Basic AF: a (mostly) tech podcast

Tom and Jeff are joined by returning guests Riley Hill (Slatepad.org) and Joe Moyer (24letters.net) for a full roundtable on what Apple announced during the WWDC keynote and what it means for everyday users.

Topics covered:

• The three pillars of WWDC 2026: performance improvements, trust & safety, and Apple Intelligence/Siri AI
• Why this keynote felt like Apple's "Snow Leopard" moment — focusing on performance and stability
• Siri AI: the personal context features Apple promised two years ago… that may actually work now
• The Gemini partnership and what Apple's privacy promises mean in practice
• New Photos features, Image Playground upgrades, and the philosophical question: "what even is a photo anymore?"
• Safari custom extensions built by Siri — Riley tried it live on the dev beta
• AI-powered Shortcuts: promising, half-working, and full of potential
• Parental controls overhaul and why it still needs a centralized management solution
• Which devices get left behind — iPhone, iPad, Mac, and Watch compatibility breakdowns
• Tim Cook's farewell WWDC keynote 

Links from the show:

• Riley Hill: slatepad.org
• Joe Moyer: 24letters.net (and The Journaling Guide newsletter)
• Support the show: basicafshow.com

Question or Comment? Send us a Text Message!

Support the show

Contact Us

• Drop us a line at [email protected]
• You’ll find Jeff at @reyespoint on Threads and reyespoint.bsky.social on Bluesky
• Find Tom at @tomanderson on Threads
• Join Tom’s newsletter, Apple Talk, for more Apple coverage and tips & tricks.
• Tom has a new YouTube channel
• Show artwork by the great Randall Martin Design

Enjoy Basic AF? Leave a review or rating!

• Review on Apple Podcasts
• Rate on Spotify
• Recommend in Overcast

Intro Music: Psychokinetics - The Chosen

• Apple Music
• Spotify

Transcripts and some images are AI generated and may contain errors and general silliness.

Both of us did something a little unusual this month: we both walked away with the MacBook Air M5. Tom grabbed the 15-inch for work, Jeff picked up the Midnight Blue 13-inch — and after a couple weeks of use, we've got a lot to say about battery life, setup philosophy, and one genuinely weird bug.

This week we cover:

• Jeff's "only install what you actually need" setup approach — and why it's working brilliantly
• Tom's mysterious MacBook Air lockup issue, and the macOS 26.4 bug that turned out to be the culprit
• Jeff's Studio Display needed a reset — turns out it runs a full iOS-based OS, and a simple unplug trick fixes a lot
• The Canvas (not Canva!) ransomware hack that hit 9,000+ schools right during finals week
• Apple shoots a live MLS game entirely on iPhone 17 Pro — sports history, or marketing stunt?
• Apple Card's "free" AirPods Pro 3 promo: the catch hiding in the fine print
• Kansas City Public Schools replacing 30,000 Windows PCs and Chromebooks with Apple devices
• Apple Sports app now covers the World Cup
• Field Notes Explore America notebooks: Tom has a new problem

Links from the show:

• Buy Jeff's MacBook Pro M2: https://swappa.com/listing/view/LAFC35203
• Field Notes Explore America: fieldnotesbrand.com/products/explore-america
• Apple TV + iPhone 17 Pro MLS broadcast: apple.com/newsroom
• Sign up for Tom's newsletter: tomfanderson.com

Question or Comment? Send us a Text Message!

Support the show

Contact Us

• Drop us a line at [email protected]
• You’ll find Jeff at @reyespoint on Threads and reyespoint.bsky.social on Bluesky
• Find Tom at @tomanderson on Threads
• Join Tom’s newsletter, Apple Talk, for more Apple coverage and tips & tricks.
• Tom has a new YouTube channel
• Show artwork by the great Randall Martin Design

Enjoy Basic AF? Leave a review or rating!

• Review on Apple Podcasts
• Rate on Spotify
• Recommend in Overcast

Intro Music: Psychokinetics - The Chosen

• Apple Music
• Spotify

Transcripts and some images are AI generated and may contain errors and general silliness.

There's a lot happening in Apple land right now. Mac mini prices just went up, a Siri class action settlement might land in your inbox soon, and a fresh iOS 27 rumor has some good news for anyone who'd rather talk to Claude than ChatGPT. Tom and Jeff break it all down.

In this episode:

• Apple Notes tips: how search really works, Smart Folders, and ProNotes — a free plugin that brings markdown and slash commands to the Notes app
• Mac mini's base model is gone — the entry price jumps to $799, and Tim Cook says supply constraints won't recover for several months
• Apple Education Store now requires UNiDAYS verification, and Apple Watch just joined the discount program
• iOS 27 rumor: you may soon choose Claude or Gemini as your Apple Intelligence AI instead of ChatGPT
• Apple's $250M Siri lawsuit settlement — if you own an iPhone 15 Pro or 16 series, you might be owed $25–$95
• M5 MacBook Air first impressions: Jeff's testing one alongside his MacBook Pro — and Tom's university just ordered 100 of them

Links from the show:

• Apple Notes: Four Tips That Make Finding Things Effortless
• Four Fast Ways to Capture to Apple Notes 
• ProNotes (free Apple Notes plugin) 
• Death of the Author by Nnedi Okorafor 
• Playworld by Adam Ross 

We'd be honored if you'd drop a 5-star rating for us on Apple Podcasts and/or Spotify!

Question or Comment? Send us a Text Message!

Support the show

Contact Us

• Drop us a line at [email protected]
• You’ll find Jeff at @reyespoint on Threads and reyespoint.bsky.social on Bluesky
• Find Tom at @tomanderson on Threads
• Join Tom’s newsletter, Apple Talk, for more Apple coverage and tips & tricks.
• Tom has a new YouTube channel
• Show artwork by the great Randall Martin Design

Enjoy Basic AF? Leave a review or rating!

• Review on Apple Podcasts
• Rate on Spotify
• Recommend in Overcast

Intro Music: Psychokinetics - The Chosen

• Apple Music
• Spotify

Transcripts and some images are AI generated and may contain errors and general silliness.

Big news out of Cupertino: Tim Cook is stepping down as CEO, with hardware engineering chief John Ternus set to take the helm this September. Tom and Jeff spend a few minutes on the transition — then welcome back guest Bill McLean for an honest, no-hype check-in on AI tools: what they're actually using, what's working, and where the marketing is writing checks the technology can't cash.

In this episode:

• The Tim Cook → John Ternus CEO handoff and what a hardware guy at the top might mean for Apple's software
• Which AI platforms Tom and Bill settled on, and why ChatGPT got dropped
• Claude Co-Work in real life: web scraping, YouTube analytics, and why you still have to babysit it
• The "dopamine hit" problem: why AI-generated ideas can kill your motivation to actually do the work
• How Bill replaced his Squarespace subscription using Claude Code with zero coding background
• Why context might be AI's real superpower and why Apple could have the biggest edge
• MCP integrations worth building: Readwise, Craft, Apple Reminders
• Why Claude projects and skills outperformed an Obsidian vault for real workflow results
• A must-read New Yorker profile on Sam Altman

Links from the show:

• Bill McLean on YouTube: youtube.com/@BillMcLean
• Sam Altman May Control Our Future—Can He Be Trusted? - The New Yorker

Question or Comment? Send us a Text Message!

Support the show

Contact Us

• Drop us a line at [email protected]
• You’ll find Jeff at @reyespoint on Threads and reyespoint.bsky.social on Bluesky
• Find Tom at @tomanderson on Threads
• Join Tom’s newsletter, Apple Talk, for more Apple coverage and tips & tricks.
• Tom has a new YouTube channel
• Show artwork by the great Randall Martin Design

Enjoy Basic AF? Leave a review or rating!

• Review on Apple Podcasts
• Rate on Spotify
• Recommend in Overcast

Intro Music: Psychokinetics - The Chosen

• Apple Music
• Spotify

Transcripts and some images are AI generated and may contain errors and general silliness.

Tom and Jeff dig into why it's getting harder and harder to buy a Mac mini or Mac Studio in anything beyond a base configuration — and what that might mean about upcoming M5 refreshes. Plus, Jeff gives a six-month health update (he's at 92% and back on stage), and the guys get into a friendly debate about Amazon pulling the plug on pre-2012 Kindles. Is it reasonable after 14 years, or does it prove physical books always win? And they wrap up with four things to know about iOS 26.4.

Topics covered:

• Mac mini and Mac Studio availability issues and what's behind the long wait times
• MacBook Neo demand and Bill McLean's hands-on review
• Jeff's updated take on the BookTracker app
• Amazon deprecating pre-2012 Kindles — and what it means for your digital library
• The Libby app and library cards for free books
• Merriam-Webster's Visual Dictionary (Jeff's new obsession)
• iOS 26.4: keyboard accuracy improvements, Urgent Reminders update, Stolen Device Protection, and AI apps in CarPlay
• Resetting your keyboard dictionary after updating

Links from the show:

• BookTracker app: https://booktrack.app
• Libby app: https://libbyapp.com
• Bill McLean's MacBook Neo review
• Apple Talk newsletter (keyboard reset tip): https://www.tomfanderson.com/p/ios-26-4-iphone-keyboard-fix
• Merriam-Webster's Visual Dictionary

We’d be honored if you'd drop a 5-star rating for us on Apple Podcasts and/or Spotify!

Question or Comment? Send us a Text Message!

Support the show

Contact Us

• Drop us a line at [email protected]
• You’ll find Jeff at @reyespoint on Threads and reyespoint.bsky.social on Bluesky
• Find Tom at @tomanderson on Threads
• Join Tom’s newsletter, Apple Talk, for more Apple coverage and tips & tricks.
• Tom has a new YouTube channel
• Show artwork by the great Randall Martin Design

Enjoy Basic AF? Leave a review or rating!

• Review on Apple Podcasts
• Rate on Spotify
• Recommend in Overcast

Intro Music: Psychokinetics - The Chosen

• Apple Music
• Spotify

Transcripts and some images are AI generated and may contain errors and general silliness.

Nate Gorby is back — and this time he's got two weeks of daily MacBook Neo use to report on. Coming from an M2 MacBook Air he'd already sold, Nate picked up the Neo on day one and has been using it the way most people actually use computers: browsing, email, watching YouTube, light social media, and a bit of writing. No benchmarks, no synthetic tests — just honest, real-world impressions.

The guys dig into the details: battery life, the lack of MagSafe and Touch ID, the physical trackpad experience, speaker quality, the color-matched interface quirks, and whether 8GB of RAM is actually fine (spoiler: it is). 

They also cover WWDC 2026 dates, the 26.4 updates, and Apple's decision to discontinue the Mac Pro.

In this episode:

• Nate's daily use case: browsing, YouTube, Threads, light writing, some photo editing
• The physical trackpad vs. the haptic trackpad on his wife's M4 MacBook Air
• Living without Touch ID and why Apple Watch makes it a non-issue (mostly)
• No backlit keyboard: why the Citrus color's white keys are a natural workaround
• Battery life: good enough?
• Why 8GB of RAM is genuinely fine
• MagSafe as the one real missing piece
• Target now selling the MacBook Neo — and what that means for reaching new Mac buyers
• The education discount trick (you didn't hear it from them)
• Speaker quality: surprisingly good for spoken word
• WWDC 26 announced
• 26.4 updates now available — keyboard improvements for iPhone
• Mac Pro discontinued; the Mac Studio is now the top of the line

Links from the show:

• Nate's previous episode (Meta Ray-Ban glasses)
• Apple Announces WWDC 2026 Dates

More from Nate:

Last Month Online https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/last-month-online/id1824514139

Nate on Threads: https://www.threads.com/@ngorby

Nate on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ngorby

Question or Comment? Send us a Text Message!

Support the show

Contact Us

• Drop us a line at [email protected]
• You’ll find Jeff at @reyespoint on Threads and reyespoint.bsky.social on Bluesky
• Find Tom at @tomanderson on Threads
• Join Tom’s newsletter, Apple Talk, for more Apple coverage and tips & tricks.
• Tom has a new YouTube channel
• Show artwork by the great Randall Martin Design

Enjoy Basic AF? Leave a review or rating!

• Review on Apple Podcasts
• Rate on Spotify
• Recommend in Overcast

Intro Music: Psychokinetics - The Chosen

• Apple Music
• Spotify

Transcripts and some images are AI generated and may contain errors and general silliness.

Tom and Jeff are back with a packed episode that wanders from Apple hardware to Apple history to Apple TV+ sports to, well, a scientific fart study. If that sounds like a lot, it is.

Topics covered this episode:

• MacBook Neo hands-on — Tom got a brief look at the new $599 MacBook Neo at an IT conference. Build quality impressions, the Indigo color, and why the "it's just an iPhone chip" skepticism sounds a lot like what people said about the original M1 with 8GB of RAM. (Spoiler: they were wrong then too.) 
• David Pogue's Apple: The First 50 Years — Tom pre-ordered it, it arrived while he was out of town, and he's had exactly 15 minutes with it. It's a 600-page textbook-style history (not a glossy coffee table book), and he's planning a more thorough read over the summer. 
• A history tangent worth taking — The origin story of the PowerBook's palm rest design — and how one engineer's persistence against resistance accidentally shaped every laptop keyboard layout that followed.
• Jeff discovers F1 — Apple TV+ now carries every F1 race, and Jeff is in. The tech angle (real-time telemetry, PlayStation-style steering wheels, hybrid power transitions) makes it surprisingly interesting.
• The Human Flatus Atlas — Jeff has enrolled in a legitimate University of Maryland research study on human flatulence. Smart underwear device incoming. Butt tag update promised for next episode.

Links from the show

Tom’s Photos of the MacBook Neo

Apple: The First 50 Years – David Pogue

Human Flatus Atlas Project

F1 on Apple TV+

Question or Comment? Send us a Text Message!

Support the show

Contact Us

• Drop us a line at [email protected]
• You’ll find Jeff at @reyespoint on Threads and reyespoint.bsky.social on Bluesky
• Find Tom at @tomanderson on Threads
• Join Tom’s newsletter, Apple Talk, for more Apple coverage and tips & tricks.
• Tom has a new YouTube channel
• Show artwork by the great Randall Martin Design

Enjoy Basic AF? Leave a review or rating!

• Review on Apple Podcasts
• Rate on Spotify
• Recommend in Overcast

Intro Music: Psychokinetics - The Chosen

• Apple Music
• Spotify

Transcripts and some images are AI generated and may contain errors and general silliness.

Apple's dropping a wave of new products this week — and Tom and Jeff break down everything that's expected: a budget MacBook starting around $600, an iPhone 16E follow-up, iPad updates for the non-Pro models, and possible MacBook Pro upgrades with M5 Pro and Max chips. It's a preview packed with speculation, opinions, and the occasional tangent about fingerprints on laptop screens.

Then things get analog. Tom just joined Jeff in the Field Notes notebook club, and they talk about why a pocket-sized paper notebook has become a surprisingly useful tool alongside all the digital gear. They also cover two weather apps worth knowing about — Acme Weather (from the Dark Sky team) and what's new in Carrot Weather 6.4.

Enjoy the show? Please drop a 5-star rating on Apple Podcasts and/or Spotify!

Links from the show:

• Field Notes notebooks & subscription: https://fieldnotesbrand.com
• Acme Weather app: https://acmeweather.com
• Carrot Weather: https://www.meetcarrot.com/weather/
• Is Apple Notes Holding You Back? (Press Pause with Bill McLean, featuring Tom)
• GoFundMe for Aliyah (Jeff's bartender friend who lost everything in an apartment fire)

Question or Comment? Send us a Text Message!

Support the show

Contact Us

• Drop us a line at [email protected]
• You’ll find Jeff at @reyespoint on Threads and reyespoint.bsky.social on Bluesky
• Find Tom at @tomanderson on Threads
• Join Tom’s newsletter, Apple Talk, for more Apple coverage and tips & tricks.
• Tom has a new YouTube channel
• Show artwork by the great Randall Martin Design

Enjoy Basic AF? Leave a review or rating!

• Review on Apple Podcasts
• Rate on Spotify
• Recommend in Overcast

Intro Music: Psychokinetics - The Chosen

• Apple Music
• Spotify

Transcripts and some images are AI generated and may contain errors and general silliness.

Tom flies solo this week and welcomes first-time guest Nate Gorby for a conversation about Apple’s ongoing Siri delays, the state of Apple Intelligence, and what it all means for everyday users.

They discuss the latest report that Apple’s context-aware Siri may be pushed back again, whether privacy is helping or hurting Apple’s AI progress, and why even basic Siri tasks still frustrate longtime users.

In the second half, Nate shares his real-world experience using Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses for the past year — what works surprisingly well, where privacy concerns come in, and whether Apple needs to move faster in the wearable AI space.

More from Nate:

Nate's podcast: Last Month Online https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/last-month-online/id1824514139

Nate on Threads: https://www.threads.com/@ngorby

Nate on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ngorby

Question or Comment? Send us a Text Message!

Support the show

Contact Us

• Drop us a line at [email protected]
• You’ll find Jeff at @reyespoint on Threads and reyespoint.bsky.social on Bluesky
• Find Tom at @tomanderson on Threads
• Join Tom’s newsletter, Apple Talk, for more Apple coverage and tips & tricks.
• Tom has a new YouTube channel
• Show artwork by the great Randall Martin Design

Enjoy Basic AF? Leave a review or rating!

• Review on Apple Podcasts
• Rate on Spotify
• Recommend in Overcast

Intro Music: Psychokinetics - The Chosen

• Apple Music
• Spotify

Transcripts and some images are AI generated and may contain errors and general silliness.

Jim Eagar joins Tom Anderson and Jeff Battersby for a thoughtful, experience-driven conversation about productivity, tools, and the often-tempting urge to switch apps. Drawing on decades of professional experience—from Air Force chaplain to attorney to productivity writer—Jim shares how his workflows evolved alongside Apple technology, why “shiny new app syndrome” can quietly sabotage real work, and how to evaluate whether switching tools is actually worth the cost.

The discussion digs into intentional productivity, app minimalism, and using frameworks (not rules) to make better decisions about software—especially in an era overflowing with AI tools. Jim also walks through his personal writing and planning stack, explains why he recently switched from ChatGPT to Claude, and shares David Sparks’ advice on limiting major app changes to once per year. The result is a grounded, reassuring episode for anyone feeling overwhelmed by productivity tools—and a reminder that clarity beats novelty every time.

More from Jim:

Original Mac Guy

Retirement Reinvented!

Links from the show:

A Very Nerdy Christmas: Evaluate Your Tech Stack

Why I Quit Paid Apps

MacSparky

Question or Comment? Send us a Text Message!

Support the show

Contact Us

• Drop us a line at [email protected]
• You’ll find Jeff at @reyespoint on Threads and reyespoint.bsky.social on Bluesky
• Find Tom at @tomanderson on Threads
• Join Tom’s newsletter, Apple Talk, for more Apple coverage and tips & tricks.
• Tom has a new YouTube channel
• Show artwork by the great Randall Martin Design

Enjoy Basic AF? Leave a review or rating!

• Review on Apple Podcasts
• Rate on Spotify
• Recommend in Overcast

Intro Music: Psychokinetics - The Chosen

• Apple Music
• Spotify

Transcripts and some images are AI generated and may contain errors and general silliness.