425: ‘Through the Wall Like Kool-Aid Man’, With Chance Miller

Chance, good to see you at WWDC. Before we relive the week, quick breaking news: the I O name mess. I blogged about it this morning and had never even heard of I Y O until now, and when you say them out loud, I O and I O sound identical. Their site cannot even decide how to capitalize it. It is a branding and trademark headache, and it reminds me of Apple calling it iPhone despite Cisco. They just went straight through the wall like Kool Aid Man.

Same here. I had not heard of I Y O until last night. All of these AI gadgets read the same anyway: little screenless eggs that listen all the time. And OpenAI did themselves no favors. They scrubbed the blog on a Sunday, let people think the Ive deal was dead, then backfilled the explanation. They botched both sides.

And Apple is still fighting the iPhone trademark in Brazil. I G B filed long ago, got the grant, and a court just ruled in their favor. It says a lot about how fractured trademarks are globally.

On legal sagas Apple does not always bulldoze through. The Masimo blood oxygen fight is pushing two years of the feature being disabled in the United States. There was even a weird holiday window where Series 9 units kept it until Christmas, then it vanished. Series 10 and Ultra 2 never had it here. Apple PR will not even say if the hardware is inside, though it almost certainly is.

I figured there would be a midnight deal or a veto, but here we are eighteen months later. Apple did beat AliveCor, but if they had lost, the heart features are so essential they would have ponied up.

Apple also pulled that Convince Your Parents to Buy a Mac short a day after launch. It aimed for deadpan cringey and just was not funny. Different from the crushed iPad spot, which was overblown but drew an apology. The Bella Ramsey AI ads bugged me more, especially the one that treats summarizing a script you did not read as a virtue. In real life, that is rude and does not even work the way they show it.

By my count that is four yanked pieces in a year. The iPad crush, an Underdogs spot that misrepresented Thailand, the Apple Intelligence ads, and now this. Very un Apple.

WWDC felt like a return to form. Tight, about ninety minutes. Apple Intelligence woven into each platform instead of a forty minute detour, and almost everything is in beta one. Apple told me the keynote features are slated to ship this fall, even if some hit a dot one.

Same takeaway. They set the A I frame in a few minutes, said the postponed Siri bits are still coming, then went platform by platform. Crucially, the betas actually have the stuff.

Last year’s pre announce was a mistake. Hold some things for dot three or dot four, surprise people in the fall. Jobs obsessed over having something new every two or three months. Engineering already staggers features. Marketing should too.

Burying A I inside platforms let phone features shine. Call screening looks great. Hold Assist listens for hold music and pings you when a human answers so you can put the Phone app away. Credit to Google for being first on screening, but this feels fresh. Yes, call centers will play cat and mouse, but we will get a good year out of it.

iPad O S stole the show. Real windowing with red, yellow, green controls and a centered menu bar. It works the same with or without a keyboard. And you can keep single app simplicity. There is even a Control Center toggle.

I was skeptical of the leaks, but the windowing is the real deal. Add background tasks that let you export a Final Cut video while you work elsewhere, plus local audio capture for podcasters. Importantly, none of this is magic keyboard only.

Apple set two rules for background tasks: it must finish with a determinate progress bar, and it must be user initiated. They surface it as a live activity. That is exactly why iPad and Mac remain different platforms even as they now look similar.

With a Magic Keyboard it feels almost like a touch screen Mac, and that is fine. The iPad is Apple’s most modular product. The Mac can stay the Mac.

Liquid Glass: I like it, even if it feels rushed in places. Internally they were sweating this right up to the keynote. That urgency is fine. iOS 7 was rushed and they tightened it fast. On Mac the layering is off—toolbar buttons look like floating pallets. On iPhone the lock screen already looks fantastic. Sometimes the right reason is simple: it looks cool.

Same here. It is modern and fresh, with beta one oddities like Music hiding the skip button as you scroll. Expect fast iteration. Design is fashion. They did it because it looks cool.

Watch O S did not add faces, it removed some. At least second hands now tick. The watch face pipeline at Apple remains a mystery.

Pleasant surprise in the car: classic CarPlay gets Liquid Glass, widget stacks, and live activities. I tried it on the drive to S F O and it is great.

CarPlay Ultra’s slow roll is mostly cost. Apple specced pricey displays, compute, and latency targets that carmakers do not have in their roadmaps. Think continuum, not a fork. TV O S barely changed, and I am fine with that. Apple TV remains the best box precisely because it is not stuffed with ads and tracking.

Vision O S had a healthy year two. Personas jumped from uncanny to almost eerie in a good way. I am bullish. Apple is probably fine with early sales; the drag is developer support. That will take time and new, lighter, cheaper hardware.

Chance, great having you back. Follow his work at Nine to Five Mac, and check out the Happy Hour and Daily podcasts there too.