iPhone – Page 2 – Life on the Wicked Stage: Act 3

Smartphone Makers Need To Make Delete and Report Spam Buttons A Priority

Time to end the phone spam game

I’ve written about the changes Apple made to the Phone app before. I’m writing about it again. Apple, other smartphone makers, and the telecommunications companies need to make detecting and deleting spam calls and texts more of a priority. Yes, there’s been some progress but to call it incremental is to insult the idea of incrementalism.

Apple now sends unwanted calls to a sort of purgatory. If they’ve been already identified as spam you may never see them thanks to the new features, unless you check for them. If it’s a new phone call you will have the opportunity to banish it yourself.

It’s an improvement, but it still takes too much effort.

For example if you receive an unwanted call, you see this screen:

New Shareshot.

Unless you know to hit the delete button or to slide the number to the left for more options the design of the screen offers you only the two options, Delete and Mark as Known. Nothing on the screen gives you any indication on how to mark or delete the call as spam.

Tapping on the Delete button gives you the following options

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Swiping to the left reveals the following icons with the orange one giving you the option to block the number.

New Shareshot.

My suggestion would be to design that first screen so deleting and blocking spam calls was a first page priority instead of having to make an additional tap or swipe to get rid of the number. If you asked me, in an age when spam calls are so prevalent I’d put a Block and Report screen on the main screen when a call comes in.

I also wonder why if I delete, block, and report a number as spam the number hangs around in a list, forcing me to use an edit function to actually get them off my phone. It feels very email like, reminiscent of having to check your spam folder if you think you haven’t received a message. But in these cases, the number as already been identified as such.

New Screenshot.

Apple has shown that it wants to help with the improvements I wrote about in an earlier post. Apple and other smartphone makers need to go further in helping us rid our phones of these unwanted annoyances.

Of course the telecommunications companies can do better here too. Spam filtering uses databases they maintain of phone numbers reported as spam. All well and good. But if you’ve already identified them as a spammer, don’t let the number make the call or send the text in the first place.

You can also find more of my writings on a variety of topics on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome. I can also be found on social media under my name as above.

Slide Over In iPadOS 26.1 Returns Just In Time

Glad to have this multi-tasking tool back.

Since I don’t run betas on any of my devices, I’ve been somewhat anxiously waiting for the release of iPadOS 26.1 which returns the Slide Over multi-tasking feature to the iPad. It got here just in the nick of time.

iPad OS 26.1 arrived yesterday afternoon, about 2 hours before rehearsal began and I quickly set things up for the evening’s rehearsal, using Notes in Slide Over to quickly jot down notes as rehearsal went along.

I use an 11 inch iPad Pro in my theatre work as my primary device. It contains the script I’m working on and ever since Slide Over was available I would use that multi-tasking feature to keep one or more apps tucked away for quick access conducting rehearsals.

New Shareshot.

I do question why Apple only allows one app in this returning version as opposed to multiple apps as it did before. It was always handy to keep multiple apps available throughout rehearsal, given that I prefer to have my script open full screen on the 11 inch iPad Pro.

As a side note, I’m not a fan of the Liquid Glass border around the window in Slide Over. It waists screen real estate, almost begging you to look at the feature. Even switching Liquid Glass to the new Tinted version, now also available in iOS 26, doesn’t erase or lessen that border or its distracting impact.

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In fact, setting the border aside, switching back and forth I don’t really see any significant difference in the apps I’m currently using between the Clear and Tinted versions of Liquid Glass. I won’t call that a complaint, but I will say it might all be much ado about nothing. At least on the iPad.

Sunday Morning Reading

Balancing on the edge of a coin

Regardless of the many problems with the Internet, there’s no denying its benefits. One of those is the pleasure of reading stuff I probably would never be aware of without it. In many ways that’s what this Sunday Morning Reading column is about (as well as my life in general on the Internet.) When you read and live life enough, you discover that the trick is always balancing on the edge of the coin that separates the two sides.

There’s comfort perhaps landing on one side or the other, but life is actually in the fragile middle of the muddle somewhere, even if it’s a fine, and increasingly thinner line, often hard to discern.

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First up this Sunday is a piece by Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo called Fear, Greed, Civic Virtue and the Fall of the Elites. Pay attention to that word “virtue.” As Marshall points out it originally meant “manliness.” The word’s evolution is as tricky as the concept itself.

Follow that up with Ian Betteridge’s The Politics of the Missing Middle.

Ian Betteridge’s law of headlines that says any headline that ends in a question mark can be answered with the word “no.” Steven Levy falls into Betteridge’s trap in his piece, Can AI Avoid The Enshittification Trap? Cory Doctorow’s theory of Enshittification has been a popular topic in this column and Betteridge’s law certainly applies here. For those looking for a primer on enshittification Greg Rosalsky has a a quick primer on the topic in A Theory Why The Internet Is Going Down The Toilet.

While technically not falling under the umbrella of enshittification, some of the ways folks are using AI sure sound shitty. Check out Alexandra Jones’s I Realized I’d Been ChatGPT-ed Into Bed: ‘Chatfishing’ Made Finding Love On Dating Apps Even Weirder.

Things are getting weird indeed. Adi Robertson tells us that The Next Legal Frontier Is Your Face and AI.

Several pieces on the arts and creativity stood out to me this week. David Sparks’ The Inherent Value Of The Creative Act reflects on his creative life and his resistance to using AI for the work of creating, but it helps with his administrative tasks. There’s that edge of the coin again.

Authoritarians always target art and artists first. You don’t need an Internet to discover that history, or perhaps we might if the current forces in charge have their way. Andrew Weinstein discusses Trump’s Campaign To Defund The Arts—and Rewrite History.

Speaking of creativity or rather the other side of that coin, Joe Rosenthal takes on Creative Neglect: What About The Apps In Apple? I mentioned some of this in a piece I wrote this past week.

Speaking of that edge and to close out this week, here’s an image of a Mastodon post by friend David Todd McCarty from this morning.

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(Coin Image above from ABARONS on Shutterstock)

If you’re interested in just what the heck Sunday Morning Reading is all about you can read more about the origins of Sunday Morning Reading here. If you’d like more click on the Sunday Morning Reading link in the category column to check out what’s been shared on Sunday’s past. You can also find more of my writings on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome.

Apple’s Changes To The Phone App Are Helpful and Confusing

Apple tries to improve the Phone experience

When the iPhone was first announced Steve Jobs uttered the now famous words about three products that would be combined into one:

Well, today we’re introducing three revolutionary products of this class. The first one is a widescreen iPod with touch controls. The second is a revolutionary mobile phone. And the third is a breakthrough Internet communications device.

The app for that “revolutionary mobile phone” has undergone few changes through the years since 2007, but nothing really to call home about. It can be argued that of those original three products, the phone has become perhaps the least important as users relied more and more on other methods of communication. This year with iOS 26, the Phone app got some significant changes. Some of which, at the moment, are proving quite helpful even if a bit confusing.

Let’s talk about the confusion first.

Apple introduced a new Unified View in the Phone app that consolidates Favorites, Recents, and Voicemails all under a single Calls tab. It sounds good to try and combine these features into one hub as a concept, but I find it confusing and some of the folks I support do as well. Apple also knew it could be confusing, providing users with a way to switch back to the prior Classic View with the familiar separate tabs for Favorites, Recents and Voicemail. Those folks I support are choosing to stick with the Classic View rather than learning something new. I’m swinging back and forth.

New Shareshot.

Like anything else new this Unified View breaks muscle memory. That sort of change isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but coming after years of users trained on the same interface, it’s about as confusing as flipping the mouthpiece and the earpiece on an old landline phone would be.

If you choose the Unified View and designate enough contacts as Favorites, it’s also a damn ugly interface to look at. Your Favorites are arrayed at the top with recent calls below.. If you tap on Show All, (the catch all bucket if you have more than seven Favorites) you’re taken back to the same list view from the older UI of the Classic View. (The Unified View is on the left and the Classic View is on the right in the image below.)

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I’m also confused at times about the differences between what’s a Missed Call and What’s an Unknown Caller as notifications sometimes, not all the time, appear in both places. Sometimes a call record will show up in three places if it’s also identified as a Spam call.

New and Newish Features

Hold Assist Detection sounds like a winner of a feature. In some cases it is. In some not. It makes me think that the designers of this feature have never used the Phone app to call a pharmacy or a doctor’s office where the person answering the phone is so busy that when they answer they speak so fast that you can’t understand what they’re saying. In my experiences attempting to use this feature in cases like those, the person on the other end just hangs up and I have to make the call again. I’ve yet to have a successful attempt at using this feature as designed other than testing it with friends.

New Shareshot.

As an intriguing side note, the same thing happened with a call to Apple Support.

Screen Unknown Callers is another new feature that works well in some cases yet not in others. It has certainly reduced the number of unwanted calls I’ve received since turning it on. The call screening happens before your phone rings, which apparently is enough to bring an end to a number of those calls. Sometimes those calls appear in the Missed Calls list, sometimes not. What I don’t understand is that some of these calls also show up as Priority Notifications while others do not.

There are three options for screening unknown callers. The first is Never, which means you aren’t screening and all calls come through. The second is Ask Reason for Calling, which queries the caller. The third is Silence which silences any unsaved numbers and sends them to voicemail, placing the log of the call in the Recents List.

I’ve been using the Ask Reason for Calling option and, as I said, it has cut down on the number of unknown calls I receive in a day. My wife and I received our current phone numbers when we lived in another state and area code, so we essentially reject any calls with that area code as unwanted. I do wonder if this will become a whack-a-mole game with spam callers in the future as they look for ways to get around this feature.

Call Filtering silences missed calls and voicemail from unknown numbers. Those calls end up in the Unknown Callers List. Sometimes in other lists.

Spam Calls, as identified by your carrier, are silenced, sent to voicemail and moved to the Spam List. Yet, sometimes are flagged as Priority notifications.

Live Voice Mail has been around since iOS 17 and is supposed to show you a live transcription of a voice mail so you can pick up if the call is important. I tried this a couple of times during the iOS 17 era but never used it regularly to gauge how well it worked. I’ve tried it a few times in iOS 26 and have not been able to see the live transcription until after the caller ended things on their end. So I’m guessing Apple has some work to do there.

The good news about all of this is that Apple in the last couple of years is working to make your iPhone less of a nuisance when it comes to dealing with unwanted calls.

The not-so-good news comes in two buckets. The new user interface will require quite an adjustment. Kudos to Apple for providing an option to switch back easily. The other bucket is that phone makers have to rely on carriers for reducing Spam. Spam lists are the province of the carriers. That push and pull is reflected somewhat in the design of the Phone app interface when it comes to blocking unwanted calls.

In order to Block or Block and Report a phone number as Spam there are two options. If you swipe left on the record of an unknown phone call a small orange icon with a white hand appears that reveals the blocking actions.

New Shareshot.

You can also open up a Contact card by hitting the Info button on the right of a Contact card, scroll all the way down to the bottom of the card and choose to Block the number from there.

Either method described above is more cumbersome than it needs to be in my opinion and it would be much simpler if Apple could design an incoming call screen that had a prominent Block button on it.

These new features Apple has added to the Phone app in my opinion demand better curation of contacts by a user to work effectively. At least in my case they do. Numbers you may use once in a while need to be in your contacts in order for these new phone features to identify them appropriately. By the same token, numbers you never want to hear from again need to be blocked or blocked and reported as spam.

All methods of communication eventually devolve into this kind of tedium and you’d think by now there would be money enough to find better technological methods to relieve us of it.

My other concern is one that I have about how Apple handles its apps in general. With a few exceptions, (Notes and Reminders) Apple tends to release new features for an app and then let them go years without continuing to improve them. I hope that’s not the case with these new features in the Phone app. Apple made a good, certainly overdue, next step with these changes. They can’t just leave us all on hold until they take the next one. We could all use a little more sanity and perhaps a bit more revolution from the “revolutionary mobile phone.”

Who knows? Maybe one day Apple will even turn its attention to the long neglected Contacts app.

More Thoughts and Issues With macOS 26 Tahoe

Unfinished Tahoe is not a friend to developers or users

I wrote a bit earlier about some of my early thoughts on the new OS 26 releases and here’s a few more to share about macOS 26 Tahoe. I continually beat a drum about the fact that we’re all on Apple’s beta bus, whether we opt in to receiving betas or not. I don’t opt in. Several of these thoughts keep that percussive refrain rumbling along through the issues below.

MacOS 26 Tahoe purple.

Memory Leaks

Since the release of macOS Tahoe 26.0.1 I’ve seen strange memory leaks increasing for what I think are odd reasons. For example, a process known as IconServicesAgent increases the longer I go between rebooting sessions. According to documentation I’ve found online, one of the causes of this can be an overly large or corrupted icon cache, or specific icon causing the problem. A solution is to clear the icon cache, which I’ve done, but the problem reoccurs.

I don’t have the expertise or the patience to tray and track down which icon(s) may be the issue, so hopefully this gets fixed in an upcoming release.

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My hunch is this has to do with icons being a lower priority for developers who still have a lot of other work to do on their apps. I base that on the number of non Apple app icons I see that haven’t been updated for Liquid Glass.

Notifications Memory Leak

There’s another memory leak that I see less frequently and seems a bit more random. You can see in the image above the amount of memory NotifcationsCenter is consuming. Apparently this “occurs when a program holds onto references to objects, like activities or other resources, even after they are no longer needed, and uses the notification system as a way to do so.” It’s tough to pin down whether these memory leaks are the fault of developers hindered by Apple’s choices, or just a system bug. Either way it’s far from optimal.

Again, I don’t have the expertise to sort this out, so I’m hoping for a fix in an update down the road.

Notification Summaries

Prior to macOS 26 Tahoe I had long ago turned off Apple Intelligence’s Notification Summaries on macOS Sequoia. I turned them back on with this new release to see if things improved. They did not. In my experience they are just as bad and just as useless as they were previously. So I’ve turned them off again.

Liquid Glass, Corners, and Such

I find the general acceptance that Apple made Liquid Glass less of a priority than it did on other device platforms amusing because it’s not only true, it’s true in the way a red wine stain shows up on a white shirt or blouse. That said, the somewhat half-way approach we do have, while not a deal breaker, is becoming increasingly more visually annoying.

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The lack of contrast for Sidebars always jerks my attention away when I have a sidebar open because for someone who once had real vision issues due to cataracts, it triggers a flashback to when I first started noticing those since corrected eye issues. The screen shot above makes it look like there is greater contrast than what I see in actual practice.

I’m also just not buying the entire concept of bringing “more focus to content.” Again, it’s more distracting than focusing. The more I see it the more distracting it becomes, which I’m guessing is antithetical to what Apple’s designers were hoping. This is true on iPhones and iPads as well.

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Widgets

This is one instance when the drum beat of bad beta behavior sounds loudest. Again, I do not run betas on any of my devices. Yet, each time that Apple releases a beta for the next version of macOS 26 all of the widgets I use on a secondary screen will disappear the morning before the release. I can set my clock by it. I’ll go to the trouble of restoring them. Within the next day or so duplicates of those widgets will appear, but strangely now revealed under Notifications.

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At first I deleted the duplicates but after this week’s beta release I noticed that they eventually disappeared on their own. It’s odd behavior to say the least.

Control Center

Speaking of Control Center, Apple is obviously hoping to move a lot of what functionality available in Menu Bar icons into the Mac Control Center. Apple has provided an API for developers to make that possible so that user can access those functions from the Control Center instead of the Menu Bar. I have very few apps that have taken advantage of this so far, again speaking to the slow pace of adoption by developers with other priorities.

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Even so, the two I have placed in the Control Center are sometimes present and sometimes not. To my surprise they appeared this morning. Not surprisingly they do not appear this afternoon, merely showing a place holder.

Control Center Notifications

Apple moved Notifications for things like Bluetooth and WiFi connections, volume sliders, and other functions so they animate out of the Control Center. That means they pop out in the upper right hand corner of the screen. That said, I find when they do animate they either distract me from what I’m doing, since I’m typically looking at the center of the screen, or my muscle memory of looking for them in different locations causes me to miss them entirely.

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The beta drumbeat pounds on

It’s been obvious since the release of macOS 26 Tahoe that Apple has a lot of work still to do. Some of that obviously was by design due to time and resources. Fine, but not fine. You can’t expect high performance out of a F1 race car unless your pit crew can nail the basics. As it currently stands Apple has its shiny new car well polished for pictures and demos, but is obviously still behind with its own engineering, throwing more delays at developers in the pit, in turn leaving users wondering about the turns ahead.

I frankly don’t see these gaps closing until sometime next spring at this point. Just in time for Apple to begin shifting resources to whatever comes next. I find that sloppy, unsettling, and like a lot of things Apple-like, not very Apple-like these days.

Stop Snoozing and Wake Up: Apple Changes Alarm Shutoff Screen

If you snooze, you lose

It was a real wake up call for me when news broke recently that in the next major update to iOS 26 Apple will be changing the wake up screen for alarms. The change means that instead of having two buttons, one above the other to either Snooze the alarm or Stop the alarm, users will now have to Slide a button to turn off the alarm.

This shouldn’t have been that much of a surprise for me as prior to iOS 26, the snooze button was a big orange one and the “button” to turn off the alarm was below it and much smaller. I can’t tell you the number of times I, and my wife, accidentally hit the snooze button instead of turning off the alarm.

To my tastes, Apple fixed that in the initial release of iOS 26 by making the buttons of similar size, even if the Snooze button still grabbed all the glory and color.

Here’s the thing. Of course how you wake it up is a very personal preference. Personally, I’m not a snoozer. When it’s time to wake I want to wake up and get moving. But apparently the majority of the world prefers snoozing, as do the folks making decisions in Cupertino. When you think about it explains quite a bit about so much when it comes to meeting the challenges of each day, whether in the real world or in tech.

What’s that old saying, if you snooze, you lose? I think that’s it.

I can only imagine how many iPhones are going to be knocked off of bedside tables as semi-awake users attempt to slide the button to silence an alarm. If I was responsible for the design, I’d have made it more challenging to hit a snooze button than to hit the wake up button.

But that’s just me.

Apple’s Freezing Out Another ICE Related App: DeICER

Apple continues working for ICE

I’ve linked to coverage about Apple purging apps that are designed to help those looking to protect themselves from the Trump regime’s ICE actions including ICEBlock and Eyes Up. Add another one to the list, this time the app is called DeICER.

According to Pablo Manríquez of Migrant Insider, DeICER is a “civic-reporting app used to log immigration enforcement activity.”

Manríquez goes on to suggest that Apple effectively is treating federal immigration agents as a protected class of individuals. HIs article also includes an account of an interview with the app’s developer Rafel Concepcion over Apple pulling the app and the app’s intended purpose. It is worth a read.

In Chicago, these are dangerous and confusing times, even more so depending on who you are, what you look like and where you live. With a largely unhelpful media, it is challenging for anyone concerned to find accurate info or, as in the case of Eyes Up, preserve what they may have seen or recorded. Do note that recording info with smartphones is one of the methods of resistance Illinois and Chicago officials are encouraging citizens to perform in the face of these actions.

Even so, there are areas of Chicago wherein you would never know this kind of thing is happening. Local independent media is stepping up its game, but unfortunately doesn’t have the reach that large outlets do.

Apple isn’t alone in their cowardly actions. Google is also pulling apps of similar ilk. Both companies are referring to their respective App Store guidelines in their defense of their actions with Apple telling Concepcion,

Information provided to Apple by law enforcement shows that your app violates Guideline 1.1.1 … because its purpose is to provide location information about law enforcement officers that can be used to harm such officers individually or as a group.

These ICE enforcement actions want to project toughness in their aim to intimidate and harass, but by and large each of these maneuvers to hide what they are doing only serves to show how afraid those responsible for these actions actually are of the chaos, fear, and harm they are causing, regardless of the chest-thumping content they are creating on their raids.

The only ones who appear more afraid are Apple and the other big tech and media companies that keep going along to get along.

OS 26 First Impressions

Early thoughts on OS 26 versions

Bubbles. My grandkids love bubbles. It’s a kid’s delight. Apparently bubbles also delight some Apple designers. My first impression of the look of iOS 26 on the iPhone was bubbles.

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I watched the OS 26 round of operating system betas over the summer as things evolved and have now installed the first release on all my devices. I’ve seen and heard the reactions so I was reasonably prepared for what would happen once the updates occurred. These are some first impressions after taking a look.

Liquid Glass

I’m not putting down bubbles. Bubbles are fun, whimsical, and joyful. But my overwhelming impression on the iPhone 16 Pro with iOS 26 installed was that the Liquid Glass design language, (that supposedly isn’t a design language,) felt very bubbly and child-like. To my eye I associate it more with bubbles than I do glass, liquid or not.

I also thinks Liquid Glass looks and feels better on the iPad Pro than it does on the iPhone. There’s more space for the chunkier, bubblier UI elements to float around. By and large things look cleaner on the iPad.

On the Mac, Apple didn’t go quite as far with Liquid Glass as they did with the iPhone and iPad regarding transparency and bubbly things, but there is still a more cartoonish feel to macOS 26 than the previous version. I think most of that is due to the rounded corners, rounded buttons and tab bars. I will say in this early going, I miss what I felt was a cleaner design in Sequoia on the Mac than what I see in this early going with Tahoe.

Bubbles are also messy things. Messier than glass in solid form certainly. Perhaps applying liquid properties to this glass like interface provides a license to keep things messier. That’s certainly true in some cases on the iPhone. For example, in the Phone app the reflective (or is it refractive) qualities around the buttons make it feel like light is leaking through a misapplied sticker than I think was the intent.

New Shareshot.

On both the iPad and the iPhone you’ll have to be careful what you choose for a wallpaper, because that same light leaking through means photos that have many colors or light contrasts within them appear more distracting than pleasing. (I like to use my own photography for wallpapers).

New Shareshot.

The issues of legibility have been discussed quite a bit over the summer, and I don’t think Apple has a complete solution for that yet when it comes to complex backgrounds, other than seemingly to force users to make simpler choices with wallpaper backgrounds. In early use, I think what we see on iPhone and iPad completely renders useless the statement of letting your content shine through. It might bleed through, but if it shines it does so in a distracting manner.

Here’s an example of one of my Home Screens that I think makes things look more bubbly than Liquid Glassy, especially in the upper two rows of folder icons.

New Shareshot.

Alan Dye, the VP of Human Interface Design, the Apple guy who spearheaded this UI change, is quoted as saying that Liquid Glass is “the foundation for new experiences in the future.” All well and good when you have a fuller view of the future as one assumes he would. But for those looking at their devices today, that means as much or as little as any tech promise or vision that have been dropped on us these last few years.

Liquid Design, in my very early looks is not to my taste. It may be to yours. the good news is that everything still appears to be functional. But to me, it’s a child-like appliqué on sophisticated devices that seem to beg for something more mature. I’m sure Liquid Glass will evolve, but until it does, I don’t think these bubbles will be popping soon.

Other Changes

I haven’t explored many of the new features of any of these new operating systems, only attempting to get things up and running. Most things appear to be running well.

A few changes I like include:

I prefer this iteration of the Photos app in iOS

I like the big multi-tasking changes for iPad and look forward to working with them more, although count me as one who will miss Slide Over. It was handy in my work in rehearsals.

I like the new Trash Can icon on the Mac. That’s the kind of whimsy I can support.

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I love the wrist flick gesture on the Apple Watch.

Things I’m not a fan of:

On the Mac I miss the Shortcuts item in the menu bar. Yes, you can add one, but instead of getting a straight drop down of clickable Shortcuts, it now opens a new window that requires not only the selection of the Shortcut you want to execute, but another separate action to run the Shortcut. Adding clicks isn’t much of a shortcut to me. I see where Apple is going with this, trying to move things out of the Menu Bar into the Control Center. That’s going to require developers to make that move successful.

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I’m not a fan of some of Apple’s redesigned icons.

I tried out the Tinting feature for icons. I could see myself using this, if the feature didn’t tint widgets. What’s the point of a tinted Photos widget?

New Shareshot.

Some things I’m on the fence about:

I’ve previously used independent apps Bartender and Ice to control the large number of Menu Bar icons I like to have available. Both are currently in beta so I’m testing out Apple’s feature to hide the Menu Bar until things change on those fronts. Simply put, that means the Menu Bar disappears until I hover over or click on it, revealing the icons. In using this feature when windows are at the top of the screen, Menu Commands sometimes disappear requiring some window rearrangement. This doesn’t happen consistently, so I’m guessing it’s a bug. I’m not sold on this in the early going but I’m giving it a try.

I’ve been using Raycast as an application and Shortcut launcher, along with some of its other features. I’m giving Apple’s new Spotlight features a try including the long overdue Clipboard Manager. This will require some muscle memory retraining, and it might mean leaving Raycast behind. It would be easier to do so if that Clipboard Manager copied across devices.

It’s early going. For me, as well as these new operating systems. I’ll discover more as I go along. I’m hoping the evolutionary pace for this software from Apple and most certainly developers will come close to matching mine in the days to come. I’m guessing it’s going to be sometime in 2026 before we can really evaluate what’s what in these OS 25 releases.

Things Apple Won’t Fix In The Next Round of OS 26 Updates

I’d bet money these issues persist after new OS releases

Apple is announcing new iPhones, Apple Watches and possibly other things today. They’ll also announce the release date for the operating systems for all of those new devices and previous generations already in use. All of the focus is going to be on everything new, improved, changed and Liquid Glassed.

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I’m sure I’ll write about some of that down the road. For today I’m writing about the things I’m thinking Apple won’t address in any of the new operating systems. These are lingering issues that in some cases have not been corrected over the life of multiple operating systems. As much as I get excited about a new software release I remain frustrated year after year when Apple steps forward while dragging its feet on correcting existing problems.

Believe me, I get that Apple has created such a large ecosystem that it is impossible to pay attention to every detail and correct every mistake. I get it, but I don’t sympathize with it. Introducing new operating systems pumped out on what seems like an impossible to meet annual cycle creates other issues that need to be addressed and it is apparently too easy to just let the older ones go unattended. And from what I’ve seen from developers I follow, there are going to be a host of new issues that are going to need to be resolved over the next year. Or longer. The longer you let an existing issue hang around without attention, the more the “control the whole widget” promises seem not quite in control.

Certainly it’s a question of priorities. How the priorities are set makes me question the priorities of those that set them.

Some of these issues I’ve highlighted before, others I have not. Here are a few that continue my questioning of Apple’s priorities. I’m sure there are some that others experience that fall into the same category of hoping Apple pays attention to them someday.

Syncing

I’ve seen a decrease in syncing issues with iCloud in general. That’s a good thing. But Apple still insists on syncing Photos on its own schedule. Whether it’s battery life optimization or system optimization the delay is never optimized for the user experience.

Shared Reminder Notifications

I’ve written about this before. The fact that this one hasn’t been corrected since Shared Reminders became a thing undercuts all of the very good work Apple has done with the Reminders app in general.

Bluetooth Weirdness

I don’t know how else to describe this other than it’s just weird. There are times when Bluetooth connectivity works as designed with my AirPods and other peripherals. There are times when things just go bonkers especially with AirPods. Things will work as designed for days on end, then they won’t. AirPods switch between devices as designed, but then stop doing so. Adaptive Listening will work well sometimes and sometimes not. Connectivity with my car works well and then it doesn’t. My car isn’t smart by any stretch of the imagination and gets no software updates so it makes sense to me that it’s a Bluetooth issue on the iPhone. Note that it happens at random times unrelated to iOS updates or those mysterious AirPod firmware updates. The Magic Trackpad works 98% of the time. Then not. It’s weird.

Shortcuts

It’s become either a legend or a joke that every time Apple releases a new update (full release or point release) something goes wrong with Shortcuts. Either way it’s a problem for “the future of automation.” I particularly love it when a Shortcut just hangs with no indication that there’s a problem after working well for days on end. This inconsistent problem is consistent.

The App Store

Apple’s biggest retail outlet is the slowest loading and buggiest piece of software it has ever designed. It’s also designed abysmally.

Focus Modes

I use very few Focus Modes. I do not share them between devices. Sometimes they work. Sometimes they don’t. I’ve never set a Sleep Focus on my iMac. Yet one mysteriously appears at random during the day about twice a month. The Focus I’ve set for listening to Podcasts inconsistently fails to kick in.

Mail Rules

I think Apple has just given up on Mail Rules because the ones I’ve built just don’t work anymore.

Apple News

I enjoy that on my Mac I can choose to open an article in Safari or that I can open a webpage in Apple News. I don’t understand why that can’t happen on the iPhone.

Notification Summaries

I long ago turned Notification Summaries off because they were just confusing and caused more work than just dealing with the Notification. I recently turned them back on to check and see if there had been any improvement. There has not.

As I said, I don’t anticipate Apple fixing any of the above with all of the new ’26 releases. I’ve learned to work around them the same way I work around the passenger side backdoor on my car won’t open from the inside and I have to open it from the outside whenever I’ve got a back seat passenger. It’s a walk around workaround. It’s not ideal. And each time I have to do it I’m reminded just how imperfect things are and can be. I’m sure it will diminish the value of the car when I do decide to trade it in, but it’s already reduced the value of it in my mind.

I feel the same way when Apple doesn’t address longstanding issues that I and others have brought to their attention. Here’s hoping Apple addresses some of these issues. Here’s hunching they won’t.

You can also find more of my writings on a variety of topics on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome. I can also be found on social media under my name as above.

Blood Glucose Monitoring on the Apple Watch Is Probably A Long Way Off

The annual hope and hype cycle

Every year as we near Apple’s iPhone and Apple Watch announcements rumors circulate and recirculate about Apple including a blood glucose monitor for the Apple Watch. It would be great if that happens someday. In my view it’s probably a lot further off than most of those hoping it happens want it to be. Here’s why I think that.

I’m a Type 2 diabetic. Checking my blood sugars has been a part of my life for 14 years or so. I’m painfully familiar with the prick your finger method and relied on it until a new endocrinologist prescribed a Dexcom G6 sensor. I’m now using a Dexcom G7 sensor. I don’t use an automatic insulin pump, just the sensors for monitoring via my iPhone and Apple Watch. I treat my condition with injected medication, both insulin and GLP-1.

The Dexcom sensors (both generations) were indeed a plus in my life as they provided a better way of monitoring, allowing me to better gauge diet and exercise, which will always be the biggest part of any diabetic’s regime.

But neither Dexcom model was a fire and forget it solution. There are times when I have to check my blood sugar with a finger prick because there are so many variables that can affect your glucose levels. The Dexcom system does provide a method to calibrate and recalibrate based on actual readings from a finger prick. I experience periods when I don’t need to recalibrate often and periods when I do.

If I’m traveling for a more than a day or so I have to pack my kit for finger pricks, because travel can be one of those variables. An inadvertent bump of the sensor on my arm can throw readings off for the remaining life of that sensor. (You have to change to a new sensor every 10 days.) AND to be frank, the tech is still far from perfect. Sensors fail occasionally and, as is the case with all tech that fails, it happens at the most inappropriate time.

Dexcom’s sensors are classified as a minimally invasive medical device. The device inserts a small filament under the skin, and yes it feels like a small needle insertion. That filament takes its reading from the interstitial fluid between cells. It does not read directly from the bloodstream. The device is held on by an adhesive patch.

When Dexcom introduced its Apple Watch app it was a decided monitoring improvement over the iPhone App which I viewed via a widget on my iPhone Home Screen. The iPhone widget far too frequently needed a touch of the screen which opened the app to update the reading.

The Apple Watch app offers a complication that displays data more consistently, needing less frequent touches to refresh the readings. (The complication is visible in the photo above showing a reading of 157.) That said, the Apple Watch tends to disconnect too easily from the sensor, defaulting back to displaying readings from the iPhone when that occurs.

I also find that the Apple Watch app reading is more current than what the iPhone is showing, but you do still need the iPhone app to communicate readings with your endocrinologist.

In some instances I’ll need to reboot both devices to reconnect things up on both my iPhone and Apple Watch. Dexcom technicians have told me these disconnections have to do with Bluetooth connection issues and are subject to the same vagaries and variables that exist with many other Bluetooth connections. I also need to be aware of which arm I have the sensor attached. I wear my Apple Watch on my left arm and if the sensor is on my right arm there will be more frequent disconnections. I don’t sleep with my Apple Watch on, so waking in the morning requires a waiting period for the watch app to reconnect.

The goal behind the push to include blood glucose monitoring on an Apple Watch (or any other smart device) is obviously to cut down on the need for finger pricks and possibly the use of minimal invasive medical devices. But also, in theory an on device sensor communicating directly with watchOS should show readings more consistently and be much less subject to the vagaries of Bluetooth connectivity.

I certainly can’t prejudge any new system or technology that hasn’t surfaced yet. Certainly I’m one who hopes Apple or some other company can eventually tackle this issue and provide a workable solution. That said, convenient as this annual rumor always seems to be, I believe blood glucose monitoring on the Apple Watch is a lot further off than most hope or think it might be. I’m also reasonably sure that finger pricks will still be needed if for no other reason than to calibrate sensor readings with actual blood glucose levels.

You can also find more of my writings on a variety of topics on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome. I can also be found on social media under my name as above.