We regret to write that our beloved husband, father, and stepfather Bill Atkinson passed away on the night of Thursday, June 5th, 2025, due to pancreatic cancer. He was at home in Portola Valley in his bed, surrounded by family. We will miss him greatly, and he will be missed by many of you, too. He was a remarkable person, and the world will be forever different because he lived in it. He was fascinated by consciousness, and as he has passed on to a different level of consciousness, we wish him a journey as meaningful as the one it has been to have him in our lives. He is survived by his wife, two daughters, stepson, stepdaughter, two brothers, four sisters, and dog, Poppy
Among his contributions were the QuickDraw screen-drawing system, “marching ants” to indicate selections, the Menu Bar, MacPaint, and HyperCard. He later worked at the groundbreaking startup General Magic and spent his later years as a photographer.
RIP to an all-time great.
As a UCSD alum myself, I’m proud that many key figures in the early days of the Mac (most notably Atkinson, Jef Raskin, and Bud Tribble) were either students or faculty there. ↩
This is the core problem with all productivity software: you’re renting someone else’s vision of how work should happen… So I decided to build exactly what I needed: daily planning like Intend, but with integrated future task management, and none of the philosophical baggage (some of which may be great for others, but didn’t mesh with me!). A tool that adapts to me, not the other way around.
Here’s where the “vibe coding” magic happens — and it’s way simpler than you think. I started with two popular AI coding tools (Bolt and Lovable) and just… asked them to build what I wanted. In plain English. No technical specs, no wireframes, no user stories.
One of the best things about user automation has always been that you can create bespoke features that perfectly fit into your personal workflows. It’s fascinating to see how AI tools can potentially allow non-developers to create much more sophisticated tools than past forms of automation ever could.1
Like in three days. Yes, another WWDC is nigh as Apple gets slapped down by the courts (a-gain). Apple teases us for next week’s operating system reveals and could we see a new one this year?
Nice try
Apple took a big swing and a miss at a fastball low and away, striking out at trying to stay a court order against the company’s anti-steering App Store policy.
An appeals court rejected Apple’s request to block an order enabling external links.
Well, it was worth asking, wasn’t it?
Mmm, you could make a pretty good case it was not, in terms of developer and customer good will, actually, but who’s counting?
It’s a nice win for developers going into WWDC25, where Apple is expected to announce iOS 26. 25, 26, whatever it takes. Glad they fixed that confusing numbering! Now we just have an off by one situation.…
My thanks to WhisperType for sponsoring Six Colors this week.
WhisperType brings high-quality speech-to-text transcription to the Mac with a clever twist: It’s designed for people who love using the keyboard. You can start or stop dictation with a hotkey, and once your words are transcribed, you get full control to navigate, edit, and format using just your keyboard. No awkward mouse-clicking or hunting for buttons.
It’s built on Whisper, the open-source transcription engine from OpenAI, so the accuracy is seriously impressive, even in less-than-ideal environments. While WhisperType uses cloud processing for transcription, your files are deleted immediately after returning the result, maintaining your privacy and security. You can even set up custom spelling for unusual words you use all the time, such as the names of people or products.
If you’ve ever wished macOS dictation was just a little smarter, or if you’ve avoided voice tools because they didn’t feel built for you, WhisperType is worth a look. It’s fast and feels right at home on a Mac. You can learn more and download a free trial at WhisperType.com.
Stephen Hackett just took a deep dive into the story of the Power Mac G5, which introduced the “cheese grater” design also used by many years of Intel-based Mac Pros. His piece’s title, “The Broken Promise of the 3 GHz Power Mac G5,” is a reference to the infamous guarantee Steve Jobs gave that the G5 chip would reach 3 GHz, which it never did. Instead, Apple switched to Intel. (It wasn’t the only reason—G5 laptops were also seemingly impossible—but it didn’t help.)
But then there’s this line in the middle of Stephen’s story:
Jason Snell addressed this his review of the Power Mac G5 in Macworld back in September 2003:
Yep, there’s nothing like having you from 22 years ago quoted back to you. That cover story for Macworld was unique—it was such a new and interesting computer that I managed to talk Apple PR into letting me sit with product marketing’s Greg Joswiak and Apple head of hardware Jon Rubinstein, in front of an open G5, and get them to tell me the story about how it was built. The piece quotes “Joz and Ruby” at length, because it really was one of the most remarkable product briefings I’ve ever received.
Also remarkable: the only time they could do it was in the afternoon on July 3, right before everyone went off for the long Independence Day weekend. My family and I were going to spend the weekend in L.A., so my wife and 20-month-old daughter were in tow at Infinite Loop. A very nice Apple PR person was tasked with showing them around, and they ended up buying an Apple-logo onesie in the Company Store.
Left to right: HOMERUN (not part of season 2), Dig Dig Dino, Fulcrum Defender.
Last week, Panic rolled out season 2 of games for its Playdate game handheld. I use my Playdate in bursts and then go a while without playing it, but I’m back in now that there are two new games being released every week for six weeks:
If you’ve pre-ordered the new season already, just grab your Playdate, head to Settings > Games, and download the two new titles. Check them out, and see what your Playdate-owning friends think about them. And if you haven’t pre-ordered Season Two yet, no problem—just buy it now and jump right in. You won’t miss anything.
The season is $39—that’s for twelve different games, plus some surprises, delivered delightfully. It felt like a no-brainer to me. I’ve been playing the first week’s games all week, and they’re great. Dig Dig Dino is a clicky no-stress game where you dig up weird dinosaur bones and find gems and stuff. Fulcrum Defender is a space shoot-em-up where you sit at the center of screen and use the Playdate’s crank to rotate around and shoot at enemies while trying to stay alive for 10 minutes, and despite all that it’s actually kind of relaxing? And two new games, The Whiteout and Wheelsprung, just showed up.
I should also mention that there are now hundreds of games available for the Playdate, between Panic’s own Catalog store and stuff you can just get on the web and sideload. Lately I’ve been really enjoying the $5 HOMERUN, in which the mechanic of using the Playdate’s unique crank input to swing a baseball bat just keeps iterating in funny and clever ways as a narrative story unfolds in the background. It’s just so fun and clever.
After years of the Playdate itself being incredibly backordered, Panic has apparently made enough because they’re in stock now for $229. It’s adorable hardware (but unfortunately not backlit, so you’ll need to play in a well-lit space) and the number of different games that have been released for it means there’s probably a load of them that you might enjoy. (My all-time favorite remains Season 1’s Hyper Meteor.)
While the rest of the world has already ushered in the new year, in the Apple world the year starts on Monday of WWDC week, when Apple opens its annual Worldwide Developers Conference and sets its agenda for the next year. Get the champagne and fireworks ready, because next Monday, the great cycle of Apple begins again.
Whether repairability affects our buying choices, what we’d want from a rumored HomePod with a screen, what we’re looking forward to at WWDC next week, and our thoughts on the Nintendo Switch 2 and whether standalone handhelds appeal to us.
I’m far more optimistic than I was after WWDC 2024. I don’t expect AI to replace our friends in the indie developer community; far from it. That’s because what sets a great app apart from the pack on the App Store is the care and humanity that’s poured into it. I’ve yet to see a vibe-coded app that comes anywhere close. Those apps will simply join the vast sea of mediocrity that has always made up a big part of the App Store. Instead, I expect AI will help solo developers and small teams tackle bigger problems that were once the exclusive domain of bigger teams with more resources.
I share John’s optimism and hope Apple gives app developers even more powers next week. (Dan and I will also be in Cupertino, and like John and Federico, we are looking forward to seeing old friends and meeting new ones!)
One of the features I’m hoping will be introduced next week at WWDC is Apple giving app developers access to its AI models. Yes, Apple’s models need to improve, and hopefully we’ll hear something about that. But right now, only Apple really gets to use them (or package them up in features like Writing Tools and let apps access them in a one-size-fits-all way).
If app developers were to get full access to the models, though, it allows them to get creative in applying AI features inside their individual apps. Yes, app developers can add AI functionality to their apps today, but it would be a lot easier and more economical if they could rely on an Apple-approved set of models that run entirely for free.
There are a lot of possibilities. I keep dreaming about one that would allow the authors of podcast apps to use on-device transcription models to generate podcast transcripts on device and then upload the result to build a shared cloud database of transcripts to compete with the cloud-based catalogs of transcripts built by deep-pocketed companies like Apple. Social-media apps could automatically generate image descriptions for uploaded images.
Another benefit would be the ability for apps to quickly generate AI summaries. I know there are limits to AI summaries—just ask the BBC—but there are a lot of interface elements that could be helped by a quick one-line summary of content.
What Apple should do instead is make its models — both local and in Private Cloud Compute — fully accessible to developers to make whatever they want. Don’t limit them to cutesy-yet-annoying frameworks like Genmoji or sanitized-yet-buggy image generators, and don’t assume that the only entity that can create something compelling using developer data is the developer of Siri; instead return to the romanticism of platforms: enabling users and developers to make things completely unforeseen. This is something only Apple could do, and, frankly, it’s something the entire AI industry needs.
Six Colors subscriber Ampsonic—an excellent source of questions—asks:
Why do some names turn red in Messages when a non-iOS user is added?
It’s all about hegemony! Ok, not quite, but it is about the tricky issue of how Apple deals with email addresses connected or not connected to iCloud accounts.
Outside looking in
When you enter an email address or type one into the address field in Messages, the software does a quick behind-the-scenes check. Messages tries to determine if the address is associated with an active iCloud account. As you accept or paste in an address, you might notice that it always briefly lights up black text within a blue lozenge. If the address isn’t connected, the background changes from blue to red. This sometimes happens so quickly you don’t see it move from blue to red.
The lifecycle of an address (from top): typing in (black text), initial confusion (red lozenge), matching iCloud (blue lozenge), but turns out it’s not really connected (green text).
Red doesn’t mean you can’t send a message to someone. Rather, it reveals that iMessage can’t be used. If you’re adding addresses to a group conversation, you might notice that if you start with a contact or an email address with iMessage active, these all appear as black-on-blue. The moment you add someone who doesn’t have a valid iMessage account, all the addresses switch to black on red.
There’s a variant, too: if you choose a contact with only a phone number connected or enter a phone number, and that number isn’t connected to an iCloud account, that entry appears as black on green.
This color confusion is even more peculiar because Apple can show you how it’s checking live. Start typing a name, phone number, or email address into the To field, and as autocomplete shows matches, it color codes the text: gray for not yet determined, blue for iCloud, and green for SMS. The grays usually change within a second or two to blue or green.
The moment you click in the message field, the red switches to the appropriate color, too. It turns to green text (no lozenge), and the field shows Text Message • SMS or Text Message • RCS. (RCS is the standard Google uses, and is enabled by default starting with iOS 18 and related operating systems when they use your iPhone for text messaging. The text “SMS” always appears whether or not the rich multimedia MMS option is available.)
As shown in the lifecycle figure above, sometimes you will see a blue lozenge for a match—cached? preliminary?—but once you click in the message field, and shifts to green text!
Better red than dead
More confusingly, even if you type in a non-iCloud-connected email address and the contact with which the address is associated also has an iCloud-hooked-up address, Messages forces the use of the iCloud-linked address! I haven’t found a way to force use of a non-iCloud address without removing that email from the contact card.
When you start typing in the To field, autocomplete shows matching contacts while Messages checks on their iCloud-connected status.
There’s one edge case you might encounter: If you enable Screen Time for yourself for communicating with others (Settings > Screen Time > Communication Limits and either During Screen Time or During Downtime), recipients with whom you cannot message at the moment will appear in red. You can override Screen Time to bypass that self-limitation.
The upshot is that red addresses are a gap in Apple’s color-coding schema. Ideally, unless there’s a legitimate problem with the addressee, Apple should use the information it already has to show a green lozenge.
For further perusal
Did you know I wrote a desperately long book that can help? Take Control of FaceTime and Messages (also covering Phone and telephony) is quite lengthy because Apple under-documents many features found in this flagship app, leaving that job to me.
I found frustrating just the sheer number of things that lacked information at support.apple.com or which had “drug interaction”-like problems where features conflicted with each other. (I didn’t take out my frustration on the reader!) If you’ve ever been baffled by how to get something down in any of those apps, I expect I have covered it in the book. If not, tell me what’s missing!
[Got a question for the column? You can email glenn@sixcolors.com or use/glennin our subscriber-only Discord community.]
Last week I got an advance peek at D-Day: The Camera Soldier, a $5 interactive documentary (delivered via the App Store) for the Vision Pro from Time Studios and TARGO. It’s the story of Richard Taylor, an American who stormed the beaches of Normandy armed with nothing but his own cameras, risking his life to document the momentous Allied landing on mainland Europe.
It’s a fascinating combination of different storytelling techniques fused together. There’s 3-D video footage of Taylor’s daughter returning to where her father experienced D-Day; there are 3-D objects such as Taylor’s camera and dog tags, as well as photos and letters; and there are some immersive locations based on Taylor’s photographs (including on and just off Omaha Beach).
Directed by Chloé Rochereuil, the app brought back to me the very best vibes of the old days of multimedia CD-ROMs. It’s an unapologetic mixed-media documentary that tells the story of the man who helped tell the story of all the other men on those beaches on D-Day. I’m not sure I’ve experienced as affecting an immersive environment on the Vision Pro as being in the landing craft with the gate down and the beach looming in the distance, 81 years ago.
In previous years, Apple would announce finalists for its annual Apple Design Awards and then roll out the winners at WWDC. There used to be a whole ceremony, back in the day. But now Apple has compressed the entire process, and on Tuesday it announced both the finalists and the winners all at once.
Honorees were chosen across the categories Delight and Fun, Inclusivity, Innovation, Interaction, Social Impact, and Visuals and Graphics, and include addictive card game Balatro (a winner), Panic’s charming game Thank Goodness You’re Here, and (a double nominee) the amazing visionOS tower defense game Gears & Goo.
It’s time for our 10th annual competition regarding what will happen at Apple’s WWDC keynote! What will be announced? Will there be a major redesign? What will the AI story be? We predict it all!
Six Colors reader Len Dintzer wrote in with an Apple Watch daily tracking question—and then the answer!
Here’s my problem: I have a Move Streak message saying I interrupted my streak and a Move Activity record that shows that I did not miss a day.…
He included two screenshots:
The first is from my Apple Watch, which says my Move Streak ended on 4/29/25, but that I have a current store of 32 days. Problem 1: Today is May 20, and it hasn’t been 32 days since April 29. Problem 2: I haven’t missed any days.
There’s no reason for this to happen and I couldn’t find an answer in my device research or online. Fortunately, Len consulted a higher authority and received an accurate set of directions to fix, which I’m sharing here with some additional detail for how to carry out each task. Thanks, Len!
This Apple Watch screen capture shows that Len’s Move Streak is broken—that’s not the right date count based on the date shown.
Reset a broken work streak
Apple told Len to follow these steps:
Perform an iCloud backup on the iPhone.
Go to Settings > Account Name > iCloud.
Tap iCloud Backup.
Tap Backup Now and wait for it to complete.
Turn off Health Data on the iPhone.
Go to Settings > Account Name > See All > Health.
Turn off “Sync this iPhone.”
Tap Turn Off.
When prompted with “Keep or Delete Health Data?”, tap Keep on My iPhone. This is vital!
Power down your iPhone and your Apple Watch.
Start up your iPhone and your Apple Watch.
Apple apparently omitted the final step, but make sure to return to Settings > Account Name > See All > Health on your iPhone and turn “Sync this iPhone” back on.
Len said this resolved the streak problem just as promised.
For further reading
If you’re looking for more information about how iCloud works, consult Joe Kissell’s extensive Take Control of iCloud, updated earlier this month.
For more general information about Apple Watch, take a look at Jeff Carlson’s Take Control of Apple Watch, up to date with watchOS 11.
[Got a question for the column? You can email glenn@sixcolors.com or use/glennin our subscriber-only Discord community.]
Jason Snell has been covering Apple since all the Macs it shipped were beige boxes. This week, he joins Stephen and David to discuss the company’s range of legal and technological issues that seem to be adding up rapidly.
Yes, Apple is hurtling over the integers from 19 to 25 in favor of having release numbers match the last two digits of the year. It’s only been a quarter of a century and we have already forgotten the lessons of the Y2K bug. Sucks to be you, iOS users 75 years from now.
This is, of course, a bit of a hassle for developers, but in the long run it makes some sense. Also, it’d be nice if they went back to animal names instead of places in California but I’m not holding my breath.…
