Let's Talk Podcasts

Bart is joined by friend of the show Allison Sheridan from the [NosillaCast podcast](https://podceet.com) for a chat about shooting in urban environments triggered by an intriguing email from Allison.

While this podcast is free for you to enjoy, it’s not free for Bart to create. Please consider supporting the show by becoming a patron on Patreon.

Reminder – you can submit questions for future Q & A shows at http://lets-talk.ie/photoq

Whilst walking and listening to the latest show, I thought of an idea for an episode: shooting in an urban environment. I’m not sure there’s a LOT of meat on them bones, but I thought about different things you can do in this realm.

We were in Fresno seeing [family]. I took this photo outside of our hotel.

It’s what my eye was drawn to and appreciated. But this is what the area actually looked like.

The point is that I often am focusing my joy of where I live on the beauty and my brain just throws away the ugly parts. Power poles just aren’t in my vision even though they may block the sunset. 

The two photos I sent [previously] show how the different point of view can entirely change what one sees.

But it’s not always about trying to hide the ugly. I love to take a photo of a pretty fallen leaf on the sidewalk from down at the ground so that in the bokeh you can make out an old rusted out truck and a bunch of power lines.

I like to capture “life finds a way” subject. A rose snaking out from between fence posts, or a crack in the sidewalk with a tiny flower.

During our conversation Allison promised to share a link of a video her husband Steve took of a total solar eclipse using the sounds of the people experiencing the same eclipse as the soundtrack: https://youtube.com/watch?v=9uVwcAqKshY

After we recorded Allison shared this cool map of her walking route, showing a hero photo and a photo count of the various places she passes daily:

I’m not an urban person, I grew up in rural Ireland, and I feel most a home surrounded by nature, so I struggle with urban photography, though I am starting to get better at it.

Here are some things that work for me:

Keep an eye out at the smallest scales — lots of interesting shots hide in the small details!

You can also get interesting results shooting a big scene wide but with something of interest very close to show a place at multiple scales at once

When shooting buildings, try really hard to keep the camera face-on and perfectly horizontal and level to minimise perspective distortions, especially when shooting wide

Or … do the exactly opposite, and intentionally shoot wide and off-square to amplify the keystone effect!

Experiment with unusual points of view

Contrasts can make for really cool shots

Sometimes the cacophony of colours can distract more than it helps, so remember you always have the option to convert to monochrome!

I also see others do greet things in urban settings that I’m trying to get a handle on, but so far, without much success:

People! Were a fascinating bunch us humans, and there tend to be a lot of us in urban areas, but I’m just bad at photographing us, you might have more success

Look out for interesting shapes

The show starts with a few quick followups from recent shows, a few regulatory & legal stories, some substantial Apple HR news, and some highlights from Apple’s services & original content before getting stuck into three main stories. We start with Apple’s Q3 2025 earnings, then check in on Apple’s continuing efforts to address their failure to deliver on AI, and we finish with a look at Apple’s new AppleCare One subscription. another bad month for Apple’s app store practices on both sides of the Atlantic, and then we dive into the fun stuff, this year’s bumper WWDC! The show wraps up with a quick rundown of some smaller Apple-related stories that made the news in July 2025.

You’ll find detailed show notes below the fold, and if you enjoy this free show, please consider clicking on the donate button at the top of the left side bar – the show is free for you to listen to, but not for Bart to Produce!

Quick updates to long-running stories the show continues to track, and to stories covered in recent shows.

Apple have filed another motion in their on-going appeal of the injunction forcing external payment links in the US store through the never-ending Epic -v- Apple case, and it's a doosie, citing the recent US Supreme Court ruling lifting the injunction against the Trump administration breaking the US constitution and ignoring the big about birth right citizenship — appleinsider.com/…

Based on credible reporting from the Financial Times, the UK is trying to find a face-saving climb-down in it's attempt to use a secret court to force Apple to back-door iCloud Advanced Data Protection — www.macobserver.com/…

AirPods Pro hearing aid features roll out to more countries — appleinsider.com/… (Argentina, Ecuador, Honduras, Indonesia, Israel, Kazakhstan, Moldova, Palestinian Territories, Serbia, Taiwan, Thailand, Ukraine & Vietnam)

Apple Opens Public Betas for macOS 26 Tahoe, iOS 26, iPadOS 26, watchOS 26, tvOS 26, and HomePod Software 26 — tidbits.com/… ( Don't install betas on devices you need to actually get work done!)

Apple's battle with the European Commission over the Digital Markets Act (DMA) rumbled on this month:

The month started with Apple filing it's formal appeal as promised, basically arguing that the Commission is going beyond the law, and trying to get Apple to do more than the law actually requires of them — daringfireball.net/…

"Today we filed our appeal because we believe the European Commission’s decision — and their unprecedented fine — go far beyond what the law requires. As our appeal will show, the EC is mandating how we run our store and forcing business terms which are confusing for developers and bad for users. We implemented this to avoid punitive daily fines and will share the facts with the Court." — Apple Spokesperson

According to credible reporting by the FT, Apple and the commission are finally engaging with each other, and quietly working to negotiate more App Store changes to avoid further fines — www.macrumors.com/…

Related: Spain widens App Store antitrust probe to examine pricing — appleinsider.com/…

Related: EU Ends Corning Glass Inquiry, Apple Deal Remains Unaffected — www.macobserver.com/…

The UK publishes it's plan to regulate Apple & Google under their DMA-like Digital Markets, Competition, and Consumers Act — appleinsider.com/…

Japan’s Fair Trade Commission has published it's plans to implement the country's new Mobile Software Competition Act — www.macobserver.com/… (3rd-party app stores and outside payments)

Apple has filed it's response to the DOJ's anti-trust allegations, countering each of the DOJ's 236 paragraphs point-by-point, concluding simply that "The DOJ is wrong" — appleinsider.com/…

ITC Ruling Puts Apple’s iPhone OLED Supply Chain at Risk — www.macobserver.com/…

Apple -v- Masimo (blood oxygen monitoring in Apple Watch): at an oral hearing the case Apple argued that the ban should never have been issued because Masimo's supposed product being harmed by the on-going dispute did not really exist, though Masimo disagreed — www.macobserver.com/… & www.reuters.com/…

Judge blocks class suit claiming iOS 13 ignored data settings — appleinsider.com/… (someone tried to argue it was deceptive that upgrading to the paid tier meant not keeping your free 5GB as well)

Apple is suing John Prosser, the YouTuber who leaked the Liquid Glass design a few months before WWDC, claiming he paid for those leaks, which would be very illegal indeed — www.macobserver.com/… (Prosser says Apple haven't got their facts quite right, but didn't elaborate)

Apple has won an appeal against an NLRB (National Labour Relations Board) ruling that it was illegally union busting in an NYC store — appleinsider.com/…

Apple COO Jeff Williams retiring later in 2025, replaced by SVP Sabih Khan — appleinsider.com/… ( Apple PR)

Two-step process — Williams left COO role at the end of July, the design team will continue to report to him until he retires later this year

Apple’s Design Leadership Returns to CEO Tim Cook After Williams’ Retirement — www.macobserver.com/…

Opinion & Analysis:

Apple Music Reveals Top 500 Streamed Songs to Mark 10-Year Anniversary — www.macobserver.com/…

Apple Arcade:

Usual release of new games, including from PlayDoh & my beloved Worms franchise — appleinsider.com/…

Apple Arcade brings SpongeBob SquarePants to slew of iPhone and iPad games — www.cultofmac.com/… ( Apple PR)

Apple TV+:

'Severance' dominates 2025 Emmy Awards nominations list — appleinsider.com/… ( Apple PR)

F1 Movie Sets Apple Box Office Record with $509 Million Globally — www.macobserver.com/…

MLS and Liga MX face off in Leagues Cup 2025 on Apple TV — appleinsider.com/… ( Apple PR)

Apple Wallet Users Can Now Ride South Korea’s Transit with Tmoney — www.macobserver.com/…

Apple News+ Audio finally arrives in UK, Canada, Australia — appleinsider.com/…

Apple Reports Record-Breaking Q3 2025 Results — tidbits.com/… ( Apple PR)

This is Tim: Complete transcript of Apple’s Q3 2025 financial call — sixcolors.com/…

Apple Q3 2025 results and charts: $95B revenue — sixcolors.com/…

Apple's $94B Q3 soundly beats Wall Street thanks to iPhone and China growth — appleinsider.com/…

Apple shatters expectations with 10% revenue surge — www.cultofmac.com/…

Apple's Q3 2025 cash dividend is up in spite of growing tariff concerns — appleinsider.com/…

Tim Cook: We spent on AI companies in the quarter, but nobody big — appleinsider.com/…

Apple has sold 3 billion iPhones since 2007 — appleinsider.com/…

Related: The Orwellianly-named One Big Beautiful Bill has provisions that will give Apple more tax write-offs for US-based R&D spending — appleinsider.com/…

Apple also added some clarity on Tariffs: Apple staring down $2 billion in total tariff costs in total before end of September — appleinsider.com/…

Apple had estimated the tariffs for this quarter would be $900M, but they were 'only' $800M.

Apple is now estimating a cost of $1.1Bn for the next quarter, assuming nothing changes, which is, of course, unlikely!

Other Tariff Related Stories:

As more trade deals get done with more countries involved in Apple's supply chain the long-term uncertainty begins to crystallise, and there are going to be substantial long-term cost increases no matter how much Apple juggles things around — appleinsider.com/…

one effect of Apple's tariff-minimising efforts is that, based on credible reporting, for the first time ever launch-day production will not happen only in China for the iPhones 17, but also in India — www.macobserver.com/…

Apple is investing $500M in MP Materials, a US firm mining for rare earths in the US to produce the kinds of rare earth magnets Apple needs, this is the same company the US government also invested $400M in this month — appleinsider.com/… & daringfireball.net/…

TSMC reports the American chip fab they broke ground on earlier this year is being fast-tracked, so they expect to open it "several quarters" ahead of schedule — www.macobserver.com/…

Apple opening manufacturing academy in Detroit to boost US innovation — www.cultofmac.com/…

The academy will host small and medium-sized businesses from across the country for workshops led by Apple experts, developed in partnership with Michigan State University. Companies can learn to implement artificial intelligence and smart manufacturing methods to modernize their operations.

Apple continues to address it's failure to deliver on it's biggest AI promises

Related: Apple's delayed Siri update spawns another securities lawsuit — appleinsider.com/… (second proposed class action suit for investors)

July was a bad month for Apple's AI talent pool:

Apple’s AI Chief Behind Genmoji and Siri Revamp Joins Meta — www.macobserver.com/… (Ruoming Pang)

Meta has poached two more heavyweights from Apple's AI team — appleinsider.com/… (Mark Lee & Tom Gunter, not execs, but experienced engineers based on the reporting)

Apple AI brain drain continues as a fourth researcher joins Meta — www.cultofmac.com/… (Bowen Zhang, a researcher rather than an exec or engineer)

The day after the earnings call, Apple held a very rare all-hands meeting to update staff on the companies plans, and there was a big focus on Apple Intelligence — appleinsider.com/…

Apple's research team are continuing to publish reports and papers at an impressive rate (seems to be accelerating even!)

Apple has published a technical report of where their AI efforts stand now — machinelearning.apple.com/… (PDF)

Apple published 8 research papers: Apple researchers take aim at AI hallucinations and true conversations — appleinsider.com/…

Apple has launched a subscription version of Apple Care branded as AppleCare One — appleinsider.com/…

A few small App Store tweaks for developers:

Apple celebrates World Emoji Day with early release of 'Emoji Game' — appleinsider.com/… (previwed at WWDC, not expected until the 26-series OSes come out)

Apple Store now online in Saudi Arabia with Arabic support, personalized shopping — www.cultofmac.com/…

Apple’s 2025 EU ‘Back to School’ Offer: Free AirPods, Upgrades, and More — www.macobserver.com/…

Note: When the textual description of a link is part of the link it is the title of the page being linked to, when the text describing a link is not part of the link it is a description written by Bart.

This solo show is dedicated to a simple piece of advice — don’t try to use a phone camera as if it’s a high-end DSLR, it isn’t, so let that reality guide your use of this wonderful photographic tool. Avoid the the inherent weaknesses, and lean into the inherent strengths!

While this podcast is free for you to enjoy, it’s not free for Bart to create. Please consider supporting the show by becoming a patron on Patreon.

Reminder – you can submit questions for future Q & A shows at http://lets-talk.ie/photoq

As I record this show in late July 2025 I'm coming to the end of two weeks of annual leave, and one of the things I've been focusing on while liberated from the day-to-day concerns of normal life is a presentation I've promised to deliver to a Mac User Group (MUG) later this year. The topic is very broad, basically my thoughts on taking great photos with an iPhone. I'm never quite sure if a broad topic is a blessing or a curse, but regardless, I wanted to use my rare mental freedom to figure out the big-picture story for the talk and get a rough skeleton of my slides together.

I've settled on using this show's theme for the narrative structure, breaking my talk into two haves, one on the art of iPhone photography, and one on the craft of it, but in the reverse order. Start with the practicalities of how to use the iPhone as a camera, then switch to more artistic themes for the second half. I'll start the second half with some general advice for photography in general, hitting some of my favourite themes like evangelising shooting freely and culling mercilessly, cropping without feeling guilty about it, and not slavishly following guidelines as if they were rules, but my main point will be to emphasise the importance of avoiding the iPhone's weaknesses, and leaning into its strengths. As I was writing I realised the iPhone's weaknesses are not specific to the iPhone, they're ultimately down to the physics of small things, so they're shared by all phone cameras. And when looking at the iPhone's strengths, some were down to the iPhone's size, and the rest may have been the result of out-of-the-box thinking in Cupertino, but those idea have had time to spread, so they apply other similarly high-end phone cameras too. In other words, this section of my iPhone-specific presentation would make for a fun discussion on this show

Small sensors inevitably result in deeper depths of field, that's simply how the physics works!

Small sensors have smaller pixels which reduces their signal-to-noise ratio, so the image signal processing chips have a lot more noise removal work to do (again, physics!)

Compact auto-focus systems are good, but they're not as good as what you'll get on high-end dedicated cameras, they have their shortcomings!

Phone cameras use rolling shutters, they will distort things moving rapidly across the frame (slanted fronts on trains, etc.)

Your phone is the camera you always have with you!

Compared to dedicated cameras, phones are small and light, enabling unusual points of view

With their multi-sensor arrays and built-in exposure stacking features phone cameras are great in mixed light, offering much higher dynamic ranges than traditional digital cameras

Also to thanks to their multi-sensor arrays, and perhaps helped with built-in focus stacking, high-end modern phone cameras have great macro modes (with the afore-mentioned auto-focus caveat)

The third killer feature empowered by the multi-sensor arrays and exposure stacking are stunning night mode (assuming the scene and the camera are not moving too much)

The show starts with a few quick followups from recent shows, a few regulatory & legal stories, and some highlights from Apple’s services & original content before getting stuck into just two main stories. We start with another bad month for Apple’s app store practices on both sides of the Atlantic, and then we dive into the fun stuff, this year’s bumper WWDC! The show finishes with a few quick rundown of some smaller Apple-related stories that made the news in June 2025.

You’ll find detailed show notes below the fold, and if you enjoy this free show, please consider clicking on the donate button at the top of the left side bar – the show is free for you to listen to, but not for Bart to Produce!

Peter Cohen shared sad news on Mastodon, MyMac founder Tim Robertson has died following an illness — mastodon.social/…

I'm very proud of the fact that the Let's Talk podcasts are now entirely independently produced under my own Bartificer Creations brand, but the simple fact is that they would not exist at all today if Tim hadn't provided a nurturing home for them to be born into and to grow up in. Listeners will have heard the "you're listening to a podcast from the MyMac podcasting network" jingle at the end of both shows for many years. Tim was one of those great people that makes the Apple community somewhere I'm proud to belong, his absence will be sorely felt by many, but especially Guy and Gaz from the MyMac podcast who were regular panelists on this very show before I changed the format. Thanks Tim, and fare well.

Quick updates to long-running stories the show continues to track, and to stories covered in recent shows.

A quick Trump Chaos Update:

TikTok ban enforcement delayed another 90 days to September 17 — appleinsider.com/…

A US-China trade deal has apparently been signed, but not published, we don't know for sure what's in it, and it's not clear when it will go into effect, but apparently the US will ease tech tariffs on imports from China in exchange for the Chinese removing their ban on exporting rare earth elements to the US — appleinsider.com/…

New Vietnam trade deal means Apple will pay at least five times more in tariffs — appleinsider.com/…

Apple get an unlikely ally in their fight with the UK government over Advanced iCloud Encryption, WhatsApp have filed a formal request to submit evidence in Apple's support — www.bbc.com/…

The EU's right to repair legislation came into effect on June 20th

DOJ -v- Apple: Apple Must Answer DOJ’s Monopoly Allegations After Judge Rejects Dismissal Bid — www.macobserver.com/…

Apple has lost it's attempts to over-turn one of its earliest App Store losses in Europe (dating apps in the Netherlands): Apple stuck with $58M fine after Dutch court rules it broke antitrust law — appleinsider.com/…

A class action case over iCloud comes back to life: Judge Says Apple Must Answer for iCloud Restrictions — www.macobserver.com/…

TOT Power Control -v- Apple: Apple hit with $110M damages after losing 3G wireless patents lawsuit — appleinsider.com/…

Opits -v- Apple: Apple Beats Back $300 Million LTE Patent Ruling — www.macobserver.com/…

"… the case returns to a Texas court for a full do-over—meaning another trial, another jury, and potentially another shot for Optis to claim damages …"

'Angry Birds', 'Kingdom Rush', and more come to Apple Arcade in July — appleinsider.com/… ( Apple PR)

Apple celebrates 20 years of podcasts with a list of fan favorites — appleinsider.com/…

Apple Maps: JetBlue will use Find My's Share Item Location to track down your lost luggage — appleinsider.com/…

Apple TV+:

Apple and Major League Baseball announce July “Friday Night Baseball” schedule — www.apple.com/…

Apple's PR Blitz for their F1 movie yields results: 'F1' is Apple's biggest hit with $55M+ opening weekend — appleinsider.com/…

You can literally feel Apple’s new trailer for the ‘F1’ movie starring Brad Pitt — www.fastcompany.com/… (Haptic feedback when trailer played on iPhones)

'F1' immersive video takes you around the track with Brad Pitt on Apple Vision Pro — appleinsider.com/…

Apple Wallet Sends Push Notification Ad Pushing 'F1 The Movie' — daringfireball.net/…

Opinion: John Gruber's key insight — daringfireball.net/… (sums up my take pretty well, I'm very worried by this violation of trust driven by Cook's services fixation)

"It’s a fact that no company can inject an ad into your physical wallet. It just can’t happen. So if Apple’s message to users is that they should trust Apple Wallet, and move more of their “shit that goes in your wallet” life from their traditional analog wallet into their digital Apple Wallet, that’s the bar. No ads, ever. They’re competing against the privacy and intimacy of one of the most personal things people carry with them."

Apple Music Celebrates Its 10th Anniversary with a New Campus, Radio Events, and a Special Playlist — www.macstories.net/…

Yet another bad month for Apple's App Store business model

Developments in the Epic -v- Apple anti-steering injunction

A trade group Apple is a member of has filed an amicus brief supporting Apple: Epic antisteering court order is 'constitutionally offensive' to Apple's free speech rights — appleinsider.com/…

Apple's appeal to pause the injunction forcing them to allow direct linking to alternative payment methods in apps in the US has failed — www.macstories.net/…

Analysis: Good overview of the judgement itself and his expectations from John Gruber — daringfireball.net/…

"The earliest this might get overturned, it seems to me, is the end of this year, but I get the feeling this injunction is here to stay."

Related Stories:

Developments in Apple's Digital Markets Act compliance efforts

Apple started the month lodging their formal an appeal against the interoperability requirements published in March (not app store) — Apple Appeals EU’s March Ruling on ‘Interoperability’ Requirements Under the DMA — daringfireball.net/…

I agree with Gruber's analysis that if Apple fail they are likely going to pull and/or withhold even more features in Europe

Related: Gruber's analysis is bolstered by two pieces of news that broke later in the month:

Early in the month well sourced reports emerged claiming the EU had softened it's stance against Apple a little, reportedly not imposing any more fines until it has engaged with Apple on it's App Store DMA compliance issues — www.macobserver.com/…

Near the end of the month Apple announced major changes to the EU app store rules in their latest attempt to comply with the law — sixcolors.com/…

Here’s the gist:

Other regulatory and legal pressures continue to build:

WWDC 2025

The Big Picture

Apple's Pre-conference Media Blitz:

Apple Design Awards: Try the best apps and games of 2025 — www.cultofmac.com/… ( Apple PR)

Apple tout a study they funded down-playing their take — Apple PR

"For more than 90 percent of the billings and sales facilitated by the App Store ecosystem, developers did not pay any commission to Apple …"

Watch the event:

Apple's Spin — all Apple's Press Releases in order:

All the Bento Boxes — www.macstories.net/…

Some smaller details from the rest of the conference

Apple's Post Conference PR:

Apple Launches Global Tour to Showcase WWDC25 Updates — www.macobserver.com/…

Apple execs explain Apple's position in the AI race & how it isn't necessarily 'behind' — appleinsider.com/…

Craig Federighi says macOS would ruin what makes the iPad special — appleinsider.com/…

Federighi said the goal is not to merge platforms. Instead, Apple wants to "retain all the simplicity of the iPad" while still giving users space to "push it at their own pace to doing more."

Craig Federighi Explains Why iPad Took Years to Get Mac-Like Multitasking — www.macobserver.com/…

The delay wasn’t just about software decisions. Federighi says the iPad’s touch-first interface demanded immediate responsiveness. Unlike a Mac, where users interact indirectly with a pointer, the iPad needs to respond the instant a user touches the screen. Any delay breaks the experience.

Apple’s Craig Federighi on the long road to the iPad’s Mac-like multitasking — arstechnica.com/… (interview with Ars)

"But we've looked and said, as [the iPad and Mac] come together, where on the iPad the Mac idiom for doing something, like where we put the window close controls and maximize controls, what color are they—we've said why not, where it makes sense, use a converged design for those things so it's familiar and comfortable," Federighi told Ars. "But where it doesn't make sense, iPad's gonna be iPad."

Design Matters with Debbie Millman: Craig Federighi and Alan Dye — overcast.fm/…

Interview: Craig Federighi Opens Up About iPadOS, Its Multitasking Journey, and the iPad’s Essence — www.macstories.net/… (best interview of the lot IMO!)

Good Opinion Pieces:

Liquid Glass

Liquid Glass: Apple’s biggest design refresh ever — www.cultofmac.com/…

Reminder: this is still the early stages with no public beta yet, and Apple are already iterating quickly with a second developer beta already out — appleinsider.com/…

Hands-on videos showing the new interfaces in use:

Opinion: “Opinionated Design”: Early Reactions to Apple’s Liquid Glass Design Language — www.macstories.net/…

Apple Intelligence

Apple Intelligence Expands: Onscreen Visual Intelligence, Shortcuts, Third-Party Apps, and More — www.macstories.net/…

Apple Intelligence opened up to all developers with Foundation Models Framework — appleinsider.com/…

Hands-On: How Apple’s New Speech APIs Outpace Whisper for Lightning-Fast Transcription — www.macstories.net/…

Lots remains unclear: I Have Many Questions About Apple’s Updated Foundation Models and the (Great) ‘Use Model’ Action in Shortcuts — www.macstories.net/…

Related: Mixed news for Apple Intelligence in China:

Related: Apple Researchers Publish Paper on the Limits of Reasoning Models (Showing That They're Not Really 'Reasoning' at All) — daringfireball.net/…

Related: Apple Hardware Chief Says Company Exploring Generative AI for Chip Design — www.macobserver.com/… (At AI awards ceremony in Belgium last month)

Opinion: Apple Intelligence shifts gears — sixcolors.com/…

iPad OS

Note: When the textual description of a link is part of the link it is the title of the page being linked to, when the text describing a link is not part of the link it is a description written by Bart.

In this solo show Bart tries to convince you to do the considerate thing and add alternative text to all the photos you share on social media. Sure, do it because it’s the right things to do, but don’t think of it as a chore, embrace it as an opportunity to improve your photography!

While this podcast is free for you to enjoy, it’s not free for Bart to create. Please consider supporting the show by becoming a patron on Patreon.

Reminder – you can submit questions for future Q & A shows at http://lets-talk.ie/photoq

Any of us who share our photos on social media know we should add alternative text, or alt text, to our photos to make them accessible to those with vision impairments. Lots of people are born less well able to see than most, those of us lucky enough to live long enough to get old are all going to start losing some or more of our vision, and plenty of people have accidents or get sick and lose their vision for a while, or maybe even permanently. We all empathise with those people, and we feel bad for not taking the time and effort to write the descriptions, but many of us still struggle to find the motivation to actually do it consistently.

I'm not going to spend this episode trying to win you over to doing the right thing because it's the right thing to do. I agree completely that it is, but others are out there making that case far better than I can. Instead, I'm going to take a different tack. Yes, you should add alt text because you're a kind and considerate person, but you should also do it because it can make you a better photographer in the process!

I'm going to be very honest in this instalment — I was one of those people who didn't add alt text because I was just too busy and I figured blind people wouldn't care about my photos anyway, so why bother? But for the past few years I've been putting in the time and effort to consistently describe all the photos I share on Mastodon and Bluesky, and wow, has it ever paid off for me, and mostly in ways I'd just never expected!

Before I share my own experiences, I want to describe the universal concept this little example falls under — the curb-cut effect.

Like so much of my understanding of design and how the world really works, I first learned about the curb-cut effect on a 2018 episode of the excellent 99% Invisible podcast. Don't let the episode's age put you off, it's truly ever-green content!

Curb cuts are those little slopes we now take for granted at the edges of our pavements when ever there's a pedestrian crossing or a junction. They were added to accommodate wheelchair users. Before curb cuts people confined to wheel chairs couldn't move around our urban environments independently, they were completely dependent on others to push them around and hoist them up and done onto and from pavements. Initially, they met strong resistance. As insane as it sounds now, people just did not want to go to all that effort re-arranging our roads just to help a few unfortunate wheelchair users get around — we just should give them helpers instead, that would be cheaper and kinder! Why would they even want to be independent anyway?

Obviously, that's paternalistic nonsense — of course wheelchair users want to be independent! Why would they not have the same desires as everyone else‽ Why would they not want that same buzz of independence we all got from our first bicycle and then our first car‽ That feeling of being able to where we wanted, and to do it when we wanted, and without needing anyone's help to do it!

So after a lot of impressive campaigning, curb cuts became common, then ubiquitous, and now they're so mundane we hardly ever even think about them. Obviously, that really helps wheelchair users get around. But it it's done more than that, much much more!

The thing is, accommodations for those with impairments of any kind never only help their intended benefactors, they always end up helping way more people! Every single person pushing kids around in strollers and buggies of all kinds benefits from those curb cuts each and every single day!

Curb cuts are not special — it really is a universal truth that making things more accessible helps everyone, not just those who need it most!

The first time I met the concept of alt text was as a web developer. Initially there were guidelines that all web pages should add alt text to their images, and then there were formal standards that mandated them in some situations. So they were always on my mind as a developer, but not as a photographer.

It was being a part of Allison Sheridan's amazing community at podfeet.com that helped me see their importance in social media. Allison's community is a very welcoming place, and Allison has given accessibility a prominent role on her show for years, so her audience is much more diverse in every way than any statistically typical group, and that includes a lot of people with impairments of all kinds. Also, Allison never reviews a piece of software without testing its accessibility features, and that's tragically rare, even today.

Early social media apps didn't support alt text, so it wasn't a habit I got into from the start. Even as support started to be added, different social networks and different client apps did so at their own pace. There was never a single moment when social media went from not supporting alt text to supporting it, it just sort of slowly happened.

I'll be honest, I was slow to notice the ubiquity of alt text support on the social networks I use. It wasn't that I decided not to use the feature, it's that I never even thought to check for it. This kind of neglect by obliviousness really illustrates the difference between academically knowing a thing and truly knowing a thing. To my shame, I needed to be nudged, gently, into adopting alt text in my social media posts.

Initially, I was writing detailed and descriptive posts to go with the photos I shared, and I started to get some unusual back-handed compliments. The general gist was "even though you don't add alt text, your posts are so descriptive I can still get some value from following you despite being visually impaired". I was briefly proud of myself, then I realised I really shouldn't be! I was being complimented for being one of the more considerate of the inconsiderate people!

So I decided to start adding alt text. I really did mean well, but my hit rate was not great. I'd often simply forget Then, Elon bought Twitter and destroyed it, and I jumped ship to Mastodon and adopted the excellent Ivory client.

Because the app was new, I did something I rarely do — I spent some time going through all the app's settings, and then I found it — the option that finally got me to always write alt tags! Ivory has a toggle to enable a reminder when you try post a toot with an image that has no alt text I toggled that little toggle to on, and since then every photo I share on social media has a description for the visually impaired!

Unsurprisingly, it feels nice to know I'm being a considerate netizen, but it turns out taking the time to write alt text brings along some completely un-expected bonuses! Like those curb cuts that help so many more people than just wheelchair users, writting alt text helped me, not just the visually impaired!

There are boring practical advantages like search engine optimisation (SEO). If you make your living from clicks, that might actually be very important for you, but TBH, I don't really care. I guess it's nice to get a few more likes, but meh!

Before we go any further let me just address the artificially intelligent elephant in the room — yes, I know LLMs can generate passable descriptions in seconds, no, I'm not using them. Like I said, I've discovered that writing alt text has real advantages. It's the act of actually composing the text myself, with care, that has paid off for me.

Firstly, I'm finding it to be artistically fun to craft descriptions that match the feel of my photos. If a photo is playful, I'll write playful alt text. When I look at the photos I consider worthy of sharing, they often have a dominant artistic element — for some it's something to do with the colours, for some it's about the textures, for others it's the compositional structure, what ever it is, that's what I lead my descriptions with, then I add more text to fill in the rest of the relevant information after that.

This leads nicely into a related unexpected advantage — the act of writing alt text works as a final quality assurance step. I've found that if I struggle to decide what to lead my description with, that probably means the photo doesn't actually have artistic merit — if I can't figure out what to lead my description with, then the photograph probably doesn't have any wider value beyond being a snapshot that might act as a nice memento for me. It's probably worth keeping, just not sharing.

However, the greatest unexpected bonus of all is that it's really helping me to become a better photographer by forcing me to analyse my own work. I've been saying for years that the only way to keep honing a craft is to keep doing just that — thoughtfully critiquing your output. When you get a photo that really speaks to you, figure out why. When you fail to capture the majesty of an interesting subject adequately, reflect on why. What did you miss? It takes effort to make the time for this kind of self-reflect, and I was never great at actually doing it consistently. But now that I religioulsy write alt text that kind of relection has become utterly routine!

Because you can't describe a photograph well without really analysing it, I now spend more time critically analysing my photos now than I ever did before. I post about two photos a day on average (one some days, three others, but usually two). That means I thoughtfully examine 14 of my best photos every single week. Week, after week, after week. That's over 700 in a year! That's probaby 600 more than I used to

I know friend of the show Antonio Rosario has found great value in keeping a photo journal because it forces him to think and reflect. Well, I think alt text is my equivalent, my mechanism for ritualising deeply thinking about my photographs.

I really hope I've inspired you to start adding alt text to the photos you share, but more importantly, that you wont' think of it as a chore, or a sacrifice you do out of charity, but as the opportunity it really for helping others while you help yourself! The ultimate win-win

This solo show starts with just a few quick followups on long-running stories we’re keeping an eye on before exploring just one new regulation and some news Apple indirectly made in a Google court case before moving on to a quick rundown of some stories related to Apple’s services and original content. The four main stories are the on-going US tariff omni-shambles, the ongoing regulatory and legal attacks on the App Store’s anti-steering rules on both sides of the Atlantic, an impressive set of accessibility enhancements coming later in the year, and the launch of CarPlay Ultra. The show finishes with just a handful of other quick stories that made the news in May.

You’ll find detailed show notes below the fold, and if you enjoy this free show, please consider clicking on the donate button at the top of the left side bar – the show is free for you to listen to, but not for Bart to Produce!

Quick updates to long-running stories the show continues to track, and to stories covered in recent shows.

Apple's self-repair program continues to expand: Apple adds iPad to self-service repair — sixcolors.com/… ( Apple PR)

Apple's AI research arm continues to publish academic papers at an impressive rate:

FastVLM AI Model Shows Potential for Apple’s Smart Glasses — www.macobserver.com/… (a Visual Language Model that can process high-resolution images with remarkable speed and efficiency)

Apple research reveals potential of future Apple Intelligence tools — appleinsider.com/… — A pair of papers describing two more vision-related models:

Apple used human instructors with Apple Vision Pros to train humanoid robots — appleinsider.com/…

Texas passes App Store age verification law, despite Tim Cook's concerns — appleinsider.com/…

US DOJ -v- Google (Search anti-trust): DOJ seeks to break up Google ad business after illegal monopoly ruling — appleinsider.com/… (now the formally requested remedy)

Eddie Cue's testimony in the remedies phase of the trail contained some interesting nuggets and caused a bit of a kerfuffle:

Some interesting crossover features and promotions:

Apple Maps adds restaurant, hotel, golf course reviews from pros — www.cultofmac.com/… (includes: Apple Maps adds Michelin reviews to help you find fine food — appleinsider.com/…)

Apple Arcade:

Apple Music:

Apple Music Launches Daily Viral Playlist Based on Shazam Data — www.macobserver.com/…

Apple Music’s Sound Therapy enhances songs to help you focus, relax and sleep — www.cultofmac.com/… ( Apple PR)

New Apple Music migration tool helps users shift away from Spotify — appleinsider.com/… ( Initial launch in Australia & New Zealand now, more to come later)

Apple TV+:

Apple Pay/Apple Wallet:

The US Tariff Chaos continued un-abated in May, and even focused on Apple specifically for a while!

To illustrate the chaos, these are the headlines relating to the tariffs themselves and their immediate impact, in chronological order:

Apple's India imports to the U.S. doubled during April tariff trouble — appleinsider.com/… (based on leaked vendor reports to the Indian government)

US and China temporarily lower tariffs to start trade negotiations — appleinsider.com/…

Trump Claims Apple Will Build Plants in US with $500B Investment — www.macobserver.com/… (I think he misunderstood or perhaps put his own intentional spin on things to pressure Apple):

"I spoke to Tim Cook this morning, and he’s going to, I think, even up his numbers" … "$500 billion, he’s going to be building a lot of plants in the United States for Apple. And we look forward to that" — Trump

Trump calls out Apple for building products in India — www.cultofmac.com/…

Trump is too busy for his own tariff negotiations, so will dictate terms instead — appleinsider.com/…

Trump demands 25% tariff on any iPhone not made in the US — appleinsider.com/…

California Attorney General threatens lawsuit over potential 25% iPhone tariff — appleinsider.com/…

"It's almost like [Trump] wakes up in the morning and he says, Hey, I think Apple should build more Apple phones, and so maybe I'll tell their CEO that he should do that.' And then maybe tomorrow, he wakes up and he says, Hey, I was just kidding.' — CA AG Rob Bonta

Trump Adds Samsung to Tariff Threat, Says Apple Not Alone — www.macobserver.com/…

White House says Trump doesn't want to harm Apple and iPhone prices won't rise — appleinsider.com/… (nothing to back up these obviously nonsensical claims)

Apple CEO’s Absence on Trump’s Trip May Have Sparked Tariff Threat — www.macobserver.com/… (Trump explicitly called out Cook's absence during at least two events on his Middle-east tour)

India now leads iPhone exports to the U.S. as trade war reshapes supply chains — appleinsider.com/… & Apple’s iPhone Shipments from India to U.S. Jump 76% — www.macobserver.com/… (Canalys numbers)

Trump 'Liberation Day' tariffs blocked by U.S. trade court — appleinsider.com/… (Bi-partisan 3-judge panel)

… a U.S. trade court has ruled that President Trump overstepped his authority. While it doesn't pass judgement on whether the tariffs would work as intended, the court does say they are not allowed according to federal law.

Trump tariffs return until June 9 after appeals court stays injunction — appleinsider.com/… (Not a rebuke of the ruling, just a pause to prepare to hear an urgent appeal against just the injunction)

President Trump lashes out at China for violating new trade agreement — appleinsider.com/… (Without specifying even a claim about how, let alone providing any evidence)

Meanwhile Apple's longer-term moves to diversify their supply chain continued, with all the May news focusing on India:

Related Opinion & Analysis:

The Assault on the App Store ramps up on both sides of the Atlantic

The fallout from the anti-steering injunction in the Apple -v- Epic case continued through May

Where things stood last month:

Epic lost almost all of its case against Apple

Apple lost on one point out of 11 — their anti-steering rules were anti-competitive, that is to say, the rule that blocked apps from not only linking to external payment options, but prevented apps from even mentioning their existence!

The court imposed an injunction on Apple forcing them to alter their rules on anti-steering to come into compliance with the ruling, even while the appeal slowly worked its way through the process.

Apple responded to the injunction with a new App Store Entitlement for the US only that allowed external links, but with conditions:

Epic filed an appeal against Apple's change saying it was so clearly designed to be so utterly unappealing that in effect, Apple did not remove their ban (a rare case where I agree with Epic!

In an utterly scathing ruling at the end of last month (April 2025) the judge agreed with Epic, and ordered Apple to just allow direct link outs, full stop, end of story.

Apple said they would appeal

Even though the injunction was purely about link outs, and not about all the other points in the case, Epic publicly promised to return Fortnight to the App Store in the US soon

The kinds of apps most affected by the onerous rules like Patreon released updates within days adding buy buttons to their US apps.

Related: A good presentation of the argument that the whole anti-steering thing was always nuts, and that Apple should have gotten off this train years ago — daringfireball.net/… (I agree with this, it's not about whether have the right to implement a dumb user-hostile rule, but whether they should)

As promised, Apple did file that appeal within days of the previous episode being published — appleinsider.com/…

A little later in the month Apple also filed an appeal for a stay on the injunction while it's appeal is pending — appleinsider.com/…

Unsurprisingly, a class action soon followed: Lawsuit hopes to return 15 months of commissions to developers after App Store ruling — appleinsider.com/…

Equally unsurprisingly more companies in good standing in the US app store rolled out support for external payment options:

More surprisingly, Fortnight did return to the US app store, bit it took some more drama!

In an Amicus brief filed in the case: Microsoft blames Apple's interference for why the Xbox mobile store has failed to launch — appleinsider.com/…

It's probably too early to tell what the real effect of this change will be, but for now, the data us noisy enough for people to see what they want to see:

Related: Epic's loby group isn't done making trouble for apple: Florida Republican Congresswoman Kat Cammack Introduces 'App Store Freedom Act' to Mandate Third-Party App Stores on iOS and Android — daringfireball.net/…

Apple's battle with the European Commission over its compliance with the Digital Markets Act (DMA) also continued in May:

Summary of where stings stood at the end of April:

May started with Apple taking over the narrative with a strong appeal — appleinsider.com/…

The story is briefly derailed by some utterly wrong reporting that Apple had added a whole new warning in the EU as a poke in the eye to to the commission, they did no such thing, the warnings have been there since last year — daringfireball.net/… & www.macobserver.com/…

Later in the month the commission took back the narrative:

First, they announced Apple have until the 23rd of July to pay the fine or to face interest payments on the outstanding amount — www.macstories.net/…

The commission released the detailed version of their preliminary finding — www.macobserver.com/…

Related Opinion & Analysis:

Related: Apple release some pro-App-Store numbers:

Apple released their latest annual App Store Transparency Report, something they've done since earlier in this now years long App Store drama — Apple PR

Apple blocked over $9 billion in App Store fraud in five years — www.bleepingcomputer.com/…

Apple Releases 2024 App Store Transparency Report and the Numbers are Jaw-Dropping — www.macobserver.com/…

Apple PR pimped the results of a study they funded: Developers’ App Store earnings double in past 5 years — www.cultofmac.com/… ($406Bn to developers in 2024 -v- $142Bn in 2019)

Related: Other countries are also continuing their attacks on the App Store:

As is now the norm for Global Accessibility Awareness Day (May 15th): Apple unveils powerful accessibility features coming later this year — Apple PR

CarPlay Ultra officially launches — Apple PR

Apple's OSes got a point update:

Some of Apple's Software also got some updates:

️‍ Apple shows off colorful new Pride Collection watch band, faces and wallpapers — www.cultofmac.com/… ( Apple PR)

Reminder: Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference kicks off June 9 — Apple PR & WWDC 2025 is very soon, and Apple is detailing the schedule — appleinsider.com/…

Note: When the textual description of a link is part of the link it is the title of the page being linked to, when the text describing a link is not part of the link it is a description written by Bart.

In this solo show Bart pontificates on just one word — Luck. It’s essential, but not sufficient, and understanding its role will transform it from your nemesis into an opportunity.

While this podcast is free for you to enjoy, it’s not free for Bart to create. Please consider supporting the show by becoming a patron on Patreon.

Reminder – you can submit questions for future Q & A shows at http://lets-talk.ie/photoq

When I tell people great photos require luck they often look horrified, like that means they are powerless and just at the mercy of the whims of serendipity, but it’s really not like that at all!

I’m not saying you need luck to get good photos, nor even excellent photos, but you do need it to get truly GREAT photos — those rarest of gems that grab every eye and elicit exclamations of delight from everyone, random strangers and passionate photographers alike.

When I'm being scientific I describe luck as a force-multiplier, because it can't get you to anywhere from zero, but if you at least fire the shutter, it can boost your shot from where it would have been to something better. When I'm being more informal I refer to it as being like one of those magical mushrooms in the original Mario side scroller games from Nintendo — you never know when your little boost is coming, but when it appears you can do things utterly beyond your regular skill levels. But of course, luck, like a Mario mushroom can't be relied on, and if you don’t know what you’re doing, it’s wasted on you!

So you need luck, but is that enough? Absolutely not!

There's simply no shortcut for building a body of high quality work — you simply have to hone all aspects of your craft, and that takes time, effort, and experience.

You need to take the time to learn the theory. Maybe you’re a savant who can intuit everything, but probably not. Generations have dedicated vast swaths of their time studying every aspect of the art and craft of photography, and distilling what they’ve learned into books and articles — capitalise on their hard work and absorb as much of it as you can, because you can’t possibly recreate all that by yourself!

In the abstract, all the knowledge in the world won’t get you very far. You need to really study other people’s work to understand how the theories can be expressed, and you need to reflect on which works you like, which you don’t, and most importantly, why!

You need to take the time to reflect on your own work — to honestly as yourself what’s working and what’s not. What needs attention, what’s just a waste of your time? What could you try next?

And of course, to get good at the practical stuff you simply need experience. Hours and hours of it — 10,000 apparently!

Everyone gets lucky and snaps a shot above their skill level from time to time. What skill and experience bring is the ability to bring your hit rate up and your miss rate down. To know that if you go shoot something you’ll definitely come home with something good.

But no matter how good you get, the truly great shots still need that little bit of luck!

I want to really focus in on the most critical point of all — luck can't elevate the shots you never take! If you multiply anything by zero, you still get zero, and if you never play Mario, you'll never get one of those cool mushrooms!

But there's even more to it than that — how many un-likely things actually happen for you depends not just how how unlikely they are, but on how many tries you take!

For simplicity, let's imagine getting a great shot is like rolling a double-six with a regular pair of dice. Every shutter press is a roll of the dice. If you only take 50 shots a year you could very easily get no great shot at all! One in 36 chances don't happen exactly every 36 times, your actual experience will vary, but over enough rolls, the natural fluctuations fade away, and your actual success rate approaches the calculated rate of one in thirty six. So, if you roll the dice five thousand times your actual hit count will be most probably be within just one or two of the mathematically calculated expected 138.888889 (recurring), 40 or 41 if you've been a little luckier than average, but maybe 37 or 38 if you're on the other side of the distribution.

Great photographic shots don't happen nearly as often as double sixes, so if the probability is even as low as one in ten thousand, then even shooting twelve thousand shots wouldn't be enough to guarantee you one great one!

So, what the reality that truly great photos require a little luck means is that you need to maximise the opportunity for luck to strike. Shooting more actually helps in two ways, not only does it mathematically increase your chances of that one in a million shot, it also helps you get the practice and experience you need to raise your baseline, so you'll need much less of a boost from serendipity, and less unlikely luck is way more common than very rare luck!

There are two ways to guarantee you'll miss great shots — not even noticing the opportunity exists, and noticing, but not having a camera to hand. The second is the most frustrating because it's like the fish that got away, you know you missed one of your double sixes! But I imagine just not noticing opportunities is a much bigger problem. It just takes one or two missed opportunities to get your right into the habit of never leaving home without a camera!

In the days before our smartphones became excellent cameras it was the done thing to have a small point-and-shoot camera to compliment your great big SLR — you'd keep that little point-and-shoot in your pocket, bumbag (fannypack in the US), or purse, at all times, and you might also keep your SLR in your car so it was at least near by most of the time for those longer-lived unexpected opportunities.

Now, I shoot everything with my phone anyway, so that part of the equation is just not an issue for me.

The bit that takes more work is developing the habit of always keeping your eyes open, and trying to notice any and every cool subject, cool shape, cool texture, cool colour, or amazing bit of light, and having the discipline to pull over in your car or on your bike (always safely!), to pause your walk, or even to interrupt a conversation, whip your camera out, and have a snap!

For my physical and mental health I make a point of getting out for a walk and a cycle every day, and since I get to choose my routes, I can try to maximise the amount of nature and local history I pass each day. I pass the same pretty church or old ruin tens or hundreds of times a year, and mostly, I just pass by, but every now and then, the light is just right, or the field in front is has been freshly ploughed so there are amazing leading lines, or the crop is perfectly ripe, or goodness know what, and then, on those days, I pull over or pause my walk and take that shot half minute to grab I need to grab a handful of shots at a few zoom levels and with a few compositions, then triage them later.

Similarly, I've found four walking routes that are the perfect length and pass through some nice bits of nature, so I see the same landscape day in and day out, and most days, I don't shoot anything, but when I notice a new flower, or a freshly ripe berry, or an unusual butterfly or bird, of the light is perfect, or what ever, I pause and grab the shot!

On work days I keep my eyes open for opportunities as I move around the campus on my way from meeting to meeting or what ever. Even when I'm on the road I still keep my eyes peeled. You just never know what serendipity will throw your way!

Giving yourself lots of random opportunities and always having a camera get you a very long way to maximising the quality of your total body of work, but you can do a little bit more with some deliberate situational awareness. Exactly what that means for your will depend on where you live and the kinds of subjects you like, but let me give you some examples from my life to demonstrate the idea.

I love getting astronomical objects into my landscape shots, so I make a point of keeping an eye on the current phase of the Moon, the location of all the bright planets, and any predictable interesting events like alignments and eclipses, and I keep an eye on the astronomical news for most unexpected surprises like passing comets!

Similarly, I'm a railway buff, so I know the rough timetables and keep the real-time rail app on my home screen so I can always do a quick check of what traffic is expected at any time on any line. I'm also an aviation geek, so I know the standard approaches to the nearby Dublin airport and which ones will almost certainly be in use in which wind conditions. Heck, I can even recognise the STAR in use based on where in the sky I see planes on any given day! I guess that fact that one of the STARs sends jets directly over my house helps a little

I also combine these things, on days when the Moon is going to be low in the sky and I know which STAR is likely to be in use, I choose my cycle route so there's a good chance I'll get a low-flying jet in the same telephoto field of view as the Moon!

Basically, the fact that great shots take a little luck is nothing to fear, it's an opportunity! If you put in the effort to maximise your chances, it's almost inevitable Fortuna will reward you, and more your keep your eyes open and your shutter firing, the more great shots your portfolio will amass!

The show starts with some quick followup on a few recently covered and long-running stories before diving into just a single legal story and some highlights from Apple’s services and original content. The four main stories are President Trump’s continuing tariff chaos, Apple’s Q2 2025 earnings, a bad month for Apple’s App Store business model, and the continuing big shakeup within the Apple Intelligence and Siri teams. The show finishes with a rundown of a few other quick Apple-related stories that made the news in April.

You’ll find detailed show notes below the fold, and if you enjoy this free show, please consider clicking on the donate button at the top of the left side bar – the show is free for you to listen to, but not for Bart to Produce!

Quick updates to long-running stories the show continues to track, and to stories covered in recent shows.

Apple TV:

Apple Arcade: Five new games join Apple Arcade in May, including WHAT THE CLASH?, an exciting addition to the award-winning WHAT THE GAMES? series — Apple PR

Apple Sports: Apple brings game card sharing to Apple Sports — appleinsider.com/… (lets you share a snap-shot of the current score as a pretty image)

Apple Wallet: OMNY Transit Cards Coming to Apple Wallet for New York City Subway Riders — www.macobserver.com/…

Related: Apple soft-launches all-in-one site to follow celebs — www.cultofmac.com/…

The Trump Tariff Chaos Continues

The news rollercoaster:

When we left the story the nonsense 'reciprocal tariffs' (they're not) had just gone into effect

Trump's 104% tariff against imports from China goes live — appleinsider.com/…

Trade war escalates: Trump hikes China tariffs to 125%, pauses others for 90 days — appleinsider.com/…

Trump Cuts Most Tariffs to 10% but Increases Tariffs on China to 125% — daringfireball.net/… (seemingly spooked by the bond market rather than the stock market which plummeted earlier)

Apple Stock Jumps 15% After Tariff Pause and Talk of Exemptions — www.macobserver.com/… (for specific comanies)

Trump, Supposedly, Thinks the U.S. Has the 'Resources' Needed to Make iPhones — daringfireball.net/…

AAPL crumble: stock hit again, as White House clarifies 145% China tariff rate — appleinsider.com/…

China calls Trump's trade war a joke, jumps tariffs on U.S. goods to 125% — appleinsider.com/…

After market tumult, Trump exempts smartphones from massive new tariffs — arstechnica.com/…

iPhone & Mac tariff reprieve only temporary — appleinsider.com/… (apparently working on new tariff plan just for chips!)

China escalates US tariff war by halting rare earth mineral exports — appleinsider.com/…

Trump has not raised big tech China tariffs to 245 percent — appleinsider.com/… (with all the chaos that was briefly reported!)

Uncertainty returns for Apple as Trump tariff pause halved for countries not making a deal — appleinsider.com/…

Related Stories:

Analysis & Opinion:

Apple's Q2 2025 Earnings — Apple PR

Good factual summaries:

Some key points:

Apple Exceeds Q2 Forecasts With $95.4B in Revenue — www.macobserver.com/…

Everything other than wearables was up, but wearables now seem to be in the kind of prolonged slide we saw with the iPad in recent years before it recovered again — Apple's justifications about it being a 'difficult compare' are not holding much water with analysts (or me!)

Apple included some little sweeteners for investors: Apple to buy back $100 billion in stock, raise dividend by 4% — appleinsider.com/…

Confirmation that Apple are re-organising where devices from their existing production capacities around the world are shipped to work around the arbitrary Trump tariffs:

Apple will not guide for next quarter due to the uncertainty, but did say that if nothing were to change in terms of tariffs, then the current rates would cost them almost $1Bn next quarter — appleinsider.com/… & www.cultofmac.com/…

An open question — do these results already include some of the rush to buy now before tariffs get worse, or is that temporary bump still to come in the Q3 results?

A bad month for Apple's App Store Business Model:

EU Fines Apple €500 Million for Digital Markets Act Violations — www.macstories.net/…

The full judgement — EU Commission

A nice summary: Apple’s convoluted iPhone sideloading rules break EU law — www.cultofmac.com/…

As Gruber and others have pointed out, the commission are not being clear about what they actually want Apple to do: Clear as Mud — daringfireball.net/…

"So is the entire idea of the Core Technology Fee disallowed? Or is the fee too high? Does Apple need to just make app distribution free and unfettered, no fees, no restrictions? Who knows?"

As is the norm for EU processes, this is an initial Preliminary ruling, and unsurprisingly, Apple is not happy and has already stated it will appeal — www.theverge.com/…

Apple spokesperson: "Today’s announcements are yet another example of the European Commission unfairly targeting Apple in a series of decisions that are bad for the privacy and security of our users, bad for products, and force us to give away our technology for free. … We have spent hundreds of thousands of engineering hours and made dozens of changes to comply with this law, none of which our users have asked for. Despite countless meetings, the Commission continues to move the goal posts every step of the way. We will appeal and continue engaging with the Commission in service of our European customers."

In theory, the fine could have been up to 10% annual global revenue, which would be billions of €/$s, so the much lower number is being seen by some analysts as the EU trying to placate Trump, or at least not trigger a big escalation in the trade war, and just as I expected, that nuance appears to have gone un-noticed in the White House — appleinsider.com/… & appleinsider.com/…

Related: even these convoluted attempts at compliance have yielded some results: AltStore PAL Releases AltStore Classic for EU iPhone Users — www.macstories.net/… (Enables emulators that use JIT which is not permitted by Apple but necessary to emulate more modern games)

Apple -v- Epic takes an epic turn — www.cultofmac.com/… & appleinsider.com/…

Apple's Artificial Intelligence Shakeup Continues

Context: just as last month's show was about to be recorded reports emerged that Mike Rockwell would be taking over the product side of Apple Intelligence with the previous head, John Giannandrea, remaining at the head of just the research efforts. We also saw the expected class actions suits emerge!

After a ruling from the Better Business Bureau Apple stops describing Apple Intelligence as 'Available Now' — www.macobserver.com/…

Apple Shares New Apple Intelligence Demo Video — www.macobserver.com/…

Lots more well sourced but unconfirmed reports detailing huge internal changes (I don't usually cover rumours and unconfirmed reports, but these reports are credible and important enough to make an exception!)

According yet more unofficial reports from Mark Gurman, Mike Rockwell is now re-arranging the lower level managers now reporting to him — www.macobserver.com/…

"According to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, Rockwell is replacing major segments of Siri’s leadership with former Vision Pro executives. Ranjit Desai now heads much of Siri’s core engineering, including its platform and systems. Olivier Gutknecht takes over user experience. Veteran engineers Nate Begeman and Tom Duffy have joined to manage Siri’s foundational architecture."

The research team is not standing still though: How Apple's new Machine Learning research will help Apple Intelligence get smarter — appleinsider.com/…

Apple announced that it is expanding it's Apple Intelligence training, but doing so in a privacy-protecting way — www.cultofmac.com/…

Google CEO Hopes Gemini Will Join Apple Intelligence in iOS 19 — www.macobserver.com/… (in testimony in one of their anti-trust cases with the US DOJ)

Apple explains how App Store reviews are summarized with AI(nothing too exciting or controversial)

Related: Meta keeps Apple’s AI out of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp — www.cultofmac.com/…

As has become the norm, Apple celebrates Earth Day by releasing it's annual environmental report and some environmental initiatives:

Apple Vision Pro immersive video library management utility arrives for Mac — appleinsider.com/…

Apple rebrands its advertising business as 'Apple Ads' — appleinsider.com/… (was Apple Search Ads, so a sign of expanding ambitions )

Note: When the textual description of a link is part of the link it is the title of the page being linked to, when the text describing a link is not part of the link it is a description written by Bart.

In this solo show Bart describes how he’s going to pivot to the unintentional insult of complimenting his camera into an opportunity to evangelise the craft of photography, and offers ten simple tips to get people started.

While this podcast is free for you to enjoy, it’s not free for Bart to create. Please consider supporting the show by becoming a patron on Patreon.

Reminder – you can submit questions for future Q & A shows at http://lets-talk.ie/photoq

One of my oldest pet peeves is people admiring my photos and musing about how great my camera must be. That made me cranky as all heck because it removed all agency from me, and replaced years of hard work with an assumption my photos were only better because I'd opened my wallet further. I've worked bloody hard to develop my craft for literally decades now, so it sure felt insulting!

Based purely on emotion, I've generally replied with snark, musing about how great Shakespeare's quill must have been, or how I need to buy one of those typewriters Hemingway used. A few people would catch my drift and apologise, but most just stared at me blankly. Sure, it felt good to respond to these un-intended insults with snark, but that rather misses the point! They were unintended insults, sure there must be a more positive way to respond?

Last weekend, totally out of the blue, something hit me — I haven't shot with a DSLR since before the pandemic. So, literally every shot I've shared on social media in the past 5 years has been shot on my smartphone. Sure, for some of those five years that was a top-of-the-line smartphone, but since I generally keep my phones for two or three years, I usually don't actually have the best phone camera out there. So, these days it can't be my camera that's making the difference!

I'm a little ashamed to say that my first inclination was to crank the snark up to 11 next time and really go to town on the next poor soul who trod on this proverbial landmine, but then I had a better and nobler idea — from now on, I'm going to use these misguided compliment as an opportunity to evangelise the art and craft of photography. From now on my response is going to be something like; "actually, I just use a regular smartphone, so it's just that I've learned a few things over the years, and, with a little practice you could do the same"!

Simply planting the idea in people's heads that they could learn to shoot equally nice photos with their own phones is good, it sure beats snark, but I think we can do better! To help me prepare for these envisioned future conversations, I spent the the last week distilling my various thoughts and ideas in ten simple tips.

The process has been very helpful for me, but I'm hoping it proves useful for others too. Let's all try help our friends and family empower themselves to shoot photos they're deservedly proud of!

Crouch down, shoot from a weird angle, hold your phone over your head, anything to get your phone's perspective to be something other than the natural height an adult holds a smartphone at! At the very least, you'll get a shot that's more eye-catching simply because it looks noticeably different.

For children and pets getting down to their eye-level works really well.

For bigger flowers and plants getting below and shooting up so you get the sky as the background instead of what ever random clutter happens to be around can be very effective.

For really small plants you can get really low — I love holding my phone up-side-down so the lens is just a few mm from the ground, and putting it right next to the flower or what ever I'm shooting.

If your camera has two or three lenses, try them all when you can.

When you're shooting a landscape they'll give you wider and narrower perspectives, which may be more or less interesting.

When you're shooting something up close, as you change lenses, move in and out to keep your subject the size you want, and watch how the different lenses affect the background behind your chosen subject — pick the one that works best!

Really great landscape shots often have many carefully chosen layers, but the phase change between a snapshot and photograph comes from shifting your mental focus from just the subject, to the subject and one additional layer.

When you're shooting something big and far away, remember to take the time to find a good foreground. Often, it's just a matter of taking a few steps and/or crouching down. Just find something other than a sea of grass or asphalt seen from adult arm level!

When you're shooting something small and close, give some thought to your background — changing your angle and/or your lens can make a huge different here. Sometimes you want a smooth distraction-free background, sometimes you want to keep it at least somewhat focused to give context. There are infinite possibilities, but the important thing is to give it some of your attention!

Your phone's camera app may not be anywhere near as capable as a fancy-pants editor like Lightroom or Photoshop, but it will surely let you crop — so use that functionality!

A small composition tweak from a crop can make a stunningly big difference.

One of the subconscious queues that distinguishes photos from snapshots is whether or not the framing feels arbitrary. Cropping to get your composition to feel deliberate will make a real difference to the perceived quality of your shots.

Once you get into the habit of cropping every keeper, you can give your self a little slack and start erring on the side of shooting a little wider than needed to give yourself a little more wiggle room. After all, it's easier to crop than to add content you didn't capture (though AI can do a passable job these days)!

Speaking of the composition — forget all the rules, they're just guidelines anyway! When you're cropping, focus on how the shot feels, not on whether or not things are perfectly centred — if it feels lob-sided, give some more room on the other side to balance it out!

Two bonus tips — unless there's a reflection, horizons generally look best a little above or below the actual centre, and if something's moving or looking in some direction, give it a little extra space to look/move into.

Maybe it's just me, but I rarely seem to get my horizons level in camera! Often it doesn't matter, but there are times when it really matters, and rotating even one degree can turn a snapshot into a stunner!

By the very laws of nature, water find its level, so if your shot has a watery horizon, it absolutely better be level, or it will just look wrong!

After water, distant horizons also really need to feel level, but other than that, don't stress too much about getting it mathematically right, focus on getting it to feel right!

On most camera apps, the screen for rotating the shot probably also lets you adjust the keystone effect in the horizontal and vertical directions.

When you use a lens that's not exactly neutral in terms of magnification, and you shoot anything with parallel edges at any angle other than exactly face-on, the parallel lines won't appear parallel. Sometimes that's a feature not a bug – think roads vanishing into the distance – but when you're shooting buildings it can make them feel like they're falling over, which is not good!

What's worse, the more you take my advice to shoot from fun angles, the stronger the effect gets

Use those keystone sliders to de-skew things like buildings, lamp posts, road signs, and similar things that just look wrong when they're distorted. You'll never get it perfect, but you don't have to, just get it to the point that it's not distracting or uncomfortable feeling.

Your phone's camera app almost certainly lets you do more edits than just cropping and rotating your shots. At the very least, it probably has some kind of the automatic enhancement button, try it! You can always undo if you don't like the result!

Many camera apps now have an auto button that just moves the other sliders for you, so if you don't like the result you can fine-tune things by nudging the sliders yourself afterwards!

As well as a simple auto button, many camera apps also offer more opinionated presets or looks which you can apply to your photos, and some even let you fine-tune those presets.

The earlier you are in your photographic journey, the more useful these automatic edits are — they can help you see what's possible, and start to give you a feeling for the kinds of looks you like and dislike.

When you get more experience you'll start to manually create more fine-tuned versions of the looks you like.

Once you get your feet under you, start to play with all the sliders your camera app offers. Figure out what they do to your photos, and slowly start using them to inject ever more of your personality into your photos,

Do remember thought that most of the time, less is probably more

Remember, they're only guidelines, they're not religious commandments, breaking them won't send you to photography hell

When you choose to break the rules, don't do it by half — make it and obviously deliberate decision!

If you want your composition to feel cramped and uncomfortable, crop really close to someone's nose. If you want to make people feel sea-sick, put that rough see at a 30 degree angle!

The key thing when you choose to break the rules is to break them enough that it feels deliberate, otherwise it will feel like just another arbitrary snapshot!

Finally, experiment, experiment, experiment!

The two biggest luxuries of our modern phone camera age are that you pay no financial per-photo cost what so ever, and that you always have your camera with you. When an opportunity presents itself, grab it! When you're not sure what approach to try, try everything you can think of!

But, don't subject people to your voluminous shutter clicks — it's your job to sort the wheat from the chaff, not theirs! Ruthlessly cull the experiments that don't work, and only ever share that the stuff that does!

The key to sharing ten great photos is shooting a thousand and discarding nine hundred and ninety of them!

These ten little tips are of course just the tip of the proverbial iceberg. No matter how much you learn about photography, there's always more to learn, which is one of the reasons I love it so much!

But, when you're tying to get some inspired to embark on their own photographic journey, don't bombard them with too many things, that'll just intimidate them. Always remember that it's the simple things that matter most. The 80/20 rule really applies to photography. A few simple rules get you 80% of the way to a great shot, and you spend the rest of your life trying to get that last 20% to perfection

The show starts with some quick followup on a few recently covered and long-running stories before diving into the regulatory and legal stories, a little Apple HR news, and some highlights from Apple’s services and original content. The three main stories are President Trump’s (not-)reciprocal tariffs, a big shakeup in the Apple Intelligence and Siri teams, and the release of this OS cycle’s fourth round of feature updates. The show finishes with a rundown of a few other quick Apple-related stories that made the news in March.

You’ll find detailed show notes below the fold, and if you enjoy this free show, please consider clicking on the donate button at the top of the left side bar – the show is free for you to listen to, but not for Bart to Produce!

Quick updates to long-running stories the show continues to track, and to stories covered in recent shows.

The European commission has issues Apple with a set of explicit instructions for the changes they need to make to iOS/iPadOS (both classified as gatekeepers) to be complaint with the Digital Markets Act (DMA) — www.cultofmac.com/…, arstechnica.com/…, www.macobserver.com/… & EU Commission PR

There are two demands:

Apple need to make changes to their process for supporting interoperability requests from other manufacturers

Apple need to provide the needed APIs to open up 9 OS features:

These demands are negotiable, so the exact user impact remains to be seen, but there is a real possibility Apple could be forced to compromise the privacy and/or security of EU users if the commission continue to hyper-fixate on interoperability over all else

The UK Competition & Marketing Authority (CMA) have completed their investigations of how Apple handles browsers & gaming on iOS and concluded that Apple's changes to the rules for gaming last year have solved the problem, and that they think Apple should let other browser engines onto iOS, but are not going to do anything about it — appleinsider.com/…

Apple have been fighting to prevent Competition Commission of India (CCI) from publishing their report on Apple since last year on the basis that it contains commercially sensitive information, they've now succeeded in getting the commercially sensitive content redacted, but don't appear to have succeeded in killing the entire report like they hoped — www.macobserver.com/…

Apple, as well as other major tech companies have received letters from House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan demanding copies of communications the companies had with the Binden administration about AI — www.macobserver.com/…

Apple has lost it's battle to prevent Germany from classing it as having Significant Market Power under German anti-trust law, opening it up more strict regulation — www.reuters.com/…

A mixed month for Apple in Brazil:

Turkey have launched a formal investigation onto Apple over price fixing — appleinsider.com/…

France has fined Apple for using App Tracking Transparency in the past, but doesn't order Apple to change anything going forward — appleinsider.com/…

The Trump administration have hired a former Apple lawyer to be the lead attorney for the National Labour Relations Board (NLRB), and the board have just suspended two open cases against Apple — appleinsider.com/…

Apple's vice president of stores and retail operations is Vanessa Trigub — appleinsider.com/… (will report to Deirdre O'Brien who currently fulfils this responsibility directly)

Apple Music:

Two notable Apple Music Classical announcements:

Apple Music Classical comes to the web before the Mac — appleinsider.com/…

Apple Music Classical gets three new features to aid discovery & learning — appleinsider.com/… (Time-synced listening guides, curated Editorial Stations, and suggestions)

Professional DJs can now use Apple Music tracks directly — appleinsider.com/…

Dolby Atmos comes to Apple Music for Windows — www.cultofmac.com/…

Six games come to Apple Arcade in April, including new Katamari and Space Invaders games — Apple PR

"Space Invaders Infinity Gene Evolve, the newest entry in the influential series by TAITO CORPORATION; puffies., a delightful puzzle game from Apple Design Award winner Lykke Studios; Atari’s iconic RollerCoaster Tycoon Classic+, enhanced for iPhone and iPad; The Game of Life 2+, the official sequel to Hasbro’s classic family board game from Marmalade Game Studio; and Sesame Street Mecha Builders+, a fun-filled STEM adventure for young learners from StoryToys."

Apple TV+: Apple have renewed two of their biggest hit shows:

Apple Pay:

Apple Maps: Find My finally works in South Korea — appleinsider.com/…

After months of threats, the Trump Tariffs have been unveiled, and they are the biggest disruption to world trade in decades, if not centuries, bigger than the dot.com bust, the great recession, and COVID!

Every company in the world that sells to Americans, or is American and relies on international supply chains in any way will be affected — i.e., just about every company you've ever heard of! That obviously includes Apple.

Even now there is still massive uncertainty, so this chaos is not going end any time soon, and predicting the extent of the damage is a fool's errand.

Worst of all, these tariffs make no economic sense — they're a bad way of addressing a 'problem' that isn't actually problematic, and are built on a foundation of fundamental economic ignorance and misunderstandings:

At the very foundation of so much Trumpist economic nonsense is the failure to understand that countries are fundamentally different to businesses — businesses need to optimise profit, countries need long-term stability, with countries, many government incomes are tightly coupled to government expenditures, and when you have your own currency and central bank, debt works very differently. You just can’t successfully run a country as if it was a business!

Trump does not understand the foundational concepts of international trade, especially the concept of comparative advantage — every country is able to produce different things more and less efficiently for all sorts of reasons, often literally geological! To maximise your economy you need to import what you can’t make efficiently and export what you can.

Trump doesn’t understand trade balances:

Trump is only considering part of the trade balance — he’s using only the numbers for goods and ignoring the numbers for services where the US run massively positive balances. Trump is literally assuming services exported to the world like Amazon Web Services, Office 365, Google, Facebook, Netflix, OpenAI, and just about every tech company that sells things that are not hardware are valueless — that’s NUTS!

Trump wrongly assumes negative trade balances with individual countries are evidence of some kind of trade barrier or nefarious practice

Trump claims his made up formula for ‘calculating’ the tariffs other nations impose on the US does not measure tariffs at all, it’s just a measures the trade balance as a ratio to GDP — it turns the false assumption that negative balances imply malice into math!

Apple-Related Coverage: (beyond the basics which have been flooding just about every news outlet on planet earth)

Opinion & Analysis:

Related:

Following on from Apple's admission last month that some of the most innovative and anticipated features of Apple Intelligence will be a year late at least, we have reports that Apple are taking this failure very seriously, though we have nothing official from Apple.

First, details were leaked of an internal Apple meeting where Robby Walker, Apple's senior director of Siri and Information Intelligence, described Apple's choice to 'demo' and advertise features that were not actually ready as "ugly and embarrassing" — appleinsider.com/…

This was followed by reports of a major managerial shakeup within Apple — arstechnica.com/… & daringfireball.net/…

Unsurprisingly, there is now class action law suits claiming Apple mislead consumers with it's ads showing features we now know were vapourware in the US and Canada — appleinsider.com/… & www.macobserver.com/…(A rare example of class action suits I actually agree with!)

Apple released the .4 updates for it's OSes — daringfireball.net/…

Apple PR

"Apple Intelligence features are now available in many new languages, including French, German, Italian, Portuguese (Brazil), Spanish, Japanese, Korean, and Chinese (simplified) — as well as localised English for Singapore and India — and are accessible in nearly all regions around the world."

Apple Updates Its OSes with Mail Parity Across Platforms, Recipes in News, Apple Intelligence on visionOS, and More — www.macstories.net/…

HomeKet gets support for robot vacuums across all the platforms

iOS & iPadOS 18.4: Everything new in iOS 18.4 — www.cultofmac.com/…

More control over default apps:

VisionPro App — appleinsider.com/…

Ambient Music can be added to Control Center

Visual Intelligence comes to the iPhone 15 Pro line

Hidden iOS 18.4 Features You Might Have Missed — www.macobserver.com/…

macOS 15.4: Everything New in macOS 15.4 — www.macobserver.com/…

WatchOS 11.4: Everything New in watchOS 11.4 — www.macobserver.com/…

VisionOS 2.4:

tvOS 18.4

Apple has worked with others to get standardised End-to-End Encryption added to the RCS spec and have promised to implement it — thehackernews.com/… & www.macstories.net/…

Apple have brought ultra-low latency and lossless audio to the recently released USB-C update to the AirPods Max — www.macstories.net/… & Apple PR

Two minor Apple app updates:

WWDC 2025 Scheduled for June 9–13 — tidbits.com/… ( Apple PR)

Note: When the textual description of a link is part of the link it is the title of the page being linked to, when the text describing a link is not part of the link it is a description written by Bart.