I’m on a flight to Vegas for New Year’s with only about 30 minutes left before touchdown, so let’s quick recap a few fitness-related goals I set out to achieve in 2025.

Elevation Gain

I have a friend who, a few years ago, set out to do 360,000 feet of elevation gain in a year. That seemed a big bite to chew, so I settled for 500 feet per day — or 182,500 feet in 2025.

Well, I crushed it. I did a ton of hiking this year for work, plus a bunch of uphill ski touring last winter. They contributed to 319,914 feet of elevation gain tracked this year. I only counted ascents during workouts like hikes, skiing, and running, so my overall number with rock and ice climbing, and day-to-day life is likely much higher. Maybe I could have gone for 365,000 after all!

(I love that the little tracker I built for my self tells me that I’m 275 days ahead of schedule on this goal. 😆)

Running

I aimed to run a total of 365 miles this year. One mile per day seemed pretty reasonable, but this goal was a real challenge.

I love to run, but going through motions of getting ready and out the door are sometimes a challenge to push myself to do. And momentum plays a huge role. If I miss one run, I’m more likely to miss the next. Suddenly, I haven’t gone out in weeks and the mileage needed to catch up starts looking daunting.

By the end of November I still needed to run over 100 miles — almost a full third of the total mileage for the year. I needed to decide if I was going to commit to it or not. Thanksgiving’s Turkey Trot was the clincher. I had a great time, and was all in. But it meant I needed to average four miles of running every day until the end of the year.

I started putting in the miles, trying to go more than four miles any opportunity I got in an effort to get ahead. Six miles turned out to be my sweet spot, but I managed to eek in a few eight, 10, and even 13.1 (half-marathon) runs.

Even so, getting runs in around the holidays and my work days that are often 10+ hours was a big challenge. I ran on treadmills (yuck), in the 0°F or colder temps, and when I was sick. But, in the end, I got it done. 114 miles over 17 run in December. Next year, I won’t leave it so late in the year. 😅

High Peaks 46er

Though I’ve guided most of the Adirondack high peaks multiple times, there were still a few that I hadn’t yet summited. This had to be the year I got them done!

I hiked the last of the 4,000+ foot tall peaks, Big Slide, on July 30th of this year. It was my 132nd high peak summit. Feels great to have that off my back!

2026 Goals

These number-based goals seem to do well to motivate me, especially when I can break them down to daily or weekly totals. With that I mind, I’m aiming for three 365-based objectives.

1. A repeat of my 365 miles of running. (I’m going to think of it as seven miles a week this time. I know I can bust out six miles pretty easily at this point, so one of those and one more run a week would keep me on or ahead of schedule.)
2. 365 miles of biking. (I didn’t hardly touch my bike this year, and I want to change that!)
3. And 365 pitches of rock and ice climbing. (I haven’t even checked how many pitches I climbed this year… It could be a reasonable number, or might turn out to be a massive undertaking. We’ll see!)

I’m not setting an elevation goal because I think that just comes with my profession now, and I often have to defer to the mountains that my clients want to hike. But I’ll keep an eye on the total, and if I get close to 365,000 feet, you know I’ll be gunning for it!

Mostly these goals are intended as motivation to continue to get outside and do what I love. The added bonus of getting to tick off a few more miles or pitches on the chart is sometimes just enough to get me off the couch.

2026, bring it on!

Journal

I’m not a ring guy. My parents had to cajole me into getting a class ring back in high school, telling me that it would be something that I would later regret if I didn’t get one. So I got one, tried wearing it, and ended up hating the feeling of it always spinning ’round my finger. And then I lost it in my bowling ball bag for like a year. I’ve got no idea where it is today.

My next ring was my wedding band. Again, following customary traditions, I spent so much of my savings on an engagement and wedding ring combo for my wife. But for my own ring, I wasn’t particular. I looked around online for design ideas, liked the look of a tungsten one, found one for like $15 on Amazon, and clicked ‘Buy Now’. It still looks good as new over seven years later. And while I liked the feel of it better than my old class ring since it was symmetrical and didn’t tend to fall to one side of my finger or the other, I still prefer my fingers unornamented.

In fact, since becoming a mountain guide, I’ve worn my wedding band on a piece of cord around my neck, lest it get wedged in a rock somewhere while I’m climbing, which could be disastrous. I’d like to get a tattooed ring on my finger someday.¹

Likewise, I’ve tended to be skeptical of the fitness rings, such as the Oura, partly because I figure I’d dislike wearing it at least as much as any other ring. But also because my Apple Watch already handles all my fitness tracking, and I wouldn’t want another thing to remember to charge.

All that being said, I’m as surprised as anyone that the Index 01, Pebble’s latest gadget, caught my interest.

It’s a ring, but instead of packing in more features than its competition, the Index is designed to do less. Its primary role is to be an ever-present way to record short notes-to-self. It’s got a tiny LED and a little microphone that’s activated by pressing a physical button. That’s it.

Eric Migicovsky, Pebble’s founder, is selling the Index as “external memory for your brain”. It doesn’t have any fitness tracking sensors. It doesn’t record everything around you, 24/7, like other AI gadgets, to make a perfect transcript of your life. It’s basically a dedicated personal note taker, and that’s what makes it so interesting to me.

In fact, I’ve been trying to solve this ‘take a quick note’ problem on my own for years. My brain comes up with its best ideas when I’m out for a hike, but that’s also when I least want to pull out my phone to type it out. So, I rigged up a solution with Apple Shortcuts to trigger voice-to-text with my iPhone’s Action button so that I can easily save my ideas and to-dos to Drafts without breaking stride. But it’s an imperfect solution as I look a little goofy in front of my clients when I mutter into my phone in the backcountry. Plus, I have to have my phone with me, and the audio isn’t saved, just the transcript.

The Index remedies a lot of that rigmarole by virtue of being a dedicated device that’s always with you, that saves the audio recording, and that’s less intrusive and distracting than pulling out a smartphone.

A few more things that I really like

The physical button. You have to hold it down to make a recording. No wondering if it’s working. Migicovsky insists it has a great click-feel, and I’m inclined to believe him.

It’s designed to be worn on your index finger, putting the button always in reach of your thumb to start a recording. That’s so smart, as it means it can be used discreetly with one hand. My Apple Watch often needs to be operated with the other hand, and its raise-to-speak to Siri feature is somewhat unreliable. Adding the button was a great idea.

You can’t charge it. This one’s a bit controversial, I know. Just read the comments on the announcement video — it’s basically the only thing people are talking about. The non-replaceable battery is a bummer, but I get it. I’d want a ring to be as unobtrusive as possible, and leaving out the charging bits and accessible battery cuts down on a lot of bulk. It’s definitely more svelte than an Oura.

Furthermore, I have enough gadgets that I need to remember to charge every day. If it can just stay on my finger, it has a way higher chance of becoming an ingrained workflow. While I don’t want to contribute to e-waste, Pebble says they’ll recycle it when the battery dies, supposedly in two or so years with typical use.

The price. If this thing cost $300+, like most smart rings, I certainly wouldn’t be psyched to replace it every two years. But at $99 ($75 for pre-orders), I think they priced it well to be a reasonable curiosity purchase. And it’s a one-time payment — there’s no ongoing subscription cost!

Additional actions. While its primary purpose — and my main interest in it — rests with its always-ready note-taking, it sounds like the Index can do a little processing and take action on some commands. From the announcement post:

• Actions: While the primary task is remembering things for you, you can also ask it to do things like ‘Send a Beeper message to my wife - running late’ or answer simple questions that could be answered by searching the web. You can configure button clicks to control your music - I love using this to play/pause or skip tracks. You can also configure where to save your notes and reminders (I have it set to add to Notion).

• Customizable and hackable: Configure single/double button clicks to control whatever you want (take a photo, turn on lights, Tasker, etc). Add your own voice actions via MCP. Or route the audio recordings directly to your own app or server!

Supposedly, you’ll be able to hook it up to MCP to do more AI stuff with the recordings. I don’t know enough about MCP, so that’s not of huge interest to me. But if it can send quick messages, make reminders and calendar events, and control audio playback — and do so reliably — that’d be pretty great.

Works offline. It doesn’t have or need an internet connection to work. Transferring the audio file goes directly to your phone, and the transcription is done there, on-device. If you set those additional actions that need the internet, that’s another story, but the Index will serve its primary purpose offline, without sending your (potentially very personal) recordings to anyone’s servers.

One bummer

Less-than-stellar water-resistance. Pebble’s billed the Index as something that you never have to take off, but then notes it’s water-resistant only to 1 meter. They note, “You can wash your hands, do dishes, and shower with it on, but we don’t recommend swimming with it.” That’s not a deal-breaker, but I’ve grown so used to not worrying about swimming with my watch that I’d be a little grumpy about having to remember to take off my ring before jumping in a pool or lake.

Did I buy?

Short answer, yes. I’m intrigued enough that I placed a pre-order this morning. But I’m still a little iffy on whether I’ll keep it. As I mentioned, I wear my wedding band as a necklace so that it doesn’t put my finger at risk when I’m climbing. That would still be a factor with the Index. But I’m willing to give it a shot.

---

1. My wife insists that I put my wedding ring back on my finger for date night, or culturally significant events like weddings and such. I don’t mind.↩︎

My maternal grandmother, Laureen Ann Beck, passed away recently. We had a memorial service for her yesterday, filled with family and friends. Here are the reflections of her that I shared at the service.

---

Grandma Beck was a wonderful woman.

Whenever I think of her, the first thing that comes to mind is her warmth.

The fullness of her laugh.

The tightness of her hugs.

The fondness in her eyes as she looked at her husband, her daughters, and her grandkids.

The second thing that comes to mind is her ruthlessness when it came to beating the pants off all of us when playing family board games.

She had a wit sharp as anything — you had to in order to keep up with Grandpa — and deployed it masterfully.

Once we knew the rules, Grandma didn’t give an inch whether we were playing Sorry, UNO, or Parcheesi.

Parcheesi is still my favorite board game to this day, precisely because it still brings a smile to my face thinking back on the many evenings spent at the kitchen table at the Lake House — and how we used to beg Grandma to take it easy on us, and how we’d then laugh and laugh when she wouldn’t.

To be fair, we never went easy on her, either.

Heading down to Colon to see Grandma and Grandpa was always a treat growing up.

Partly because it meant getting out of the normal routine and spending time with family that we didn’t see all that often.

Partly because I loved getting out on the water, speeding along in the boat, on skis, or getting jetted out of the water tube when my Dad, Aunt Bobbi, or Grandpa were driving.

But it was also a favorite time because of the food.

Grandma always made a point of cooking our favorite meals when we were visiting.

For me, of course, that was spaghetti.

Her recipe is still the one that I love most in the world.

I remember back when I was 8 or 9 years old and was spending some time with Grandma and Grandpa by myself for a few days, I was a little nervous to be that far from home on my own.

But as soon as I walked in the front door and smelled the spaghetti simmering on the stove, I knew it was going to be a great time.

She had remembered, and that meant so much to me.

Now, I’ve never been one to love cooking, but when we were at the Lake House as a family, all the grandkids helped in the kitchen — and Grandma made it fun learning how to cook new dishes.

Whether it was a grand Thanksgiving feast stretched across the dining room table, or simple sandwiches in the kitchen after getting off the water, mealtimes brought all of us together, which you could tell was always Grandma’s favorite time.

She sure loved us, and made sure we felt it.

But what I especially enjoyed was learning how to make pies from scratch with her and my mom.

Pressing, kneading, and stretching the fresh dough took patience and skill.

Two things that I didn’t have right away, which was frustrating, but still okay because Grandma never made us feel bad about not getting it quite right, and we got to eat the scraps of dough that didn’t make the cut for the crust.

And then I could practice the next time — make it a little faster, a little tastier, with a little fancier weave on top.

When I think about slowly getting better at a skill over a long period of time — something that I teach frequently in my career — I think about baking pies in that kitchen.

Still, I never got the hang of crimping the edge quite as well as Grandma could.

In her later years, the thing I enjoyed most when talking with Grandma was about the books she was reading.

Grandma’s always been a voracious reader, but when she started listening to more audiobooks, it felt more like a shared activity.

I’ve always adored listening to stories, and stayed up waaaaay too late listening to tape after tape of Harry Potter at the lowest volume possible on my bedroom boombox growing up.

Talking to Grandma about all the different books she picked up from the library gave me a better appreciation for the breadth of her personal interests — and I was always tickled when a book she enjoyed overlapped with one that I liked too.

It’s how I’ve enjoyed picturing her these last few years as mobility became more challenging — comfortable in her chair, eyes closed, but face obviously intent, listening to the next story.

It’s what she’s probably doing now.

Spending long-awaited quality time with Grandpa — telling and listening to stories of her family.

I loved her, and I’ll miss her.

As I know we all will.

But we’ll remember her, each in our own way.

For me, it’ll be when I eat spaghetti or bake a pie, when I start a new audiobook, or when I break out Parcheesi — which I brought with me in case anyone is up for a round later.

I won’t go easy on you, because Grandma sure wouldn’t.

Journal

The core of Micro.blog’s mission is to make it easy for people to own their presence on the web. At first, it was a simple blog host that also incorporated a Twitter-like social timeline that put short (title-less) and long (titled) posts on equal footing. In the years since its 2017 launch, Manton Reece — Micro.blog’s founder — has added a plethora of features that expand upon that mission. Here’s a list off the top of my head:

• Hosting podcasts
• Bookmarking/archiving webpages
• Fediverse compatibility with native replies to Mastodon and novel reply gathering from Bluesky
• Crossposting to other social networks
• Photo blogging
• Custom domain name registration
• Private notes
• Book/Movie/TV Show blogging
• Reading tracking
• Automatic newsletters
• Open APIs to manage your content

All of this is hosted on your own website, (optionally, but strongly encouraged) at your own domain name. I’ve never seen anything else like it.

There are plans ranging from $1/month to $15/month that include subsets of these features, depending on how much a blogging “power user” you are.

Reece’s next¹ big foray with Micro.blog: video hosting, which launched yesterday.

Micro.blog Studio adds longer video hosting for your blog, with uploads up to 20 minutes. You can read some of the technical bits here. It can automatically copy videos to PeerTube and Bluesky too.

That’s a quaint description for what promises to be a significant challenge.² Because if hosting videos were easy, YouTube wouldn’t be the only³ game in town. And that’s exactly why Reece has pursued it. It’s not good for the open web for so much of its video content to live centralized at one host. John Gruber lamented this following Jimmy Kimmel’s suspension:

The big problem is YouTube. With YouTube, Google has a centralized chokehold on video. We need a way that’s as easy and scalable to host video content, independently, as it is for written content. I don’t know what the answer to that is, technically, but we ought to start working on it with urgency.

Just like Micro.blog encourages people to own their text, reading lists, podcasts, photos, and social network interactions at their own domain, that ethos now extends to videos too.

One of the great things about Micro.blog is how it enables the Publish to Own Site, Syndicate Elsewhere (POSSE) framework. That’s manifested in features like its automatic crossposting to Bluesky, Flickr, LinkedIn, Mastodon, Medium, Nostr, Pixelfed, Threads, and Tumblr. And manual crossposting elsewhere. This allows the “source of truth” to be at your own website that you control, but you won’t miss out on conversations and audiences in other places. With expanded video hosting, Reece has added PeerTube as another automatic crossposting destination, and hopes to also enable YouTube if and when Google approves his application. It’s not about only posting to your website, but instead centralizing your website as the first and primary place you post and then getting your text, images, audio, and now video out to other networks from there.

As you can probably tell, I’m pretty excited about Micro.blog taking on the challenge of being that ’indie-focused, YouTube alternative” that Reece envisioned. I haven’t upgraded my plan yet, but only because I mainly post shorter videos (covered by my current ‘Premium’ plan), but I’m very glad it now exists as an option.

There’s never been a better time to own your spot on the web. If you haven’t checked out Micro.blog before, I think it’s a compelling place to look.

---

Update 2025-11-11: I was in a hurry when I posted this earlier, and it slipped my mind to include some wants and wishes that I have for Micro.blog’s video hosting capabilities. It’s a short list, due to both Reece’s solid offering from the outset, and my lack of imagination. 😆

Scale time limits across the tiers. I really think video hosting would be a stronger offering if it were available more consistently across Micro.blog’s tiers. For example, 1-minute videos at $5/month, 5-minute videos at $10/month, 10-minute videos at $15/month, and 20-minute videos at $20/month. All with the same capabilities, but limited by length.

This was something that I know Reece considered, but ultimately decided against in the name of simplicity. He didn’t want to muck up the existing plans, and (rightly) considers them a tremendous value with their current features. He obviously hopes that people will upgrade to the higher-priced Studio plan specifically for the new video stuff.

But I think tying some video features (multiple resolutions and fast playback on your blog) to the 20-minute time limit and $20 plan creates more confusion, a feature gap, and missed opportunity. Take me for example. I think I could reasonably say that I’m a Micro.blog power user. But even I’m not sure if I’m correct in saying that those unique features are limited to the Studio plan. I know everyone gets video uploads up to 1 minute in length. (Maybe not everyone, though. Does Micro.one users at $1/month get the “new” video features? I’m not sure.

Historically, most of the videos I post are around 90 seconds in length. I’m far more likely to shave 30 seconds off my videos to fit a 1-minute time limit than I am to double my monthly cost to show those extra 30 seconds. There’s too big a gap between 1-minute videos and 20-minute videos to make it seem worthwhile. In my mind, I’d be “wasting” the extra $10/month ($120/year) by not posting 20-minute videos. But I’d be more likely to pay a little extra money for a little extra time. And then if I started hitting that new limit, I’d feel incentivized and validated graduating up to the next tier. I worry that Reece will see more infrastructure cost with a bunch of 1-minute videos being uploaded and served, but won’t see an accompanying bump in revenue, since we’re all getting the 1-minute videos for “free, and I don’t see a significant portion of Micro.blog users needing the 20-minutes.

Said one more way, I think giving people a little headroom to grow into hosting their videos on Micro.blog will make them more likely to upgrade over time. Once that habit has solidified, and users are comfortable with it, paying $5 more for the next jump in time limit isn’t a big ask. But jumping right into the Studio plan for $10-$15 extra is kind of off-putting. The gap between 1 minute and 20 is just too big.

Support 4K resolution. A pie-in-the-sky request, I know. 4K videos are huge. But I can nearly always see the difference, and choose higher quality playback every time. I’d love for my videos to appear at full-quality if they’re uploaded that way.

---

1. To be clear, Micro.blog has had the ability to host videos — or nearly any other kind of file upload — and show them on your blog for years. But it’s been limited by file size, not an optimized part of the offering. The Studio tier makes it a first-rate feature, with smooth playback, automatic conversion to multiple resolutions, and ups the limit to a healthy 20 minutes no matter the file size. And the old file size-limited video uploads should still work for folks who rely on that workflow. 👌↩︎

2. Here’s a little more on the what and the why from Reece.↩︎

3. Sure, Vimeo exists, but it’s expensive and limited, and it’s future is uncertain. Plus, you’re still posting to a vimeo.com domain. And, of course, many people post videos to Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, X, and other social networks. But I’d argue that videos there serve the algorithm first and users second. Micro.blog’s Studio tier flips that. It’s meant to serve the user first, and there is no algorithm at all.↩︎

Blogging

A weekly-ish list of interesting things I found on the internet. Sometimes themed, often not.

---

1️⃣ Greg Morris points out some minor oddities in the recent Apple Event. I noticed a few of them myself, but not all. [🔗 gregmorris.co.uk]

2️⃣ Dr. Drang points out how the fitness trend suggestions in Apple’s fitness app aren’t so smart. I agree, they’re either too vague or too specific and I hardly look at them anymore. Needs a rethink. [🔗 leancrew.com]

3️⃣ Matt Birchler’s got some good thoughts on LLM costs regarding token usage and cutting edge models. I think he’s spot on. [🔗 birchtree.me]

4️⃣ The visual and production work in this iPhone review is absolutely incredible. I can’t imagine how it was made in just a few days. (Via Matt Birchler) [▶️ youtube.com]

5️⃣ If you’ve ever used the CARROT Weather, you’ll be used to getting the unexpected out of this app. But I admit, I was surprised by an impressive musical number featuring its developer, Brian Mueller. [▶️ youtube.com]

6️⃣ Stephen Hackett was right, this blog post evaluating macOS versions, but in reverse, is required reading. [🔗 rakhim.exotext.com]

7️⃣ “AI art might eventually have the right number of fingers, but it’ll never have a heart.” The Oatmeal gets you right in the feels. [🔗 theoatmeal.com]

---

🔗 Take a Chance

---

Thanks for reading 7 Things. If you enjoyed these links or have something neat to share, please let me know. And remember that you can get more links to internet nuggets that I’m finding every day by following me @jarrod on the social web.

7 Things

The madness just got madder. ‘Apple TV+’ is now just ‘Apple TV’.

I noticed something was off right away when I saw Apple’s streaming date announcement for F1: The Movie. They said the movie “will make its global streaming debut on Apple TV on Friday, December 12.”

I caught the lack of the “+” immediately, and, knowing Apple doesn’t often make those kind of copyrighting mistakes, I wondered what it meant. Were they going to license the movie out to other streaming services that can be watched on the Apple TV box or in the Apple TV app in addition to their own Apple TV+ service?

The answer is found at the bottom of the announcement (on their blog that’s still called ‘Apple TV+ Press’ at the moment):

Apple TV+ is now simply Apple TV, with a vibrant new identity. Ahead of its global streaming debut on Apple TV, the film continues to be available for purchase on participating digital platforms, including the Apple TV app, Amazon Prime Video, Fandango at Home and more.

It’s an app. A streaming service. An entertainment box. A storefront. Are you getting it? These are not four separate products. Oh, wait — yes, they are — but we’re still calling them all Apple TV.

You watch Apple TV shows in the Apple TV app on the Apple TV box. But you can also get Apple TV on Fire TV. And you can get Apple TV from the Apple Store. Or Apple Store app. Or the App Store.

It’s Apple TV all the way down.

Or, I guess, simply, it’s on Apple TV.

Putting my cynical hat aside for a moment, I kind of get it. It seems clear to me that a major part of reason to drop the “Plus” branding is that celebrities with titles on the service and normal folks alike simply didn’t remember it. I’ve heard more promotions for shows and movies that could be found “on Apple” or “on Apple TV” than I ever have for “Apple TV Plus”. I’ve done it myself when recommending shows to friends — it felt kind of nerdy to say, “There’s this great show I love called Trying. It’s on Apple TV Plus.” (It totally is a great show.) I, the Apple nerd and TV+ fanatic, would shorten it down to “it’s on Apple TV.” So, yeah, I get it even if I don’t love it.

I am curious, though, about that “vibrant new identity” they mentioned. I was just thinking the other day that while other streaming services has gone through change after change to their branding and visual/auditory design, I appreciate how Apple TV+ has stayed consistent since day one. Their network ident, that black and white fade in of the logo with the spotlight shining through the “+”, along with the deep thrum sound signature — a play on the beautiful Mac startup chime — it really felt timeless. Something that could last. I liked it.

And it worked so well alongside their (also great) Apple Original Films introduction reel.

I wonder how much of that identity will stick around.

---

Those Very Good Tweets™

Can’t wait to watch Apple TV on Apple TV in Apple TV

I too have a vibrant new identity

#AppleTV Genuinely excited to see what this means for the service in terms of growth and potential tiers, as well as the app, storefront and hardware.

Is there room for an Apple TV+ tier that includes rental access, lossy audio, and more? Is there room for an Apple TV Pro?

Unpopular reality check:

Most people in real life just call it Apple TV. They know what they mean. “The Apple one”.

Renaming the service to Apple TV is cleaner, and totally a non-issue. Only nerds obsess about naming these things. Nobody in real life will ever say the sentence “The TV app for Apple TV on Apple TV”. Only people here do.

Apple TV+
Apple TV
Apple TV GO
Apple TV Now
Apple TV Max
Max

Suggested name revisions:

Apple TV (hardware) ➡️ Apple HDMI box thingy

Apple TV (app) ➡️ iTunes

Apple TV (service) ➡️ Not Netflix, the Other One

If the new Apple TV 4K is somehow named “Apple Home Hub Max” I’ll flip a table

Imagine if the hardware was called iPhone

and it contained an app called iPhone, which was also available on Android, full of lots but not all of your content

and you could buy an optional subscription with extra content

…called iPhone

I have acquired a + from an undisclosed seller and am now known as Matt+

TV & Movies

I enjoyed writing gut reactions to the product announcements live during the event, but here’s how things are shaping up for my apple.com shopping cart plans, given a little more time and consideration. Shocker, they’re fairly in line with my pre-event predictions.

While the iPhone Air certainly has the thin/light/new appeal, the more I compare, the more I’m leaning toward the Pro for a few reasons: ​

• ​Camera system. I use the camera so much these days for work, and the .5x ultrawide lens is pretty important for the mountain photography I take. Having a better telephoto lens would be great, too.
• Screen size. I’m not thrilled about the even bigger screen of the Air. I already struggle somewhat with one-handed usage with the regular-sized 16.
• ​Battery life. I’m tired of worrying about it. The Air actually has better battery life than my 16, but not by much, and it’s not uncommon for me to need to charge up during the day as it is.
• Orange. Need I say more? (The iPhone Air’s colors, while illustrious with their high polish finish, are lackluster to me​.)
• Future Fold. I’m mega tempted by the rumors of the iPhone Fold. It’s bound to be even heavier, so getting used to an incremental bump up in weight this year might prepare me for that hefty boy.

I’ll wait for reviews to come out next week to make my final decision, but that’s what I’m thinking at the moment. I could sway either way because damn that iPhone Air looks so good.

I already locked down the Apple Watch Ultra 3 with a pre-order this afternoon. Had to do some quick wrist measurements for the Titanium Milanese Loop (I’m right between a small and medium, so I went with the medium-sized band), but getting an Ultra 3 was an easy decision with how much I liked the original. I waffled a bit on doing a trade-in of my Ultra 1, but ultimately went for it. I’ll keep using an old Series 5 as a night watch/alarm clock, or maybe I can get back into the one-watch lifestyle with improved battery life and charging speed. I’m pretty excited for it to arrive on the 19th.

While the AirPods Pro 3 look really like quite an update, I’m not ready to pull the trigger on them — yet. The Pros have never fit my ears very well, and while I may give them a try at some point, I’m perfectly happy with my AirPods 4 with ANC. Touting the new Pros as the “best-fitting AirPods ever” has me curious, but consider me still skeptical that they’d stay in my ears. No AirPods purchase for me today.

Apple Events

AirPods

• Did they say foam tips for the new AirPods? Moving away from silicone tips?
• In-person live translation looks amazing. But you’ll need a newer iPhone for it to work, I’m sure.
• “Best-fitting AirPods ever” huh? Maybe they’re worth another shot.
• Finally, you can start workouts with just your iPhone! I wonder if it’ll work with other heart-rate monitors, or just Apple’s headphones.
• Looks like a great update!

Apple Watch

• Here comes the tear-jerker video…
• No more Jeff Williams to head off Apple Watch, and we’ll see if Jay Blahnik’s a no-show as well. Update: Was not seen.

Series 11

• Yay, 5G! No snark, I was fighting the watch’s cellular connection just this morning. Hopefully this will help.
• Whoa, they’re going after high blood pressure! Didn’t think we’d see anything about this for a few more years. That’s (potentially) huge.
• Sleep Score is nice, I guess. I’ve used third-party apps in the past, but never found the data very actionable. I’ll try it out.
• Damn, 24-hours of battery life on the Series 11. They’ve hit the full-day milestore.
• Huh, Space Gray is back! Welcome back, old buddy.

SE 3

• “The most powerful watch chip, S10.” That doesn’t bode well for a faster watch chip coming today. But maybe it’ll come in the Ultra.
• JK, the S10 is a new chip!
• Double turns out, the S10 chip debuted last year in the Series 10 Watch. Which I guess makes sense. So now the whole lineup has caught up and has the S10, but they didn’t make a new watch chip this year. 😕
• Lots of great improvements for the SE — it’s much easier to recommend now, particiularly with the always-on display. Stephen Hackett will be happy, even though it didn’t get the price drop it deserves.

Ultra 3

• Let’s go!
• Awesome, bigger display without a bigger case size.
• Also getting 5G, unsurprisingly.
• Woot woot! Sattellite connectivity not just for SOS, but the full messaging and location experience that’s on iPhone
• 42 hours of battery life. Yay!
• The case is 3D-printed. Wild!
• No mention of GPS improvements. I’m really hoping that perhaps the issue is just with my particular watch and that this new one will be better anyway.
• No mention of any on-device Apple Intelligence, like for workout buddy. That’s a miss in my books, I won’t run with my iPhone. Probably needs a new chip, which it also didn’t get.
• Oof, I’d forgotten the Ultra is $800. But available to order today! That’ll be happening here at HeyDingus central momentarily…

iPhone

• Four new models, as expected…

iPhone 17

• Probably the device I’m least interested in today.
• Hmm… wit that reveal video, it doesn’t look like anything is different than the 16. It was all software features they were showing off.
• Ahh, it does have a slightly bigger display. And with ProMotion — the first in a non-Pro device.
• Better scratch resistance on that new screen — but they always say that. Will it actually be any better?
• 50% charge in 20 minutes sounds quite good.
• 500 billion selfies last year. Wow.
• Anything they can do to improve selfies is good in my book.
• Ooh, a square sensor with easy switching of framing options. That’s nice! I’ll be glad to not feel like I’m going to fumble my phone trying to get a landscape selfie.
• Starts at 256GB storage! That bump would have been nice last year. I wonder if that comes with a similar bump in price…

iPhone Air

• Keeps the titanium. And glass on both sides. Didn’t see that coming.
• “Iconic Plateau”
• “With the power of Pro inside”. This is gonna be pricy.
• The edges look a little more rounded, giving it an even thinner look.
• Ahh… they’ve packed way more of the guts into that camera bar, including the silicon. Cool. Will probably keep the hottest parts away from your hand.
• Tim Millet got out of the lab.
• AI accelleration via the GPU. Interesting… they usually refer the AI talk to their neural cores. I wonder what they’ll do with that extra power.
• N1 (for Networking) and C1X (for Cellular) chips. They sound great! I wonder if C1X will have the faster version of 5G (the C1 didn’t). Not a big deal either way.
• Single camera. This may be it’s downfall for me. I’ll have to wait for reviews to know if it can hang.
• Dual-capture video is going to be huge for content creators.
• They’re talking about eSIM. Interesting. They’ve had it forever, so what’s new here?
• Ah, it’s eSIM-only worldwide. Some countries still had physical SIM version.
• “All-day battery life.” But they didn’t quote time or compare to other iPhones.
• 40 hours of battery life for video playback with the new MagSafe battery. Hmm. That’s not super convincing.
• This is pretty tempting.

iPhone 17 Pro

• Starting from scratch, huh?
• Ah, they’re justifying the move away from titanium to alumium (first in a Pro phone) with a sexy industrial manufacturing video.
• Biggest battery. Looks pretty thick. Hopefully lighter though?
• And there’s the orange! Like the color, wish it came to the Air.
• Lots of presenters in Apple Stores around the world. I like it. They have beautiful architecture.
• They’re talking a lot about thermal management today. They must have gotten the feedback that their last few phones were too warm to the touch too often.
• Seems like the Pro ate the Air’s extra battery with how much they keep mentioning it. 39 hours of video playback without a battery pack.
• 48 MP cameras across the board on the back is pretty awesome. Fusion cameras across the board too. I like that the zoom levels are .5x, 1x, 2x, 4x, 8x. They double at every jump, which makes my brain happy.
• Really pretty photos taken by professional photographers. But that’s always been the case. It’d be more fun if they put it in the hands of camera normies like me and let them try their best.
• Joz says, “How cool is that?”
  
• It’s really cool how much pro video stuff they pack into these iPhones. It’s way over my head, but I love that it puts so much power in creatives’ hands.
• TechWoven cases that offer great “scratch and stain resistance”. That’s some FineWoven trauma right there. You can bet people will be putting that claim to the test.
• The Apple logo placement looks good in the center of the two-tone “glass” panel on the white and orange, but looks goofily low on the blue where the contrast is less.
  

Pricing

• iPhone Air takes the Pro’s old spot at $999, which the Pros get a $100 bump up starting at $1099. They try to spin away that bump by saying its the same price as last year’s 256GB model.
• I think maybe they just discontinued the iPhone 16 and previous models altogether? Usually they show the whole lineup, but now it’s all iPhones that were introduced this year. 16e, 17, Air, and 17 Pro/Max. That’s a curious break from a longheld tradition in Tim Cook’s Apple. (But which actually started back during Steve Jobs’ time.)
• Nope, the 16 and 16 Plus are still in the lineup.

Those good (snarky) tweets…

Bold move…

Always good when the keynote stream starts with me doing a spit take.

“Design is how it works. That’s why we made half the interface illegible”

why does the apple keynote keep cutting to some old white trump stan

Apple loves to talk about how many ears they’ve looked at

An illegible new watch face is an appropriate way to “celebrate” Liquid Glass.

If your blood pressure spikes while listening to the US president speak, let Tim know

Can’t wait for my Apple Watch to tell me how shitty my sleep is.

I’ve never seen my timeline so negative during an #AppleEvent and honestly I’m so proud. Fuck Tim Cook for ruining what used to be such an exciting day for us Apple nerds

idk 42 hours of battery life definitely sounds bigger than the 10 hours my apple watch ultra 1 now lasts

It’s 90% faster at gaming but checking Slack is still slow.

looks the iphone started working with my trainer

Going to start referring to my forehead as an iconic plateau

“All-day battery life” proceeds to present a battery pack accessory #AppleEvent

THE BUMPER IS BACK BABY

What if Jony Ive voice but female

Joni Ive

Only British people can talk about materials.

ORANGE ORANGE ORANGE ORANGE ORANGE ORANGE ORANGE ORANGE ORANGE ORANGE ORANGE ORANGE ORANGE ORANGE ORANGE ORANGE ORANGE ORANGE ORANGE ORANGE ORANGE ORANGE ORANGE ORANGE ORANGE ORANGE ORANGE ORANGE ORANGE ORANGE ORANGE ORANGE ORANGE ORANGE ORANGE ORANGE ORANGE ORANGE ORANGE ORANGE ORANGE ORANGE ORANGE ORANGE ORANGE ORANGE ORANGE ORANGE ORANGE ORANGE ORANGE ORANGE ORANGE ORANGE

We also drink every time they say “vapor chamber”. Cheers!

I’d be pretty thin too if you ignore the bulky bits that stick out of me

“Fuck it, we’re doing seven layers”.

Nothing says Pro like “We offer ProRes RAW video support, but you cannot adjust the gain level on an external mic.”

Is there really no black Pro phone?

Somebody check on @gruber

PROrange™

Apple Events

Can I publish this in the 4 minutes before the keynote starts??¹

iPhone

• I went way too low on device storage space last year, so I’m definitely buying a new phone this year
• I’m using my camera for work more than ever, so I’m probably going to go with an iPhone Pro, but I’m not psyched about a bigger screen or heavier device. Hopefully, they’ve gone back to aluminum, as rumored.
• We’ll see what it actually looks like, but the iPhone Pro’s rumored camera bar that retains the tripod of camera lenses on one side looks goofy to me. I expect it’s retaining that design so it can continue to do Spatial Videos.
• I’ll be tempted by the iPhone Air, I’m sure, but battery life and camera performance are huge deals for me. And I’m more interested in a thin folding phone — next year?
• Come on, Orange!!

Apple Watch

• Please be a new Ultra 3! My Ultra 1’s battery life is not so good, and I’m also hoping for improvements in GPS sensitivity and cellular connection.
• A better chip would be great too — the Ultra 1 is a little sluggish these days.
• Could we see more happening with Double Tap? The more I can operate my watch without using the other hand would be great.

AirPods

• AirPods Pro 3 are due, but they’re not for me. I can’t do the soft tips. Still really happy with my AirPods 4 with ANC.

Alright, here comes Tim Cook “on stage”. Let’s go.

---

1. It turns out no, I couldn’t. Published at 1:02pm.↩︎

Apple Events

In these, the minutes before the September 2025 Apple Event, in which I — and many others — will fawn over the company’s latest gadgets, I felt I had to get this one out.

Nick Heer wrote decisively and emphatically about how the transformation outlined in Apple in China that Tim Cook oversaw, led him straight toward kissing the ring in the White House. You should absolutely read the whole thing, but here’s an observation that I’ve been contemplating for a while now:

Cook has previously advocated for expressing social values as a corporate principle. In 2017, he said, perhaps paraphrasing his heroesMartin Luther King Jr. and John Lewis, “if you see something going on that’s not right, the most powerful form of consent is to say nothing”. But how does Cook stand firmly for those values while depending on an authoritarian country for Apple’s hardware, and trying to appease a wanna-be dictator for the good standing of his business? In short, he does not.

Heer’s article followed shortly after this post in which John Gruber took a slightly longer and broader view of Cook’s actions in the Trump 2.0 administration, and gives him more benefit of the doubt regarding when he chooses to play ball with Trump:

Did Cook’s Oval Office display of fealty and his grotesque golden gift make you feel something? Did it engender an emotional response? Grossed out, perhaps? A little sick? Angry? Offended? Me too. But did you feel good — reassured? proud? — when Cook skipped that Middle East Trump tour in May? You know, the one that ranged from Trump singing the praises of the murderous Mohammed bin Salman (“I like you too much”) to accepting as a gift (that he claims will wind up in the possession of his post-presidential “library”) a 747 luxury jet from Qatar.

If you choose to believe that Tim Cook is weak, unethical, greedy, or even — despite his long-professed heroes — secretly a MAGA supporter, there’s likely nothing I can say to disabuse you of the notion. You can’t prove a negative. But I would argue that that line of cynicism is the easy way out. That you’re taking comfort in directing your ire at Cook, and the notion that if Cook had more backbone he’d refuse to play this game. It’s comforting to believe it’s him and his ilk, greedy selfish billionaires, not us as a collective whole.

If you didn’t read Gruber’s piece when it was published in August, I highly encourage you to do so now. It’s compelling and quite different from his usual writing, taking a timeline-of-events — dare I say investigative? — approach to understanding Cook’s actions. I’ll admit that I had completely forgotten that Cook had snubbed the Middle East trip, and that I was completely ignorant about the overall implications of that trip regarding the Saudi regime.

And yet, after reflecting on these two pieces for a while, I still come away disappointed and sickened by Cook’s compliance and reverence toward Trump’s agenda. Yes, as Gruber points out, the lion’s share of our collective ire should be pointed at Trump, his administration, and his voters. But we also look to those in leadership roles to, well, lead the way. To use their voice and actions, their stature and influence, and, yes, sometimes their money to usher us toward a better future. For if they throw their values to the wind when the going gets tough, what does that mean for the rest of us who lack the protections that their prominence affords them?

We’re taught not to judge people by what they say, but by what they do. I won’t go so far as to guess at what Cook feels in his heart toward this administration — only he knows — but his words and actions of late paint a cowardly story.

I can commend Cook for having the conviction not to participate in the Middle East trip. But I can also be supremely disappointed in his lack of leadership — sitting, as he does, in the seat as the most powerful man in one of the biggest and most successful American companies — in standing and speaking against the rot in the foundational Democracy of the country he claims to love.

And those pictures of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy — true leaders who used their voices and actions to advocate for the very civil rights that Trump now openly threatens — that he has on his desk? Well, I’d have lain them down in shame.