By Jason Snell

January 19, 2026 4:56 PM PT

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If the future of e-readers is getting weird, I’m here for it

Late last year, a bunch of people, knowing that I love e-readers, asked me if I was going to try the Xteink X4, a $69 tiny, no-frills reader. Like, seriously tiny—so small that it comes with a stick-on magnet ring and will just snuggle into the MagSafe area on an iPhone 17 Pro Max.

The moment I saw that the Xteink X4 didn’t have any lighting, I decided I wasn’t going to bother—I spent way too much time clipping book lights to Kindles so I could read in the dark. But in a moment of weakness (possibly fueled by several Hazy IPAs and high altitude) over Thanksgiving, I bought one. It was $69! Why not take a chance on a weird little e-reader?

When the Xteink X4 arrived, I got my answer: I was deeply unimpressed with the hardware, which has two rocker switches on the front as well as a rocker on the side and a power button and a recessed reset button. Look, I love e-reader buttons, but eight is too many. Of course, there was the aforementioned lack of lighting, meaning you need to use it outside or in a well-lit room. Also, the whole premise of this thing seems to have been that it sticks on the back of your iPhone, but that’s not true unless you have absolutely the largest iPhone available.

But I’ll give it this: it was tiny.

The software was the real tragedy, though: It was really bad. Hard to navigate (so many buttons) and, tragically, just bad at being an e-reader. I couldn’t turn off forced justification, another deal-breaker for me. I tossed it on my desk and figured I wouldn’t write about it because why kick this little thing when it’s down? (I did say some unkind things about it on Upgrade, I’ll admit.)

And then a funny thing happened: Dan Moren sent me a message saying:

Finally got my Xteink ironically after hearing you slag it on Upgrade. So I flashed it with the community-made firmware, which by all accounts is better.

I had seen several people report that the Xteink worked better with some community-built firmware, but I hadn’t tried it—mostly because I firmly believe that suggesting that someone buy hardware only to immediately replace its firmware with someone else’s fix is not really the endorsement it sounds like.¹

But Dan’s message intrigued me, moreso when he pointed out that I could install the new firmware directly from a web page using Chrome. Loading a web page and clicking a button seemed like a very low-effort way to see what all the fuss is about, so I went ahead and installed CrossPoint reader.

What a difference. The CrossPoint software draws labels next to the four rocker directions on the front of the Xteink x4, so you know what each button does. It parses ePub files properly, offers font and justification control, and will even display the cover art of the book you’re reading. There’s even support for uploading books via Wi-Fi!

Is it as sophisticated as other e-readers? Absolutely not. Most readers are either Android or Android-based; this thing is an ESP32-based thing, so it’s incredibly bare bones. But it works.

Do I recommend that people rush out and get the Xteink X4? No, I don’t. It’s fun to mess around with, and if you’re looking for a super-tiny e-reader that you can keep in a pocket or bag and break out in well-lit spaces at the drop of a hat, it will suffice. It won’t sync with other readers or your phone, so consider it the digital equivalent of throwing a paperback in your purse or backpack.

What I am enthusiastic about is the potential for interesting e-readers. Amazon seems comfortable shipping Paperwhites that are boring and featureless, Kobo’s innovation seems to have slowed as well, and everyone seems distracted by the possibility of finding a new market with E Ink-based note-taking devices like the Kindle Scribe.

But there’s still room for weird. The Android-based Boox Palma is shaped like a phone, but it’s an e-reader. At $250, it’s not cheap, and it’s a bit too big, but who’s to say where experimentation with smartphone marks and E Ink screens might lead? And coming from the bottom up are devices like the Xteink X4, with basic software running on ESP32 hardware.

If I were Xteink or any similar hardware developer, I’d be looking hard at giving support to the CrossPoint project and then focusing my efforts on making a device with simpler controls (fewer buttons!). Adding lighting and potentially a touchscreen would make this interesting, too. There are a lot of directions this sort of product could go—so let’s get to experimenting.

In the meantime, I’ve loaded a bunch of DRM-free public domain books from Standard Ebooks on my Xteink X4 and am letting it just hang around the house. I can pick up an Agatha Christie on a sunny afternoon and just enjoy a little bit of reading time. There’s a lot of potential here.

By Dan Moren

January 15, 2026 10:54 AM PT

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Wish List: SSH keys in Passwords

It might be weird to describe myself as an “authentication enthusiast,” but I guess I’ve never claimed to not be weird. I’ve written a whole lot about passwords and passkeys, so it shouldn’t come as a surprise that I’m a big fan of Apple’s Passwords app. It lets you easily store your authentication details, share them with others, and even view the history of changes to your accounts.

Previous to Apple offering features like iCloud Keychain and Password Autofill, I relied on 1Password to store a lot of this information, but in recent years I’ve transitioned in large part to Passwords. But you’ll note I said “largely.” There are still a few things that I use 1Password for and while Apple is generally good about ticking off the lowest hanging fruit and leaving third parties to offer more niche products, I’d argue that authentication and security are important enough to our everyday lives that the Passwords app can afford to take on more responsibility.

So, maybe it’s time for a power user feature. cracks knuckles SSH keys! You know them, you love them. If you don’t know them, you should love them. Like passkeys, SSH keys are credentials that rely on public-key cryptography to simplify connecting to remote servers and computers without the use of passwords.

And before you dismiss this as something that’s just for those of us who enjoy diving into Terminal, lots of services and sites let you use SSH keys, from GitHub to apps like Edovia’s screen-sharing app Screens and many more. Again, like passkeys, their use helps make our lives more secure and more convenient.

Managing these credentials, however, can be a headache. In part because they can be stored or viewed in many places: in your user’s home directory on macOS, synced via iCloud Keychain, in macOS’s Keychain Access app, the command-line ssh-agent tool, and even some third-party apps like, yes, 1Password can handle them.¹

A veritable surfeit of solutions. Too many, really. I’d love to be able to have all my keys stored in a user-friendly interface like Passwords, which would hopefully work under the hood with the command-line tools as well as providing a system for more easily using the keys. 1Password seems to provide the best implementation here, where you can set it up to have requests for your key pop up a dialog box where you can use biometrics or your main password to authenticate.

Just as Apple eventually supported (or at least didn’t actively hinder) Touch ID for sudo on the command line, it’d be great to see Passwords embrace SSH key management for those of us who need it. Which, honestly, is all of us.

[Dan Moren is the East Coast Bureau Chief of Six Colors. You can find him on Mastodon at @[email protected] or reach him by email at [email protected]. His latest novel, the sci-fi spy thriller The Armageddon Protocol, is out now.]

By Jason Snell

January 15, 2026 8:48 AM PT

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Apple’s pro bundle makes sense, but making iWork freemium doesn’t

The Apple Creator Studio subscription bundle announced earlier this week makes sense. We live in a world where Adobe’s Creative Suite and Microsoft Office have been subscription plays for more than a decade. When Apple bought Pixelmator in 2024, it seemed like Apple really was building its own take on the Creative suite, and later this month it’ll finally arrive.

At $129 a year, it’s a lot cheaper than Adobe’s Creative Cloud subscription and roughly what I pay for just Photoshop and Lightroom… but it’s obviously more expensive than Canva’s Affinity suite, which threatens a new business model of “free software, but pay for AI features.” Still, I’m old enough to remember when Logic and Final Cut cost many, many hundreds of dollars—putting them entirely out of the reach of most people. Now you can just spend $13 for a month in Final Cut or Logic to work on a project or even see if it’s the right tool for you. I think that’s a pretty good deal.

Truth be told, Final Cut and Logic are among Apple’s two most updated apps. I’ve been using them both for ages, and there are always new updates with new features—and I’ve very rarely been asked to pay for an upgrade. (The Logic Pro release notes are a sight to behold.) When a developer is committed to consistently improving its subscription product, I think it’s a fair exchange that benefits customer and developer alike.

The addition of Pixelmator also gives Apple a piece it was missing before. Pixemator combines many features found in Photoshop and Illustrator, giving Apple the design tool that it was missing previously. It’s hard for me not to look at this bundle and think that, for the people it’s designed to serve, it’s a pretty compelling offering.

But something about this announcement really doesn’t sit right with me.

Apple has chosen to roll its “iWork” apps—Numbers, Keynote, Pages, and Freeform—into this bundle. While the company has gone out of its way to assure everyone that those apps, which come free when you buy Apple hardware, will remain free… it’s also essentially converting them into “freemium” apps that have features that will only be unlocked if you pay $129 a year for the Creator Studio.

Some of the additional items do make sense as subscription offerings. Apple is offering loads of templates and themes for those apps, limited to subscribers. It’s not unreasonable to ask for money in order to access a content library, and the templates and themes seem geared at the target audience for the bundle: creators.

But it’s some of the other stuff that gives me pause. Apple is adding features to the iWork apps, and locking them behind a paywall. There’s a feature that generates a Keynote presentation from a text outline, and another that creates presenter notes from an existing slide deck. Users of Numbers will be able to have access to Magic Fill, which lets them “generate formulas and fill in tables based on pattern recognition.”

On the one hand, these read like they’re AI-powered features that might have actual costs attached to them. But they still don’t seem like features designed for the creative customers targeted by the bundle. They seem like regular features of Keynote and Numbers, ones that those apps’ much more general user base might want… but rather than being broadly released, they’re being withheld.

I don’t generally like the idea that Apple’s taking the free software that has added to the value of its premium hardware for a couple of decades and turning it into an upsell designed to generate more services revenue. But at least I can understand that if there’s an actual cost to running AI-powered functionality, giving it away entirely for free might not be a wise thing to do.

More specifically, this move stinks for anyone who uses Keynote and Numbers and isn’t in the target audience of Pixelmator, Final Cut, and Logic users. If Apple wanted to offer an iWork subscription for $20 a year that enabled AI features, some nice templates, and the rest, I’d… probably still complain.

It junks up the simplicity of the classic iWork concept: Apple devices come, for free, with a suite of software tools that let you get things done. Even though Apple has taken great pains to say that the iWork apps will remain free, they’re now free with an asterisk: free except for the stuff you have to pay for. Asterisks make things less simple.

But at least if Apple chose to offer iWork users a targeted bundle, it would be something understandable and reasonable. This, though? A feature to make building formulas and tables in Numbers is, somehow, limited to people paying $129 a year for Final Cut? A feature to make it easier for someone to build a Keynote presentation out of their notes is only available for someone shelling out $129 for Logic or Pixelmator?

It just doesn’t make sense. It’s as if Apple has decided that there can only be one Apple software bundle, and all of its apps are just going to be dumped into it. And I’m worried about where this potentially might lead, in terms of making the entire Mac, iPad, and iPhone buying experience feel more exploitative and gross. Apple needs to recognize that it’s in the business of selling high-margin hardware that people buy because it’s nice. The more that an expensive phone or computer is just an upsell opportunity for the real thing that requires an annual fee, the less special it is.

I understand charging an annual fee for great professional audio, video, and design tools. But for features in a free bundled spreadsheet app? It just doesn’t pass the sniff test.

By Dan Moren

January 13, 2026 6:55 AM PT

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Apple launches Creator Studio pro app collection

Wonder no longer about what the future holds for Apple’s pro apps. On Tuesday, the company announced its Apple Creator Studio subscription bundle, including Final Cut Pro, Logic Pro, Pixelmator Pro, Compressor, and MainStage as well as additional features for productivity apps Keynote, Pages, Numbers, and Freeform. The bundle will be available starting on January 28.

Let’s start with the top line news: the subscription, which is a universal purchase across Apple’s platforms, is sharable across up to six members of an Apple family and will cost $12.99 per month or $129 for a year, with a one-month free trial. There’s also a substantial education discount for the bundle: $2.99 per month or just $29.99 per year. Additionally, customers purchasing a new Mac or a specific model of iPad¹ will be able to get three months of the bundle for free.

You can also continue to buy the Mac versions of any these apps as an individual one-time purchase. The productivity apps themselves will stay free—subscribing to the bundle will only unlock additional features for that software.

All the pro apps gain new features as part of this update. Final Cut Pro gets Transcription Search to search through footage and find the right piece of audio; Beat Detection, which lets you time videos to beats in music; and Montage Maker, which uses AI to edit together a dynamic video where you can adjust the settings.

Logic Pro gains a Synth Player for its AI Session Players; Chord ID, which can turn audio into a chord progression; and a new Sound Library. The iPad version also gets the Mac version’s Quick Swipe Comping feature as well as Music Understanding functionality that helps you find a loop by using natural language to describe it.

Pixelmator Pro is perhaps the biggest part of this announcement, as many have wondered what was in store for the graphics app after its parent company’s acquisition by Apple in late 2024. The Mac app comes to the iPad for the first time with Apple Pencil support, and there’s a new Warp tool across all versions.

As for the productivity apps, the Apple Creator Studio adds a Content Hub for what Apple describes as “curated, high-quality photos, graphics, and illustrations.” There are also new premium templates and themes for Keynote, Pages, and Numbers and integration with image-generation tools from OpenAI. Apple is also, in an unusual move, including beta features as part of the bundle: the company mentions one that can create a draft of a Keynote presentation from a text outline and one called “Magic Fill” for Numbers with lets you “generate formulas and fill in tables based on pattern recognition.” Freeform’s premium features aren’t yet ready to roll out but will come later this year.

Overall, this ground is well trod. Other companies like Adobe and Affinity have offered creative bundles of their software suites, and recurring subscription revenue is an attractive prospect for the company.

I’m glad that Apple is retaining the individual purchase option for the Mac apps: if you’re a pro who really only needs a single app, an individual purchase seems to make more sense. Any more than that, and you might be better off with the subscription—as long, of course, as you don’t mind paying in perpetuity.

I do wonder a bit about those who’d prefer to have the iPad apps as individual purchases, but I’d speculate that Apple has probably looked at what customers’ buying habits on that platform and see this as a way to juice adoption there.

[Dan Moren is the East Coast Bureau Chief of Six Colors. You can find him on Mastodon at @[email protected] or reach him by email at [email protected]. His latest novel, the sci-fi spy thriller The Armageddon Protocol, is out now.]

By Glenn Fleishman

January 12, 2026 8:30 AM PT

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Step up blocking unwanted calls and texts

I came across two seemingly unrelated pieces of news recently that I am tying together as the theme of this column.

First, the heartbreaking garbage information that senior citizens may receive as many as 50 calls a day from salespeople trying to get them to reveal enough personal data that it can be used to commit fraud or identity theft, including charging Medicare for unneeded care or supplies or never-performed procedures.

Second, a wildly varying set of statistics about the percentage of iPhone owners who have upgraded to iOS 26. Is it 15%, 26%, 55%, or far more? We don’t know. But it appears to be far less adoption this far out than updates to iOS 18 a year ago. Blame Liquid Glass, or user exhaustion, or the amount of unused storage required.

The practical combination is that tools introduced in the 26 releases for Phone and Messages, particularly useful on an iPhone, are either not being used or could be used better.

Apple stepped up to the plate on overhauling and improving the way that unwanted and full-on spam messages are identified and categorized, and can be blocked. Let’s look at how you could configure your phone—and that of people you love—to better lock out the creepo fraudsters.

Take a look at updated Phone settings

In that Times Medicare scam article, one senior explained to the reporter why he answers every call:

His family can’t set the phone to allow calls only from preapproved numbers, because that would filter out some medical calls. And changing his phone number seems unfeasible, given that every legitimate contact would have to be notified.

“I’m counting the days until open enrollment ends,” Ms. Kurutz said.

With iOS 26, there’s a lot more that can be done, even by a user who isn’t a smartphone expert. Most of the actions that can be taken are as complex as answering a call or not much more so. The benefits of acting on them should be enough to reinforce behavior.

The most incredible thing you can enable for yourself or someone else right away is the Screen Unknown Callers feature in the Settings app in Apps: Phone. To balance the need to get calls from unknown parties while also avoiding fraud, enable Ask Reason for Calling. Now, any incoming call that isn’t from a number in contacts requires the calling party to provide a little information, which is automatically transcribed and can be viewed in real time.

If it’s a scammer, it’s easy enough to tap Stop or just ignore. Any legitimate party will say who they are. Later, you can select the call and tap Report Spam. While some fraudsters rotate through numbers like mad, I think some industry and governmental measures in the United States to reduce the ability to fake incoming phone numbers have worked: If I don’t block a number immediately, I will often see calls from it over time until I do. I also find that looking up a number via a search engine leads me to a page with a huge number of spam reports, meaning that number should be blocked in any case.

People unfortunate enough to follow me on Bluesky know that I needed a lot of medical care in 2025—things are going great now!—and I enabled this iOS 26 feature in the summer on a beta release. I constantly had calls coming from healthcare workers, and the filtering feature meant I answered all of those (and then marked them as known callers), and was able to avoid dozens of others.

Because of the possible need to receive calls from unknown numbers, as above, you may want to leave Phone settings for Call Filtering: Unknown Callers turned off. If you don’t, then a screened or missed call from such a number requires tapping the Filter menu and choosing Unknown Callers to review it. At least a red dot appears over the Filter icon when there are messages in Unknown Callers or Spam to give a cue.

The other option in this section, Spam, should be turned on. It lets you rely on a carrier’s analysis from phone network traffic of call patterns or customer reports of spam. I also recommend installing the free version of the apps from AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon that let you enable spam detection at the network level—that can block some calls even before they reach your phone.

The Call Blocking & Identification option is yet another way to amp up your iPhone’s intelligence about calls you (or a loved one) doesn’t want. Services from companies like Hiya receive spam reports constantly, and push out updates to a list that’s resident on your device that allows instant matching for potential or well-known spam numbers. Enabling one of these apps lets calls that pass through other layers of filtering display a label identifying a call you might not or surely don’t want. With a paid subscription, you can also show enhanced Caller ID information.

While Phone has received the biggest boost at fighting crud, and Messages is not where most of the Medicare and other kinds of relentless fraud come from, it’s still worth enabling in Settings in Apps: Messages: Screen Unknown Senders and Apps: Messages: Filter Spam. This lets you tap Filter: Unknown Senders or Filter Spam to review messages dropped into those buckets.

This takes more training. I find I have to tap Mark as Known or Not Spam on more messages than phone calls—most phone calls are correctly identified.

While I’m focused on iPhone here, call screening can be used in Phone for iOS, iPadOS, and macOS; some of the other screening options are slightly different or missing on macOS, but if you have them enabled on your iPhone, the effect is the same. It’s only if your iPhone were turned off that you would see a difference.

Liquid strength

Look, I know you have feelings about Liquid Glass—speaking to both upgraded people and non-upgraders—but I think there’s a value to overcoming that distaste and taking advantage of the good. Reducing the attention stolen away from you can be worth the cognitive load of adapting to a new interface.

For those who want extra help in sorting out iOS 26 and spam, you can check out three of my books:

• Take Control of FaceTime and Messages: This book, which includes full cover of the Phone app across iOS, iPadOS, macOS, and watchOS, will help you understand everything you can do to fight spam, scams, and many forms of harassment.
• Take Control of iOS 26 and iPadOS 26: This title will help any iOS 18 or iPadOS 18 user understand exactly what changed, instead of digging through settings and features in apps.
• Take Control of iPhone and iPad Basics: This edition, completely revised for iOS 26 and iPadOS 26, takes you through all the stuff that nobody ever tells you about an operating system, and that it’s just assumed you know. It’s great as a gift, too.

[Got a question for the column? You can email [email protected] or use /glenn in our subscriber-only Discord community.]

[Glenn Fleishman is a printing and comics historian, Jeopardy champion, and serial Kickstarterer. His latest books are Six Centuries of Type & Printing (Aperiodical LLC) and How Comics Are Made (Andrews McMeel Publishing).]

By Dan Moren

January 12, 2026 7:52 AM PT

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Apple will base its foundation models on Google’s Gemini

Updated with the full text of Apple’s statement below.

According to a statement from Apple to CNBC, the company has officially selected Google as the technology partner for its foundation models. News that this deal was in the works had previously been reported by Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman as far back as March of 2024.

The full implications of this deal aren’t yet known, but it’s likely to affect both Siri as well as other Apple Intelligence features, several of which were first announced in 2024 but have yet to actually ship. Gurman has also previously reported that those delayed Apple Intelligence features are likely to make their debut in iOS 26.4 this spring.

It’s unclear exactly where in the timeframe we are. Given that 26.3 is already in beta, and 26.4 is expected in a few months, it’s possible that work has long since started on this, even if it’s only being officially announced now.¹ Even with the leg-up provided by Google’s models, it seems unlikely the company could simply roll in that tech for a feature due out in short order.

It had previously been thought that Google’s Gemini would be offered as an option via Siri, in the same way that ChatGPT has been available for some time. That was tacitly confirmed by Apple software chief Craig Federighi who said at the company’s 2024 Worldwide Developers Conference, “we may look forward to doing integrations with different models like Google Gemini in the future.” But that deal never materialized—perhaps in part because the two companies were discussing this more substantive deal?

Either way, Google’s models are clearly a step up from Apple’s own endeavors thus far. The two companies also have a longstanding relationship over search in Safari, which makes this perhaps an unsurprising continuation of that. But as to whether it can help Apple dig itself out of the AI hole in which it’s found itself, well, we’ll find out soon enough.

Apple provided Six Colors with the full statement:

Apple and Google have entered into a multi-year collaboration under which the next generation of Apple Foundation Models will be based on Google’s Gemini models and cloud technology. These models will help power future Apple Intelligence features, including a more personalized Siri coming this year.

After careful evaluation, Apple determined that Google’s Al technology provides the most capable foundation for Apple Foundation Models and is excited about the innovative new experiences it will unlock for Apple users. Apple Intelligence will continue to run on Apple devices and Private Cloud Compute, while maintaining Apple’s industry-leading privacy standards.

[Dan Moren is the East Coast Bureau Chief of Six Colors. You can find him on Mastodon at @[email protected] or reach him by email at [email protected]. His latest novel, the sci-fi spy thriller The Armageddon Protocol, is out now.]

By Jason Snell

January 9, 2026 8:37 PM PT

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Some first thoughts about live immersive basketball

I got to watch the first quarter of tonight’s Lakers-Bucks game from the front row by the scorer’s table. Except when I was suspended in the air behind both baskets. Or maybe in a concourse watching people walk to their seats, or occasionally right out on the court for the national anthem or a Laker Girls performance.

In other words, I was watching it in my Vision Pro during the first live Apple Immersive sports broadcast.

The experience overall was surprisingly… normal? The video just played, and it felt like watching any other Apple immersive video on the Vision Pro, other than the fact that it was happening live.

Clearly, Apple and its partners (including Spectrum SportsNet, the Lakers’ TV partner) have learned a lot from their first couple of years experimenting with immersive video. Unlike previous sports highlight packages, the live broadcast kept switching camera angles to a minimum. For most of the quarter, I watched either from courtside or from behind each basket. I found that I got the hang of switching perspectives when flipping from one basket to the other pretty quickly, and the view of the action was definitely better behind the basket. But seeing action from center court, courtside, also felt like a rare treat.

Again, my real surprise was that it held up so well: The video was smooth, though when LeBron James zipped right past me, he did get a bit blurry. I’m sure the video quality wouldn’t hold up to close inspection if it were compared with a highly produced and massaged immersive documentary, but it didn’t feel any lower quality than Apple’s previous pro sports efforts, like its MLS, NBA, and Super Bowl highlight packages.

While I was able to tell the score by looking up at the scoreboard, Apple and Spectrum helpfully added a score graphic located… down on the floor, basically. It never got in the way of the action, but I could look down and quickly pick up the score and the time if I needed to.

It was novel to hear the play-by-play announcers, who were calling the game specifically for the immersive broadcast, tell me that Bucks coach Doc Rivers was “off to your left on your Vision Pro.” The announcers did a fine job, though I do wonder if it might be wise to have an option that turns off the announcers and lets you just experience the entire thing as a spectator.

If I have one real criticism of the broadcast, it’s that I’m not sure the sound was entirely right. It sounded good, don’t get me wrong, but it didn’t exactly sound spatial. Sound is one of the ways your brain places you into a scene, and it felt like the sound I was hearing was not really attached to a spatial environment that matched what I was watching. There’s probably some more work to be done on that front.

Still, this was pretty awesome. Having been to a few women’s college basketball games this past year and sat in the front row, I’ve come to appreciate that when you can see the size of the players, hear them talking, and really get a sense of depth as the ball moves around the court, it’s a very different game than you get in a flat television image. Apple and Spectrum’s immersive NBA game had a similar effect. I’m ready to see more.

(Anyone with a Vision Pro should be able to watch the replay of the Lakers-Bucks game starting Sunday at 9 am Pacific via the NBA app.)