Weekly posts from the mind of Charanjit Chana
Having just watched Apple's September event for 2025, we got to see updates to the AirPods Pro, Apple Watch and iPhone line ups. And let's get this out the way first, battery life is better across the board and I'm here for it.
I didn't win the iPhone naming bingo, but let's dive into the details!
I don't know I remember, but when driving on rainy days I always think back to an invention I saw on TV. It was paint applied to the road for road markings but filled with some sort of plastic that meant it was slightly raised and textured. Almost like corrugated card. It made it easier to see on rainy days as it could poke through a thin sheet of water.
This isn't the same, or even the goal of the product, but made me thing it might be an unintended benefits because of the way it's applied.
I wonder what it feels like to drive across?
Update
Not the video I was thinking of, but something similar:
It's been over two years since I first posted about the Apple Vision Pro, they're Apple Silicon powered headset.
There were some stand out features announced, especially around spatial content but the price tag makes it prohibitive to most.
Then last week I got a chance to try the Apple Vision Pro for myself during a 30-minute demo in an Apple Store.
View on Instagram, Charanjit wearing the Apple Vision Pro
Experiencing it yourself is something else.
My only real experience with it previously had been with the Simulator app on the Mac when testing my own apps. I had clicked around a bit but without real content to dive into there wasn't really much to make of it. Moving around is a little clunky and not intuitive to me.
In contrast, real world usage is intuitive. You don't have to tap the physical buttons often and can just rely on your site and two fingers.
I did find that the pinch to tap gesture didn't work all the time for me. Maybe I'm falling into the same trap I did with AirPods where reviews made out like certain actions would be near instantaneous but the reality is you have to wait or be more intentional.
That aside, the content demos were spectacular. There was a general walkthrough, but viewing actual Spatial photos really was like being there. Zooming into panoramic photos really did drop you into the middle and converting flat photos into spatial photos was pretty effective. I hope that feature comes to my iPhone 14 Pro with iOS 26, but if not, then hopefully I can do something via Photos on my Mac.
There was a F1 demo video that did make me feel queasy given how realistic it was but it was an effective demo for some fast paced action. Entering the immersive cinema mode for movies was wonderful too. Truly blocking out the real world and putting you at the centre of a personal cinema. For that alone, I can totally see the appeal. Although I'd worry about my eyes if this was the only way I was consuming content!
The immersive demo was the one that really got me though as you get up close to the action, be it MLS or NBA content. There was a short, up close and personal, concert with Alicia Keys. All of these did make me wonder how far this could be pushed. You're so close and it's high fidelity enough to just feel real.
If the Apple Vision Pro was closer to £1,000 the demo would be enough to turn maybes into yeses. At £3,500 it is just so expensive. No matter how good it is.
Eager to try out a competing product now to see how it stacks up. I don't recall being impressed or not by the Home Screen being shown in the real world via pass through but my experience was short.
I think I'll need another demo again at some point. It would be lovely to bring up my own panoramic or auto-spatialised photos to experience those.
I've been using the Beats Fit Pro for almost 2 years and while they are a pretty good alternative to AirPods Pros, they have their flaws.
The ANC is most of the way there, but compared to reviews of the AirPods Pro 2, I think there's some room for them to be better. Overall, they're very comfortable, but the arm that sits to improve the fit while you're active can be hard to deal with for an extended period of time.
The biggest flaw of the Beats Fit Pro is the case. It definitely feels more fragile in comparison to even the case of the AirPods 2 I had previously and there's no wireless charging. The base is flat and prime real estate for MagSafe but that's reserved for Apple's own headphones it seems.
Transparency mode is pretty good but not perfect, I always end up removing my headphones when talking to someone when in this mode. It lacks the Conversational Awareness feature of the AirPods line.
The constant updates to the AirPods Pro 2, starting with the move to USB C and now with additional hearing functions, it's been a fantastic device for anyone that's bought a pair but I've been holding out.
And now it looks like the AirPods Pro 3 are on the horizon, maybe as soon as September. I really hope they do come out sooner rather than later as I am in need of an upgrade but I can hold out a bit longer if needed.
While the newer
Better battery life is always a plus, but it's not a problem I've ever encountered with my headphones thanks to the extended life achieved by the battery cases.
What I might enjoy most is the audible noise that the case can play when using the Find My feature. More than once I've tried to locate my headphones with no luck because the headphones are playing the sound inside a closed case. The Beats headphones specifically do not even start playing the sound at all, it seems, until the case is opened which makes it all pretty pointless in the first place. I don't think the location is even updated unless the case is opened and in reach of an iPhone.
I intend to get my hands on the AirPods Pro 3 and while audio improvements over the Beats would be nice, I think the "pro" usability is what I'll enjoy more with more gestures and better integrations with features like Find My and Conversational Awareness.
By my calculations we are a couple of weeks away now from being able to submit iOS 26 compatible apps for App Store review. Team Sheets was first built using Xcode 26 beta but ported to Xcode 16 for deployment with TestFlight and the for release in the App Store.
I've been switching between the two and the changes are actually fairly minimal, but it will take advantage of Liquid Glass come the release of iOS 26 in September.
Kop Quiz needed more thought, but it's also ready for submission.
With Kop Quiz, I'm now using Navigation Stack so that I can put a title on the screen and have moved the help and history icons into a Liquid Glass toolbar. It looks better and forced me to look at the rest of the layout for what I could do better with the new design language. The changes were not huge but the play button now sits as a bottom toolbar action button and the rest of the elements sit within the main view. It is able to scroll at all times, which is something I'm still undecided on, but I will revisit once more before the final push.
The good news is that it's been relatively low effort in terms of writing code, but it's been a pain to test jumping between two versions of Xcode and getting to grips with the documentation.
The one bit I'm not yet sold on is the ability to use zoom transitions when opening a sheet. It makes the button you tap appear as if it is becoming the sheet. A great visual tool but none of Apple's apps in the iOS 26 simulator use this pattern. I found the opening transition looks great but the closing transition has an odd state where the sheet is tiny and takes on the colour of the button right at the end of the animation.
Once I've had a chance to look at more of Apple's own apps for examples and how others are adopting it, I'll make a call but for now it's fine to me using the traditional method of bringing sheets up.
Probably the best app design video from this year's WWDC. Walking through an example definitely helps me to see the bigger picture.
I was looking for a resource to help me decide when I should apply Liquid Glass to my own components depending on the layer but it's not clear to me at all beyond buttons and controls.
I will be updating Kop Quiz for iOS 26 with my first take but I'll have to see how others, especially Apple, have approached Liquid Glass across all their apps before performing more updates.
Over the past few weeks, I've been working on an app called Team Sheets and as of yesterday it's in the App Store as a free download.
Now that I figured out how best to pull health samples in a Shortcut on my iPhone, here's my water logging shortcut. Feel free to take it and use it as it is, adapt it to specific measurements or units or to extend/reduce it's functionality as you see fit.
You do need to grant it health permissions once you open it in the Shortcuts app, but overall it's pretty simple:
It originally used the notification action but that presents a button so I switched to an alert instead. It still needs manual dismissal but if you're on the lock screen it doesn't add clutter to the notification list.
My water intake has definitely improved and it didn't require an additional app to make it happen. Something I considered building for myself, but deep down I knew that I could achieve what I wanted to achieve with the Shortcuts app so I'm glad I spent the time digging in.
I have used the Shortcuts app on and off for a while but I've always struggled with the Health shortcuts on offer. Logging data is easy enough but pulling it back can be really frustrating and yesterday I figured out why.
When you insert the Find Health Samples action after a Log Health Sample action, it will change the terminology to Filter [Health Sample] where [Health Sample] is the output of the previous action. No amount of filtering or configuring the action will do anything other than return the last sample entered.
My use case is pretty simple, I want to log the amount of water I've been drinking and then immediately pull the total for the current day. But because of how the action is changed after insertion, it is pulling up all the details of the sample being passed to it.
After many strong taps on my phone I realised clearing the [Health Sample] variable and changing it to [All Health Samples] got me back to the original intention which was to 'Find All Health Samples]! The difference between the two configurations is pretty subtle in my opinion and totally depends on what previous actions might be in your shortcut without any warning.
Pulling something like steps is tougher because there are many samples per day that can cause the shortcut to hang for a bit but once I realised the terminology was wrong it has been so much easier to work with. Grouping by day gives you a total for each day in your sample range.
This stumped me for hours previously to the point at which I gave up. I tried again this week and again was stumped for hours until I tapped angrily on something that toggled the terminology and my thinking! I hope it's useful for someone else out there struggling with the same issue.
Subway Takes has recently become a favourite YouTube channel with its mix of sensible, thought provoking and insane takes on modern culture.<\p>
Last week, I posted about a particular struggle with Liquid Glass and within the week I've got it sussed!
It turns out that I was trying to apply two competing styles. You can, but it caused the conflict between .borderedProminent and Liquid Glass.
What I hadn't realised that I was already applying what was necessary for Liquid Glass after applying the .borderedProminent modifier which caused the issue. Using just .confirmationAction as the placement modifier solved the problem.
So my second app is ready to be tested and soon to be pushed to the App Store. I want to refactor a few areas into components and while it's iOS 26 ready, I'll have to continue submitting for just iOS 18 only for now. I'll see if I can support iOS 17 too but I think the way in which I've used loops may not be compatible.
So watch this space, my iOS and Apple Watch app is almost ready.
Every time I visit Rome, the accessibility to fountains and clean drinking water is an underrated luxury. It's great to see a fountain with so much character being restored rather than replaced by a modern one – they might be useful, but they're ugly and only available in certain boroughs of London.
It starts and finishes perfectly.
Perfect timing to come across this site via
I am in the process of building a new app, it is written in SwiftUI, and I'm hoping to support both iOS 18 and the forthcoming iOS 26.
Liquid Glass brings some interesting layout choices. I'm not mad at the tab bar, which now hovers above the content, but it feels unnecessarily large. Maybe this will change by the time we get to September though.
What I've found most frustrating is working with button styles. Using the tint() method will change the foreground colour, which is perfectly fine but when you combine that with the .borderedProminent style you don't just get a tinted button but a tinted button with a 'traditional' iOS bordered button sitting within it.
It's actually not that noticeable in the Xcode preview because it's so small but it's clearly an issue in the simulators.
So I'm still grappling with it all, but for the most part the modifiers I'm applying are backwards compatible so the app will look fresher with the OS updates in September.
David Smith has been posting about design choices as he looks to adopt Liquid Glass in his own apps which are well worth a read.
Way too late but I'm fully behind this. It has been a long time since I ran a forum but even though I couldn't control what was posted, I took moderation seriously. Meta and X never have, but they really need to.
This should be top of the list for the EC in it's fight with Big Tech.
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