https://9to5mac.com/2026/04/15/ios-26-4-moves-app-store-updates-heres-how-to-open-them-fast/ So we have to click one more time to get to app updates as of iOS 26.4, WTF! Why make it less efficient Apple? Honestly this is one of my biggest pet peeves! Things should be made more efficient over time, not less and a single click more of always worse design!
The new MacBook Neo Apple just released the MacBook Neo for $599 with 256 ssd and 8gb of ram or $699 with 512 ssd and Touch ID on the keyboard. It is a real entry laptop built on a iPhone chip, so it is not going to be as snappy as as an M5, but from early bench marks, it is almost an M1 Air (Faster single core slower multi core) Personally since I became a professional editor I have worked off a pretty fully loaded desktop Mac (even if my current is an Mac Studio M2 Ultra with 192 Gb of RAM and the top GPu offered at the time) that has always been more powerful than any laptop (though the latest M5 MacBook Pro is certainly a very pro machine even if it can’t match the thermals of a desktop machine or screen size of an external monitor) and expensive enough that I couldn’t afford my desktop and a laptop. So to work I had to be at my desk. And that is mostly fine, but sometimes it would be nice to be able to work from the couch or while watching my toddler out on the porch… And for years I have used Jump Desktop to VPN onto work computers and make some changes from my Mac or my iPad Pro, but having a keyboard would be an improvement. And the Neo’s 2408x1506 is at least better than hd, even if 13 inches is a pretty big downgrade from my dual 32 inch monitors. Sure it is only 500 bits bright and no backlight on the keyboard, but I think I can used to that. Now the display is only sRGB instead of P3 so no color correction, have to use my iPad Pro for that. The worst part is i probably would want the upgraded model just to get the 512Gb hard drive, because I have a 4 TB in my Mac Studio and I am always fighting it being full even with my iTunes library and basically everything else not being stored on it. And while I might like Touch ID, I have never used it on my Mac since I use an ergo keyboard (that will take getting used to as well). An Indidgio would match my iPhone 17 For that price it just seems like a great companion to my Mac Studio. And it would let me try out Tahoe, since the fact that Tahoe kills FireWire has kept me from upgrading my Mac Studio. Honestly this is the longest I have ever waited on a major update, but since I also hate Liquid Glass so much I don’t feel as if I am missing much. I have wanted something to act as a VON front end to connect to my Mac, and was looking at google devices, but this seems perfect!
On iOS the Select button is large with a menu next to it. I hate inefficiency! Why should something I use every day be hidden under a menu on the iPad where there is ample space, but not on the iPhone where there is not! iPad O 26.2 and the select is hidden under the menu Here is the menu with select at the bottom. I hate having an extra step and it is even weirder that the device with more screen real estate is the one that hides Select making it the 2 presses versus one the iPhone. Not only should this be consistent between devices, but it makes no sense. Please Apple Fix This!
Another money sucking subscription from Apple, Apple Creator Studio comes out at the end of the month, luckily I don’t find that much use for Apple’s Pro tools in a month basis (except maybe Pixelmator since it’s photo corrections also show up in Photo (damn I miss Apple Color doing color correction like that with old school Final Cut Pro 7). And thankfully for now you can still buy the programs outright, at least the Mac ones. It is $12.99 a month or $129 a year and includes Final Cut Pro, Logic, Motion, Compressor, MainStage and templates for Pages, Numbers, Keynote, and Freeform, and it includes the iPad subscriptions
So since activating reduce transparency to get rid of the awful and illegible Liquid Glass, when I try and search in Mail, the results only show half the screen. Obviously there is something transparent there that is now opaque, and it basically makes search unusable. Just another huge issue with Liquid Glass. I have reported the bug to Apple, but I am not holding my breath.
MacRumors on Tahoe screen flicker with Studio Displays. Of course I am on Sequoia, and I have 3rd party monitors and it happens to me randomly all the time. It does seem to happen with switching apps though. I have an M2 Ultra Studio with 2 external Displays and one is on the hdmi port and 1 is usb c, so I think it has to do with the using different ports. It only happens on one monitor for me, but with me doing full time care for our 18 month old I haven’t had time to try and fix it.
I was excited by the new cameras of the iPhone 17 Pro, so I was pretty excited to move over, but the move so far has been a nightmare. First off I use a local backup of my phone as it saves passwords and is much faster than the cloud, but boy it has been anything but quick. First I had to enter all my info on the phone and sign into iCloud, and then to restore from computer I had to wipe the phone with a restore (which took hours) and I was hoping it would then sync, but then I had to enter all my info again, and then the sync from the computer started. After a 12 hour backup, this took a good part of the morning, and then hung with about 500 songs to go (out of about 15,000). And every time the sync screwed up or something I had to restart my computer to get another one started, which would be fine if my finder wasn't unresponsive for 5-10 minutes almost every restart (though not every one), I think it is because I have so many hard drives attached for editing. So the sync failed and I restarted to see if I could finish, but every playlist had just a few songs, which wasn't the case this morning. And when I removed all the files (with another sync) trying to put them back was only with 4000, songs instead of 15000. This took hours to figure out, but it had corrupted my Apple Music library, and I had to go back a day and recover the library file to regain all my playlists! How did that even happen? So here I am on day 2 of my new iPhone. I have had it for 24 hours, and it is once again syncing my music. And I left about 10 playlists out so I can sync them later so they can show up at the top (my most recent albums) sync I can't favorite playlists without activating iTunes Sync which I will never try again after it almost wiped out my entire iTunes music library years back! This is a fucking Nightmare!
Juli Clover at MacRumors ran the tests . iOS 26 with reduced transparency and increase contrast on I am quite surprised by the results, but I wonder if it means that the reduce transparency settings are being added on top of the transparency, because it makes no senses that removing the transparency doesn’t increase battery life. It is graphically intense and on my phone constantly glitches and has to redraw. And here is the same glitch I have been getting with transparency with it all turned off. So I think the transparency is being rendered then covered, so that is why it doesn’t save memory by turning it off, even if everything is easier to see with the transparency turned off. And not just switching Liquid Glass to Tinted, but accessibility to Reduce Transparency.
And I can definitely say just how bad it is because my iPad Pro M2 was replaced after screen issues 3 months ago so it has a basically brand new battery, and I had my battery replaced in my iPhone 14 Pro not a month ago (and they exploded my phone so I have a replacement). After upgrading to version 26 I thought it was bad at first, but I have literally such worse battery life than I did with my phone which was down to 80% efficiency on the battery! Without walking and using the GPS my phone is down to 30 percent by 3:47 PM! And this happens every day! And my iPad Pro with almost no use is down to 70 when with the old battery would have been at 96%.. And I am sure half of it is from the awful transparency that makes everything look illegible, and constantly glitches and takes a while to redraw as most things show up transparent. And hopefully 26.1 which will allow you to limit transparency will bring some efficiency back, but likely this is mostly bad coding! My pet peace’s in an OS are making things less efficient (more steps to do the same things),, less legible (say with transparency, and running slower with each OS release! And these OS’s do all of these in spades!
If only Apple would work on this issue, and Adobe as well. Sure DaVinci previously could do this with Rec 709a, but rec 709 (scene) should do a better job. https://youtu.be/Fcej7hDihW8?si=Bd_-xBChSs6gbywb And the fact that it does ColorSync and the correct gamma tags is awesome! And if you aren’t subscribed to Chadwick’s Creative Video Tips? What are you doing?