sangsara.net

Tag: iPhone

  • Week 15.26

    Week 15.26

    I’m looking through my camera roll to remember what happened this week and it’s mostly a bunch of “artworks” I’ve been making. Wait, let me step back: I’ve had an interest in procedurally generated graphics (GenArt) for awhile, and it peaked with the NFT boom of 2021–22, where I spent a relatively obscene amount of money minting and collecting artworks I really liked (not the monkeys). I’m mostly drawn to the idea of mathematically rigid routines producing organic beauty — the contrasts in that, and the unpredictability of what you get when you roll the RNG dice.

    So after my recent experiments in making apps, I wondered if I could get AI to write me code that would generate images based on concepts I described. The answer is, of course, yes! It’s important to note this isn’t prompting for images (like when you use Midjourney or DALL-E), it’s prompting for the math behind making images. And once you’ve created the rules by which it draws different art styles, you can create a nearly infinite number of unique artworks by dialing different variables up and down.

    One example is a “style” I made called Labyrinth, which produces actual, solvable mazes. Depending on the variables you adjust, you can make mazes ranging from tiny to massive, with just one solution, or many. If you asked an image generation AI to draw a maze, it would likely lack the coherence of a real maze, because of the way it operates — focusing on the superficial appearance and not the integrity of its paths. But an AI model can make the math to draw a maze.

    I start most of these by thinking up an artistic production approach, say “take sheets of colored cardboard or acrylic, and punch holes of varying shapes into them, then layer them on top of each other so the holes line up (or not), and randomly spray contrast-colored paint on some of them”. Then I describe the possible variations and variables I want to control to the AI, such as the density of shapes, the thickness of the borders, the ratio between angular and organic lines, and we iterate after seeing some of the results. Just think of all the methods and ideas you might want to play with, and how this lets any old idiot model them on their computers!

    The meta project is that I’ve made a modular app that handles all these different styles for me, whether they require a 2D canvas or WebGL. The app provides a common UI layer that all “styles” can plug into, which allows me to control them. Now that it’s done, I can just focus on experimenting and having fun making new artworks. I daresay a few of these are executed as well as any of those I spent money on.

    I’ll probably release it as a wallpaper generator once I have enough styles built in, if anyone’s interested. But mostly I love having this as a background project that I can dip into, on and off. It allows me to take on other app ideas as momentary “side quests”.

    While making Labyrinth, I showed a maze to Cong, who said “You should do a puzzle maker”. To which I said, “Nah.” And then a minute later… “Although, a daily maze game. Hmm.” It made sense that I could save time by taking CommonVerse’s daily random generation mechanic and combining it with Labyrinth’s logic to make a daily maze challenge. But would it even be fun to trace a 2D maze with your finger and try to solve it? No… so what if it was a 3D maze you had to escape?

    The first prototype took a couple of hours, and I’ve been polishing it for the last few days. I think it’s coming along nicely. I’ll put it out soon, once I balance the difficulty and get more feedback from testing.

    Labyrinth, and the game it’s inspired

    The development of a maze, a maze, a maze… was hampered by a rare bar crawl with Howard and Jussi on Thursday night that gave me a massive hangover lasting into Friday afternoon. When I got home, I was too plastered to care that my vinyl copy of J Dilla’s Donuts had arrived from Amazon US protected by nothing more than a flimsy paper envelope. By the clear light of day I was amazed that they would even do such a thing. The discs are intact, but the sleeve has a bent corner. If I’d ordered from Amazon Japan, I would bet a major internal organ that it would come wrapped in four layers of stiff cardboard, bubble wrap, and a handwritten apology for their carelessness.

    Did I mention we’re going to Japan again? It’ll be a short vacation, in a couple of weeks’ time. Not much on the agenda, just checking in on the state of curry rice and egg sandwiches. Maybe see some nice art. Take some photos.

    Which brings me to the latest betas of Halide MkIII, which I’m very much looking forward to using on the trip. They’ve been progressing the app nicely, and it might be enabling the Holy Grail of iPhone photography workflows for me. Ironically it involves using Halide not as a camera app, but just as a photo editor. You can shoot compact (lossy, JPEG-XL compressed) ProRAW photos up to 48mp with the default camera app, then edit them in Halide to have the same look as their Process Zero photos! What this means: you get all the benefits of computational photography at time of capture, including noise reduction and night mode, but you’re also free to dial it back and get natural, “real camera” photos in post if the scene calls for it.

    As much as I like these side quests, I think making my own photo editor would be biting off entirely too much to chew, so I’m still rooting for these guys to crack it.

    While writing this post, I got the news that an elderly aunt passed away at the age of 93. She had been in reduced health since the Covid years, but by all accounts she went very peacefully and I guess you can’t ask for much more than that after a long life. The extended family’s Chinese New Year routines fell apart in recent years after she pulled back from organizing them, so it was fitting that some of us got to reconnect at her wake on Sunday evening.

    See you next week.

  • Week 14.26

    Week 14.26

    An update on my app addiction

    On Wednesday morning I woke up and saw that my last app DataDeck was getting a bunch of likes and reposts on Bluesky, which was a nice surprise. If ever there was a place where people would appreciate a wacky, nerdy idea, I guess that would be it.

    My Instagram Story on Wednesday

    I made a couple of post-release updates to my magnetic poetry non-game, CommonVerse. There are now two new themes, one called Label Maker that resembles those little Dymo stickers we used to make, and another called Zine which is like a random note of cutout words. The UX has also been improved in subtle ways that might make it easier to manage making sentences.

    My “main” app project now is one that I can keep noodling on in the background, with no real endpoint — it’s done when I think it’s done — and the idea was that would help me slow down and spend less time with this vibe coding stuff. Guess what happened? That’s right, if you design something that can sit on the back burner, it will sit on the back burner. I started work on another app instead.

    Defying time and gravity

    I’ve known that the next step was to play with agentic coding tools like Codex or Google’s Antigravity. These are code editors with integrated AI that can look across all your project files and manage multiple agents working on simultaneous tasks. It’s a far cry from the way I’d been working: getting advice and instructions from a single chat, and then doing everything myself in a code editor. So I finally got started with Antigravity, and it blew my mind.

    The productivity increase is hard to describe. I could just describe stuff and it would get done without further work on my part. The tool can use the system’s terminal and Chrome browser to install packages, click around and test the app, figure out why things aren’t working, and fix it while you watch. Stuff that took me days over the last month could have been done in hours. It was automating so much of what little I, the non-programming human, was doing and considered my job, that it made me feel kinda redundant, to say nothing of real programmers.

    With Antigravity, the MVP of my app concept was done in three hours on a Friday. The good/bad news was that it blew through most of my token allocation for the week. So I went back to the “old” way of working and made subsequent changes manually. What I discovered was that I much prefer getting hands on with the project files, looking through the code to understand what was going on and what went where. I think I’ll use these agentic tools to get started fast and figure out a working architecture. After that, it’s more fun to get involved and make improvements slowly.

    Ate and left the Crumbs

    So the new app is called Crumbs, as in breadcrumbs, as in leaving a trail of them so you know where you’ve been. It’s a private location journal that lets you mark where you are on a map with a single button push. Over time, you can see the path of your journey(s).

    I made this because I’ve always wanted something like this for logging holidays, and no app really does what I want. Foursquare’s Swarm is based on Places, so you have to find the business listing or entry in order to check in. If you’re in the middle of a national park, or in a country where no one has created Places, or you can’t read the names, you’re out of luck. Google Maps has a Timeline, but it tracks your location all the time, and it only shows your trail on a day-by-day basis. Your data is also locked in their app and you can’t get it out to visualize in other ways.

    Crumbs is private, and you can take the data out in JSON format. It logs the time and weather along with your location, and you can write little notes. You can save an image of your map, or export a PDF of your journal.

    A big breakthrough (for me)

    Unfortunately, because it’s a web app and not a native iOS app, it can’t permanently store data on your device. The OS may decide to purge all your data if you haven’t used it in a week. That’s a dealbreaker for any app intended to be a life-logging tool. That really bummed me out, and I thought it would just have to be a personal tool that I couldn’t distribute to anyone else — since remembering to do manual backups/restores of the JSON file would be a massive PITA for any user.

    And then I had a Eureka moment! I thought of a possible solution and asked Gemini if it was feasible, to which it answered “Yes, this is an ideal solution”. I wanted to scream “Well, then why didn’t you suggest it all this time we’ve been discussing how to get around the problem!?”

    The answer was Dropbox integration. I can’t make a web app read/write files locally, but I can do it in the cloud. So now Crumbs is as useful as a “real app”, provided you connect a Dropbox account.

    As of Monday morning this post is late and I think Crumbs is ready, so here it is.

    Other thoughts

    • Here’s a free idea: I was inspired by this stamp journal that went semi-viral, and wanted to make some sort of digital Instax photo album. It’d be kinda nice to keep a virtual scrapbook of interesting images, right? Well, turns out you can just use Apple’s Freeform app and Dazz Cam. It’s as simple as making a board and dropping in images, then arranging them however you want. All stored locally and synced to iCloud, easy peasy. Just because you can vibe code it doesn’t mean you should.
    • My iPhone’s MOFT Snap Case developed a cut/tear in its faux leather surface, and so had to be replaced after just six months. Its replacement is a Caudabe Sheath, which fits my requirements of being neither silicone nor slippery, with full edge coverage and a Camera Control passthrough button. It’s a hard plastic material with a rough, pebbled texture that makes it feel secure when held. It also came in second in MobileReviewsEh’s roundup of the year’s best cases. I got the version with the ‘open’ cutout for the 17 Pro Max’s camera island, not the ‘precise’ covered design.
    • Kim managed to finish reading Project Hail Mary and we went to see the film on Sunday (non-IMAX). Apparently there’s a longer cut, nearly four hours, which will be released on streaming in August when it comes to Amazon Prime Video. Yes, this is billed as an Amazon original film from the very first frame, coming even before the MGM logo (which they own), and I don’t think that will ever stop being weird. The film is good, a mostly faithful adaptation of a fun but slightly flawed book. I just think they glossed over a lot of detail in the final act, which lowered the stakes and made it less exciting and rewarding than it could have been. Hopefully the extended cut’s extra run time is concentrated at the end.
  • Week 12.26

    Week 12.26

    Another busy week, and I’ve been like a caffeinated creature hunched over its keyboard with bloodshot eyes. You may notice I’ve updated the navigation bar on this site to point to a dedicated page listing all my apps. This takes the place of a page that pointed to all my custom GPTs on ChatGPT (that never really took off, did it?) and before that, my NFT experiments. Those are still around, though!

    You may call it AI slop but I’ve generated key images for each of the apps on that page, which I like to think of as analogous to game box cover art, those evocative artistic representations that used to stretch truths to their breaking points, back in the days when games looked like Lego.

    Here they are, just so you can admire them.

    HEIFer
    Collagen
    Urban Jungles
    SkySpotter
    CommonVerse

    The latest for now is CommonVerse, my daily magnetic poetry app. Give it a go!

    I’m writing this paragraph on Thursday after another failed attempt to stop vibe coding and focus on other pursuits. So far I’ve mostly finished one project and started on another that I meant to leave aside until next week. What is this feeling? This need to actualize a new ability that I’ve always wanted but never had to worry about not having?

    Instead of being able to recognize that I’ve already accomplished a lot, and “taking the rest of the week off” to go watch movies or something, I’m sucked into continually iterating and improving upon these apps like I’m on a deadline. It’s that paradox (mentioned here last May) where new technologies don’t decrease our workloads but only make us busier instead.

    Productivitymaxxers will say this is fine. This is how it’s supposed to be: you can do more, so you work just as hard and get twice as much out of it. Why would you want to work half as much? And they’re not wrong — that’s the engine of progress. But it’s also how you end up making six apps in three weeks and treating it as some kind of baseline rather than a miracle. As predicted, my capability has grown but I got desensitized to the satisfaction.

    The discomfiting shock to the system as I struggle with this resetting of scale, and feeling addicted to realizing more ideas, is an adaptation crisis. Adapting to life at a new speed and learning to balance capability with sensibility. Astronauts and pilots have to train to handle G-forces, in which the G stands for gravitational. I’m suggesting that working with AI has its own G-force, where the G is gratification. You can suddenly manifest many of the things you can think of. That’s a very powerful impulse to get under control. How do you engage with life’s responsibilities, appointments, or your growling stomach, when there’s always just one more prompt and revision to make? After getting home from a few drinks on Friday night, I found myself on my laptop in bed after midnight, fighting with a procedural audio generation engine that wouldn’t trigger drum sounds for any obvious reason.

    The next night I did the same, staying up to 3:30 AM because I had some new ideas that just could not wait. My Apple Watch sleep score is in shambles. But App #6 is certainly shaping up to be my best work. I’m going to sit on it for a whole week and keep polishing, instead of putting it out and moving on to the next one. That’s my strategy for slowing this down — it’s all I’ve got.

    Over the weekend, I also attended an Apple Store photo walk activity on a sweltering afternoon (up to 36°C next week) with Cien and Peishan. I hadn’t done one of these in years, but always keep meaning to. This one was conducted by the staff at Apple Orchard, and was a walking tour of Emerald Hill — which in reality is just a tiny street off Orchard Road. I’ve been there dozens of times over the years, but never saw the details just sitting there in tiles, old paintwork, and ornamental doorframes. Going to a small area with the intention of taking photos, and giving it more time than you’d normally allocate, can be a really fun and creative exercise.

    There’s no reason one couldn’t do this themselves any time, anywhere, of course. But these free ‘Today At Apple’ sessions are a good excuse to get off the couch. The other two local stores have their own programs, and I might check them out someday: Apple Jewel Changi Airport looks at the indoor waterfall, and Apple Marina Bay Sands has a night photography focus.

    Another nice touch is that they’ll lend you an iPhone 17 or 17 Pro if you don’t have one, and they’re incredibly relaxed about handing them out. No paperwork to fill out or deposits to pay. That’s the great thing about Find My protection, I guess. A comment was made that in the UK, those phones would disappear the instant the group left the store — even if just for parts. But they must do these sessions worldwide, so I’d love to know how it’s dealt with.

  • Week 44.25

    Week 44.25

    I saw a doctor about last week’s vertigo episode, and they concurred with my internet research that it was most likely a case of BPPV. Apparently, it really does “just happen” to anyone and they see quite a few cases of it. I was told to watch my salt intake and blood pressure, and see if the vertigo occurs “too often”, which might indicate a need for further scans.

    The doctor was surprised when I explained that we’d performed the Epley maneuver at home with a YouTube video, and said that it was probably what they’d be doing for me now if I’d still had symptoms. I didn’t explain that it had essentially been an AI consultation, because I didn’t want to get lectured about how they can be wrong. Not saying it’s a good idea, but it helped until I could get an appointment with a real doctor.

    After the doctor’s visit, I decided to have breakfast at Starbucks, a thing I used to do too often when I went in to the office. But in light of the advice I’d just been given about eating less sodium and watching my blood pressure, I opted for an egg white wrap instead of the rosemary chicken croissant that I really wanted, and it was unsatisfying. Is that what I have to look forward to now in old age? Just healthy compromises and remembering the good old days of eating crap?

    As if eating in revenge, we had a huge dinner with Alex at a place called “La Vache!” the following night. They run a simple concept: S$68/person for a salad, ribeye steak, and unlimited French fries. Cocktails are S$26 and pretty substantial. There are also desserts if you have room, including gelato from Messina down the road. Reader, I had a lot of fries and thereby a lot of sodium. So much so I’ve spent the rest of the week trying to up my water intake to make up for it.

    ===

    The MOFT brand iPhone case I got a few weeks ago has been impressing me so much with its soft material and quality construction that I blinked and found that I’ve now bought more products in their MagSafe-compatible lineup.

    The Snap Phone Tripod Wallet folds out into an adjustable stand that could be useful for anyone needing to shoot photos, make video calls, or watch media handsfree. Like I said, I’m barely conscious of why/how I bought these things, because that doesn’t describe me. I suppose I’ll just have to become a content creator then! It also holds up to 2 cards, although in hindsight I should have gone with the thinner version that doesn’t.

    That’s because a few days later, I also ordered their Snap Field Wallet which holds 8 cards and even some folded bills, coins, and a SIM card tool. There’s a version of this that includes a built-in stand, but I decided against it since I already have the “tripod” for stand-related needs.

    Happily, this shopping spree concludes my search for a new minimal wallet to replace my worn and aging Bellroy. Every bearable option I’ve found has been over S$120, and because carrying a wallet is such an antiquated concept for me these days with everything on the phone, I wasn’t thrilled to spend the money. But the MOFT Field Wallet’s low price and novel origami design made for an easier and less risky decision. It’ll mainly stay in my bag, but the option of attaching via MagSafe is a nice bonus.

    ===

    I haven’t seen many films lately, so this week was a corrective period. I saw a Korean arthouse film on MUBI that I don’t regret but can’t recommend, called Woman Is the Future of Man (2004), and a more mainstream Korean thriller called The Old Woman With the Knife (2025). The titular trifecta was pure coincidence, but I also saw the new Keira Knightley vehicle, The Woman in Cabin 10 (2025). None of the above are really worth your limited time on Earth, if we’re being honest.

    Usually, whenever a three-hour film pops up in the queue, I push it down to the bottom. But this time when I saw Martin Scorsese’s Casino (1995) was leaving Netflix, it seemed like a sign to just sit down and do it. I can’t believe I waited so long though, because it’s something of a masterpiece despite the gangland tropes, and I don’t normally even like these kind of stories.

    I subscribed to Disney+ Premium to watch Avatar: The Way of Water (2022) in 3D on the Vision Pro, another three-hour movie. While the story isn’t worth the time, the immersive experience and quirky filmmaking tech was absolutely worth my money. My Letterboxd review: “The story of a Saturday morning cartoon with the technical complexity and execution of a space mission. Big failure on the part of our entire species that we can’t produce a director who can do both parts equally well. Not a film I want to see again.”

    As an example of how this is a film that you can’t really watch traditionally, it constantly switches between 24fps and 48fps shots, often within a single scene. It feels like a videogame, where you’re watching a cinematic cutscene and then it suddenly transitions into ultra-smooth gameplay. The 3D also pops in HDR clarity on the Vision Pro, where it would be dimmer on an IMAX screen. Sitting at home with Disney+ in a headset is oddly the definitive way to experience James Cameron’s shallow deep sea epic, which probably wasn’t what he envisioned.

    I swore I wouldn’t read or watch any of the Dan Brown/Robert Langdon stories, but it’s been almost 20 years so I put The Da Vinci Code (2006, only 149 mins) on one night and it wasn’t terrible. It helps that it’s a Ron Howard film, and I think I might actually see the next two films, Angels & Demons (2009) and Inferno (2016), before they leave Netflix. There was also some positive press for the new Dan Brown book in this series, The Secret of Secrets, so I’ve added it to my reading list. Younger me would be so disappointed.

    ===

    It wasn’t just me that visited the doctor this week — I brought my 2021 iPad Pro (M1) down to the Apple Store over the weekend. When the Apple Genius came up to me and asked, “So what’s wrong with your iPad?”, I answered “It‘s just old.” For a while now, I’ve suspected it of falling short of Apple’s promised “all-day battery life”, but sending it in for a replacement felt like such a hassle that I kept putting it off.

    Because this iPad model doesn’t report battery health in Settings, I figured it was easily below 80% capacity, and was prepared to pay maybe $120–150 for a new battery. So they ran their diagnostics app on it, and told me it’s actually at 86%. Huh. That’s pretty good for 4.5 years! I asked how much it would cost to replace anyway, and was told just shy of S$200, but it would be a full unit swap rather than just a new battery.

    If the battery health had been 70%, I would probably have paid the money and then had to use this for at least another two years. But at 86%, I can probably make this work for another year and then see what the new models look like. So by building a product that actually ages well, Apple has… increased the likelihood of me upgrading even sooner. That’s the 4D chess game that Tim Cook plays, folks.

  • Week 40.25

    Week 40.25

    • I’m now at the age where annual medical exams are strongly advised. Everyone around me knows someone whose life’s been upended (or worse) by a serious health issue. As much as it sucks to find out, finding out too late is worse. We went for ours this week and are waiting for results, fingers crossed.
    • I’m now also at the age where lame jokes come naturally, so when the nurse asked, “You have about five drinks on average a week? What do you like to drink?”, I replied, “What do you have?” The nurse laughed harder than expected so I’m guessing the clinic doesn’t get many patients masking anxiety with comedy.
    • They’ll probably come back and tell me I’ve got hypertension, because I definitely felt my blood pressure spiking on Saturday when Kim agreed to give It Takes Two another go on the Switch. For the uninitiated, it’s a co-op game where a married couple on the verge of divorce magically get turned into a pair of their daughter’s wooden dolls in the shed, and need to make their way back into the main house to get her help. But in order to make the journey, they’ll need to — you guessed it — work together. As a couples conflict simulator, it’s super effective. There are many videos online showing one player (usually male) getting frustrated as their partners (usually female) struggle with the hand-eye coordination required to get through the platforming sections, dying over and over. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a lot of fun, and we surprisingly played for about three hours before calling it a day.
    • Speaking of things women do differently, I watched this video essay on the rise of gambling-related activities and industries, and learnt that blind box sales are overwhelmingly driven by female buyers. Supposedly, the data bears out that women prefer to get their dopamine fixes from such lower-risk, collection-and-completion-oriented activities with a community element. I definitely have never felt especially compelled to buy more than a couple of any given gacha or blind box toy. It says men prefer higher-stakes competitive play, “go big or go home” style, or what you’d recognize as traditional gambling. The point is, businesses really know our buttons and they are pushing them every minute in the modern world.
    • Speaking of wasting money, it didn’t take long to realize that my plastic Beats case wasn’t suited to everyday use — not because it’s candy pink but because, like the iPhone it protects, it’s too smooth and hard to hold. It’s now my occasional fun case, but for other days when I want to use one at all, I’ve got the MOFT Snap Case MOVAS™ in “Misty Cove” colored “vegan leather”. Nevertheless, it feels significantly nicer: soft, textured, grippy, yet smooth enough to slide out of a pocket without turning it inside out. One additional benefit of vegan leather over the murdery kind is that it’s more stain/patina resistant. I would never have been able to risk this color with a cowhide case; it’d turn blue-black from my jeans in no time. Btw, when did we all agree to start calling PVC vegan leather? That’s quite the PR masterstroke by Big Plastic.
    • Last week, the Twitch streamer 4amlaundry once again attended the Tokyo Game Show and streamed hours of walking around the show floor. I missed it then, but watched some of the recording this week on YouTube. I was more excited when he decided to visit the Extinct Media Museum in Tokyo on Wednesday. It’s a private collection of old cameras, laptops, phones, and media devices like the Walkman/Discman, MP3 players and so on. This was on my list to visit back in February, but on the day I was meant to go, it got too cold and dark for the 15-minute walk over from Tokyo station and I decided to head home. Watching the POV stream felt like being there — except he was happy to touch all of those beautiful tech artifacts where I, the germophobe, would have declined.
    • I read a couple of books. Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes is one of those titles you always hear about, but I never actually knew what it was about. I thought it was some inspirational crap like ‘Hey God, it’s Whoever, Are You Listening’, or ‘The Five People You Meet in Purgatory’ or whatever. It turned out to be about an intellectually disabled man who’s turned into a genius in a science experiment. It was also more powerful than I expected because it’s presented entirely as journal entries by the man himself, so the reader experiences his increasing intelligence and widening awareness of his position firsthand.
    • Another book was Perfection by Vincenzo Latronico, which has been getting mentioned a lot on account of being nominated for the Booker Prize this year and for being too painfully truthful a look at millennials, and our devotion to living through trends, cool hunting, digital nomadism, performative wokeness, and mediocre aesthetics. Here’s the New Yorker’s article about Perfection, which makes me want to read the Georges Perec book that inspired it. Me? I loved it, but if I’d taken a few different turns — say, moved to Berlin — I’d probably feel personally attacked.
  • Week 38.25

    Week 38.25

    I type this while listening to Sam Fender’s last album, People Watching. I’ve been meaning to hear this through for awhile, but it got buried in my ever-growing library of new music. Thankfully, with the latest update to Apple Music in the OS26 series, you can now pin up to six albums or playlists to the top of your screen. I’ve wanted this sort of ‘Now Playing’ or ‘Heavy Rotation’ virtual shelf for the longest time — it’s the first feature I’d add if designing a music player app. So this album and five other neglected ones are now sitting up there, and I can give them the attention I want.

    I’ve been listening on both my new AirPods Pro 3 and an original pair of AirPods Pro, and dare I say the difference is quite obvious. Louanne asked me what I do with old pairs of headphones when I get new ones, and the answer was “put them in different rooms!”, of course. I’m fast running out of rooms. The new model sounds much more Beats-like than ever (modern Beats, not OG Monster Beats). That is to say, a bass-forward sound with a very clear, almost sparkling high end. It’s a fun sound, and I think they’ll be very popular for all kinds of music, if not audiophile-grade neutral. They appear to fit better than before too, and the difference in body shape will strike longtime AirPods users as soon as they pick them up.

    Then my new iPhone arrived, and before you judge, the old one is being returned to Apple’s Trade In partner in a few days, where it will hopefully be responsibly refurbished or at worst recycled. They’ve suggested that I’m likely to get nearly half the original cost back, which is an astounding deal for a two-year-old model! I’ll believe it when the deposit lands in my bank account.

    I’m very happy I decided to stick with the Pro Max size instead of switching to a Pro. The slight increases in height and width are visible if you put them together, but isn’t really noticeable in the hand. The increase in thickness IS, but combined with the new gentler corners on the seamless aluminum body, I think thicker is actually better? This might be the best feeling iPhone ever.

    I’ve yet to put the new camera system through its paces, but I’m excited and very pleased after a couple of days with it. Images look cleaner, and the redesigned front-facing camera is a revelation. I took a test selfie and could scarcely believe how presentable I looked. Coming from the iPhone 15 series, I’m also new to the new Photographic Styles that were introduced last year, and am getting a lot out of them. I compared photos shot in RAW with Halide and in HEIC with the default camera using a tweaked “Natural” style, and they’re extremely close in both SDR and HDR. This is a big deal! Along with the revised Photonic Engine this year, the dark days of overprocessed iPhone photos may be behind us.

    When reviews get creative

    One thing I’ve noticed this year is how bland and predictable the video reviews from the usual tech YouTubers and influencers have been. They go through the spec sheets while speaking to the camera, do a few test shots, and end without any thoughts you couldn’t have pulled out of ChatGPT. But then I saw a couple of videos from the Chinese-speaking side of the internet, and that’s when I realized Western civilization is well and truly finished.

    Take a look at these and tell me you’re not duly impressed by the storytelling creativity, production skill, points of view, and passion on display — even if you can’t understand a word (but most of them have English subtitles you can enable). They could just shoot the phones on a stand while swinging a light overhead, but they instead they go hard with CGI, costumes, sets, comedic sketches, and cinematic editing. And they do these in the WEEK they’ve given between the phones being revealed and launching.

    We visited a local art sales event for works based on the Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex franchise, just to have a look. The metal-printed pieces were going for upwards of S$4,000, so there was never any chance we’d buy one — but I got a little acrylic plate standee for my desk (S$25). Above are some snaps straight from the iPhone 17 Pro Max, using only Photographic Styles.

    Afterwards, we visited the SG60 Heart&Soul Experience which is being housed at the site of the old library@orchard. Supposedly it will be renovated and return as a downtown library next year, which is great news. From what I can gather, it’s meant to inspire people about what Singapore’s future might look like, and what place they’d have in it (employing lots of tech to personalize the journey). Criticisms I’ve heard are that it doesn’t go far enough, and the future shown looks kinda like the present: delivery drones, working in VR headsets, greenery everywhere. Visit and see for yourself. Bookings are required, but the tickets are free. It’s quite an involved production with each visitor being given a guide device (an encased Xiaomi smartphone) to wear around their necks, and human facilitators bringing them through the stations.

    Oh, speaking of cases, we went by Apple Orchard Road after the show to have a look at the iPhone Air, and I haven’t seen that store so packed in years. I picked up a rather loud Beats case in “Pebble Pink”, mostly because I really wanted a Beats case last year but they only made them for the iPhone 16 series. It’s hard plastic with a matte finish that’s slippery when your hands are dry but tacky enough if there’s a bit of moisture.

    Check out my reel with the Pink Panther theme:

    And while we’re on the subject of great directors, I finally sat down with Bernardo Bertolucci’s The Dreamers (2003) on MUBI. More explicit than I expected, it’s easy to see why people call it pretentious with its heavy callbacks to classic cinema, but it’s never boring and it sure knows how to use mirrors. I gave it 3.5 stars on Letterboxd, mostly because there’s “altogether too much time spent lying on floors for my liking”. There’s also one truly revolting moment where, out of money, they raid the apartment building’s trash for scraps of food and assemble the world’s grossest bento.

    Spike Lee’s Highest 2 Lowest (2025), now on Apple TV+, is a remake of Kurosawa’s High and Low (1963), which I’ll embarrassingly only get around to watching after this homage. But this is a fine film that stands on its own: a sharp, sometimes experimental exploration of class and morality, constantly playing on the gulf between generations — Motown vs. modern rap, film vs. digital, Kurosawa vs. Lee.

  • Week 37.25

    Week 37.25

    Happy iPhone week aka Tech Christmas to all who celebrate! I wrote up my thoughts (below) after the event on Wednesday, and since then I’ve seen the same sentiments echoed throughout YouTube videos, podcasts, and articles, so I at least know I’m not reading these things entirely wrong. All in all, one of the best iPhone lineups ever. They went all out, with very few compromises or artificial impairments to make the expensive models more attractive — they are all seriously good value, extremely capable-sounding devices.

    On Tuesday, we went over to my parents’ place for dinner, and spurred by a question someone had last week after seeing a photo of their living room, I asked after some family history and got some new information. The accuracy and completeness of Singaporean family stories must vary widely; after all most families here only arrived in the last century. My dad only knows where his grandfather came from in China, and a suspicion of his occupation (ask me and I’ll tell you), but not why or how they made their way down to Southeast Asia. Apparently no one ever said. I’d say that was weird, but then I’ve waited this many decades to even ask.

    You know what else I’ve waited forever to do? Start The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom. I finished Breath of the Wild in the summer of 2023 — I could have sworn it was last year, oh my — after letting it languish uncompleted for about six years. Since both games are set in the same world of Hyrule, albeit expanded in TotK, many recommend taking a break in between. Now that the Switch 2 edition is out, with modern luxuries like running at 4K 60fps, it was time. And because this is a game where skills also accrue in the player rather than purely in the character, jumping back in feels great. I’m better at combat and finding my way around than I was at the beginning of BotW, which makes sense for a sequel: Link has been here and done this before. It’s marvelous game design all around.

    Speaking of capital-D Design, Singapore Design Week is back again, but I’m less inclined to explore every venue and event after seeing that last year’s slipshod execution probably hasn’t been rectified. The website and program directory are still confusing and missing key visitor info.

    Case in point: On Sunday we went down to the Science Park district for a talk I’d signed up for, only to find that no one in the stated venue (a building lobby) knew where it was happening. It turned out to be in an open space outside instead. I’m not sure the speakers knew either, given that several used packed slides unreadable on the small screens provided. To make matters worse, some presenters’ slides weren’t even fit to the full screen size. When informed by the audience, they said “sorry, we can’t fix it. We can send you the deck!”

    Nearby, one of the robotics exhibitions had info cards printed in such tiny type you’d literally have to crouch on the floor to read them. I don’t know why we can’t get these things right for a design week.

    But there was a high point! Local graphic and art book seller Basheer had a small stand at the fair, and I found a copy of Silvio Lorusso’s What Design Can’t Do: Essays on Design and Disillusion, which Jose recommended ages ago. It was S$37 for future reference.

    If you follow me on Goodreads and were shocked at the amount of reading I suddenly got done, calm down. Those were not five separate books, but short sci-fi stories in something called The Forward Collection, published by Amazon, and curated by Blake Crouch of Dark Matter fame. For some reason, each story has its own entry on Goodreads instead of just one for the compilation. I recommend them!

    ===

    Apple Fall Event

    • The annual Apple fall event took place as it always does in early September (I love that it’s been over 15 years but some people still ask “When do the new iPhones come out?”). This year was of particular interest to me because 1) I didn’t upgrade my iPhone for once last year, mostly content with my iPhone 15 Pro Max and even wondering if I could stretch it out to three years. 2) If I can save any money somewhere in my annual budget, I’d be open to it! Alas, my Apple Watch is three years old, and my AirPods Pro 2 are the Lightning version that don’t do lossless audio with Vision Pro. So as the livestream began, I started praying that none of the announcements would make me feel like I needed to buy stuff.
    • Right out of the gate, the new AirPods Pro 3 were shown and I was like “goddamnit!” These mostly look the same, but have been subtly refined to fit better in your ears and yup, I need that as they’ve always been a little loose on one side. They supposedly sound better, thanks to a new acoustic port design. The active noise cancellation is now 2x better, and battery life has gone up about a third, to 8 hours. There’s also heart rate monitoring but I don’t give a crap about that. Nevertheless, a very hard purchase to resist.
    • Then, the Apple Watch Series 11 and Ultra 3 were shown, but thankfully I’m not sporty enough so the bulk of their workout/outdoors adventure-centric improvements bounced off my consumer armor. I mainly use my Series 8 as a timepiece, with occasional notifications and stock prices that I read when waking up in the middle of the night, and all it needs is a new battery. Lighter, smaller, more health sensors, faster charging — these are all nice to have but not when a new titanium model comes to over S$1,200 with AppleCare+. What’s that? Buy aluminum? Oh no, darling.
    • I was excited to see the iPhone 17 get a ProMotion display (variable refresh rates up to 120hz), because it suggests that the iPad Air might get one next year too. Overall, this is a truly great phone to offer as the base model. With better battery life, 256GB starting storage, and very capable cameras (including a smart new multi-aspect selfie camera), there are no compromises to be seen here and most people will be fully satisfied with one. It stands up well beside the Pro phone for everyday use in nearly all aspects.
    • When rumors of the the iPhone Air leaked, I didn’t believe a thinner phone with less battery life made any sense. And including only a single camera with no ultrawide lens? That excludes most Gen Z buyers! But I think I was wrong. The new wider front-facing camera might handle the Gen Z selfie use case. In truth, this is a phone that matches or exceeds the specs of last year’s iPhone 16, but is way more desirable. With its unique and recognizable design, glossy titanium frame, and premium semi-pro price positioning, this is the peacocking model. It’s literally the shiny new object. And that place in the lineup is made possible by a welcome pivot in the Pro line.
    • The iPhone 17 Pro and Pro Max are now freed from their jobs of pushing up iPhone ARPU by appealing to customers with a little more money to spend, and who want something better than the base model. That’s the Air now. The Pro models have now transitioned to powerful professional tools with features that most people won’t even have heard of (e.g. GenLock for video), let alone know how to use. Which means they can ditch premium/luxury materials like stainless steel and titanium, for a more pragmatic forged aluminum that’s lighter and better for thermal management. They can also withstand weirder/uglier industrial designs (emphasis on industrial) like the new camera plateau that houses bigger sensors and makes room elsewhere for massive batteries. These models can now be thicker and heavier than most consumers would like because the Air exists.
    • The Air, by the way, looks like they got halfway through the development of next year’s rumored foldable iPhone and decided to ship one half as a product. Which is probably not entirely untrue; many niche Apple products are test beds for scaling ideas that will later appear elsewhere. The Air’s remarkable miniaturization and the Pro’s new vapor chamber cooling system will probably be echoed in a future Apple Vision Pro.
    • It’s also worth noting the ever-changing definition of “Air” in Apple parlance. It usually means either cheaper or lighter, and never premium/luxury. The MacBook Air is both the cheapest and lightest laptop, at least for now. The iPad Air is a Goldilocks model, sitting between the basic iPad and the Pro (which is the thinnest and lightest). But while the iPhone Air is cheaper than the Pro, it’s the thinnest, lightest, and also nicest. It’s elegant where the Pro is beastly, and I think this is their main design direction for the future.
    • Even if it doesn’t sell well this year, I don’t see this being canceled like the Plus phones. If anything, the Pro Max might be the one to go next. Its role is now to simply be the biggest screen, which a certain folding device might take the place of. So 12 months from now, we may be talking about iPhone 18, iPhone 18 Pro, iPhone Air 2, and an iPhone DS or whatever.
    • So it’s decision time. By the time this gets posted, I would have chosen a phone, size, and color. The Air is very tempting, except I couldn’t live without macro and telephoto photos. I do think its 6.5” screen size is in the sweet spot. The Pro’s 6.3” is too small and according to myself in 2023, going back to a bigger Pro Max after three years of Pro was worth the pocket bulge and hand strain. The new Cosmic Orange is striking as hell, but will it look tired after two years? Or two weeks? Brian called it reminiscent of “80s anime” and I think he’s onto something with that bit of free association. It also reminds me of some Sony MP3 players and phones.
    • Update: Pro Max in Silver. Big, heavy, and expensive. I’ll have to tighten my belt now in more ways than one.

  • Fixing an iOS/iPhone issue where apps don’t save photos with the original date and time metadata

    How to solve an iOS/iPhone bug that prevents third-party editing apps (e.g. Lightroom, VSCO, AgBr) from retaining the date/time metadata from the original photos when saving new edited files

    I’ve tried to pack the right terms in the title and heading above in the hopes that you’ll find this page if you have the same problem that I did.

    For several years, edited photos saved from apps like VSCO wound up with the “current” date and time as the “capture time” on my iPhone, meaning that they don’t sort chronologically alongside the original photos when viewing the Photo Library. I noticed with one app that when I made edits on my iPad, it worked as expected, i.e. the original capture time was retained, but mistakenly believed it was a bug in that specific app that only surfaced in their iPhone version.

    Last week I discovered this behavior in the new AgBr app, and got to emailing with the developers. In that process, I realized it was a problem with my iPhone, and most likely down to a bug in iOS rather than the photo editing apps.

    Without further ado, the solution is to “Reset All Settings” in your iPhone’s Settings app (under General → Transfer or Reset iPhone). This will undo many of your longstanding settings, such as known WiFi networks and cards in your Apple Wallet. It’s a pain in the ass, but much better than wiping the entire phone and starting over from scratch, which is what I thought I would have to do.

    I have no idea when I picked up this problem, but it’s a deep-seated one that has followed me across several iPhones, resurfacing with each migration and “restore from iCloud backup”.

    Funnily enough, I chanced upon the solution while whining about this problem to Michael, and while I was celebrating with way too much joy than fixing a computer problem should give someone, he pointed out that just a few weeks earlier he had also solved a longstanding problem with Safari on his Mac while telling me about it. I think we’ve figured out a winning formula.

    Summary

    Issue Description: Edited photos saved from third-party editing apps on iOS/iPhone lose the original date/time metadata, resulting in incorrect chronological order in the Photo Library.

    Cause: Likely a bug in iOS.

    Solution: Reset All Settings in the iPhone’s Settings app (under General → Transfer or Reset iPhone), though it will reset some settings.