I had to implement dark mode in a web app because I was doing a lot development in it at night in a room that was naturally darkened for obvious reasons. Even turning my monitor down to minimal brightness, swapping back to the app from the code editor was absolutely scalding my retinas
Same reason as to why they make it so difficult/impossible to opt out of updates or control them granularly - I suspect deep down they know full well nobody wants their new trash so the only way to get any kind of adoption is to force people.
yet there is no way to get my iPhone to stop auto-switching bluetooth audio between my devices. Any time I get in my car, my headphones connect to the car and I have to switch it back. So annoying
In iOS 26, you can keep audio playing with your headphones by enabling the new "Keep Audio with Headphones" setting, found in Settings > General > AirPlay & Continuity, which stops audio from automatically switching to nearby devices like car stereos or Bluetooth speakers when you're already connected to your headphones.
This setting, which is off by default, ensures your music, calls, or podcasts stay with your AirPods or wireless headphones, preventing frustrating interruptions when you start your car or enter a room with another speaker.
Thanks! Though the funny thing - it's not possible to search for this option using the search bar in settings - it doesn't show any results for "keep audio" ) I'm on 26.1
Maybe you didn’t catch this yet, but Apple pulled their latest iOS 18.7.3 update and they seem to only promote iOS 26 now. They really want everyone off iOS 18 :/
There are many reports that since around Christmas day, you can not do this any more on phones that support iOS 26. Updating to iOS 26 is the only option now.
> Still on iOS 18 and macOS 15 (Sequoia). I was a day one upgrader up until now, never had any regrets but this time things seemed very different.
I've tried and returned the iPhone 17 Pro. Love the hardware (especially the camera), but iOS 26 is inefficient (for lack of a better term), and the new camera UI hides too many things.
My phone updated on me and yesterday it took me 10 minutes to figure out how to listen to my voice mail. Like seriously, how do we go from clicking on the name calling to clicking on the name to see the voicemail left by that specific caller and no others
I did find this later, but that's also very unintuitive. I'm looking at a call log, why would I filter my calls to look at voicemails? I mean even the options there are categorically inconsistent. It is "Calls", "Missed", "Voicemail". voicemail is a different category than received and missed. I'm expecting that because that's what used to be at the top of that page. They taught me that that's what I should expect from the filtering option.
My solution was to change from "Unified" to "Classic" which changes the bottom bar from [("Calls" "Contacts" "Keypad") "Search] to ["Favorites" "Recents" "Contacts" "Keypad" "Voicemail"]. THE ICONS ARE EXACTLY THE SAME SIZE. The only difference is the spacing between them.
But again, this is fucking crazy because going back to the classic mode, if I click on a recent name it starts dialing them. But in the unified mode it gives me information. The unified makes the whole name act as if I'm pressing the info button.
The problem is that Apple created an anti-pattern, TO ITSELF. They taught users that an action did one thing and then used that action to do something completely different. No one on iOS 26 should expect that clicking the call line will take you to the information page and should instead expect that doing so will start dialing that person.
This is the most disappointing aspect of the slide in quality for me.
I working in software and "build features" for a living, and over the years I've come to prioritize reliability, performance, and an intuitive experience over all else. No matter how good the feature set is, if it crashes, is painfully slow, or I can't figure out how to use it, then I don't want it.
Apple used to have that focus, but seems to have lost it of late.
Apple definitely had that focus under Jobs but people now are all too happy to tell you you're holding it wrong and I think Apple internalized this mentality.
But I find iOS 26 absolutely disrespectful. It wants you to use it in ways that previous iOS versions pushed you away from. It's an anti pattern to previous versions. I'm sorry, if you teach users one pattern don't update to have them do the opposite. Nothing is could be less intuitive
My HN comment history shows I've been worried about macOS for quite a while now, too. I'm a bit less optimistic than you, but I hope you're right. I'd really prefer to be wrong.
macOS has been an incredible productive OS for me since I was 15. I'm now 39. In the last few years is the first time in that period that I've seriously begun to wonder if it would be wise to get off the platform. I've already dropped iOS, watchOS (Garmins are actually amazing these days, for what it's worth), and iPadOS. I still use macOS daily along with tvOS when I happen to watch something, but the days seem numbered now. I'm pretty disappointed. I hope it turns around, but I'm slowly preparing myself to be on Linux primarily.
Upgrading to iOS 26 was a mistake. All the slow, distracting UI features that only makes the iPhone feel like some slow Android phone is really not an "upgrade" in any reasonable sense of the word.
One huge benefit of Tahoe for me is that you can now hide any menubar icon, even if they don't explicitly support hiding. It's a small thing but that alone makes the upgrade worth it for me
I still remember Snow Leopard - I think that's when I started using Mac.
Most of the upgrades since then I have resisted and not enjoyed, though I seem to recall liking Mavericks.
A lot of the big features each time seem to be about tieing further into the Apple ecosystem, which doesn't interest me at all, since I have no other devices and don't use iCloud.
Snow Leopard was spectacular. Rock solid, I never had a single problem with the OS. Lots of third-party developers making good software helped, I think shortly after (Lion?) I bought Things, Little Snitch, Sketch, and Alfred.
Yeah, OS X was definitely the nicest native development experience at the time. Apple's documentation was considerably better and more searchable back then than it is now (especially as it is now for desktop). And even though they've introduced lots of niceties (including Swift), as Apple's piled additional features and APIs into Cocoa/Xcode I find the overall experience quite a bit less coherent or intuitive or ergonomic than it used to be.
Pretty much. Xcode was quirky but it still is. But the frameworks were well documented and 1 Cocoa book could get you a long way. I loved building Obj-C/Cocoa apps back then.
I'm not mac dev but wasn't apple all in on objc back then and these days it's more swift? that is pretty big shift, I'd assume for the better for most parts.
I prefer Swift as a language, but Apple's developer documentation back then was clear, detailed, and overall excellent. Occasionally I felt like I was reading a classic CS text rather than a manual. I could always find the guide on the particular facet I was looking for within a few clicks.
I still listen to the soundtracks of Myst and Riven by Robyn Miller as background music, it takes me back to the wonderful comfort zone of my 486 DX4 Compaq Presario.
Seeing those game boxes on the store shelves, picking them up and looking at the artwork…
Just download the audio with yt-dlp and transfer it to your iPhone.
"In iOS 26, you can find and make custom ringtones easily from the Files app by long-pressing an audio file (under 30 seconds) and choosing "Use as Ringtone" from the Share menu, a big simplification from older methods needing GarageBand or a computer."
I would never consider a matte display at home because I keep my computers in dark environments like a real nerd.
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