Side Project Spotlight

Mohammad Azam turned a childhood game into Block Bop with AI and three days of work. He joins The Trio to talk expressive blocks, playtesting, and paid level packs, with a detour through a 3,000-line ContentView.swift. Azam and Steve weigh the fun of fast prototypes against token limits and the need to understand your code, while Kotaro makes the case for watching people play. One More Thing: BarCamp Philly is back.

## Chapters

00:00 Introductions & Welcome Mohammad Azam!

03:05 From Childhood Game to Block Bop

07:27 Building with Codex

18:34 Playtesting and Level Design

25:05 App Review and Paid Packs

33:34 SpriteKit, Retro Games, and New Ideas

40:35 AI Dependence and Code Ownership

55:48 Wrap Up and One More Thing...

57:40 Tag

## Show Notes

- Azam returns after episode 44 with Block Bop, inspired by a stone-stacking game he played in Pakistan.

- Codex through Xcode handled the code and geometric graphics, while Azam used ChatGPT for background music.

- Three days of prompting included a 3,000-line ContentView.swift that Codex later split into a few files.

- Azam's cousin flagged unclear onboarding and punishing levels, prompting a longer timer for level 10.

- Kotaro recommends watching people play to spot the joy and frustration that written feedback misses.

- Azam chose one free ten-level pack and $1.99 themed packs over ads or consumable purchases.

- Kotaro pitches holiday packs and iMessage stickers using Block Bop's expressive characters.

- Azam can prototype games quickly, but running out of tokens leaves him stuck on code he hasn't learned.

- Steve argues that cheap code generation doesn't remove the need for thoughtful design and human accountability.

- One More Thing: Kotaro recommends BarCamp Philly on October 17, 2026, with talks chosen on the day and great T-shirts.

## Links

**Mohammad Azam & Block Bop**

Block Bop: https://azamsharp.com/block-bop.html

Azam's website: https://azamsharp.com/ | AzamSharp School: https://azamsharp.school/

Azam on X: https://x.com/azamsharp | Azam on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@azamsharp

Azam's App Store apps: https://apps.apple.com/us/developer/mohammad-azam/id392527683

Previous appearance, #44: WWDC23 with Mohammad Azam: https://podcast.phillycocoa.org/episodes/44-wwdc23-with-mohammad-azam

**Events & Ideas Mentioned**

SwiftCon 2026: https://www.nextappcon.com/swiftcon

Shipaton 2026: https://www.shipaton.com/

Conway's law: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway%27s_law

**One More Thing**

BarCamp Philly 2026: https://barcampphilly.org

**PhillyCocoa:** https://phillycocoa.org

Intro music: "When I Hit the Floor", © 2021 Lorne Behrman. Used with permission of the artist.

Mike Zornek wants your software to keep working even when the company behind it disappears. He joins The Trio to explain local-first software, Automerge, and CRDTs, then shares what he learned building LocalCents, an expense tracker that syncs offline edits. Steve digs into collaboration, Kotaro asks about changing data structures, and Mike explains why giving users more control is worth the extra work.

## Chapters

00:00 Introductions & Welcome Mike Zornek

04:22 From Mac Apps to Elixir

12:30 What Is Local-first Software?

22:32 Inside Automerge and CRDTs

36:29 Collaboration Between Equal Peers

42:49 Building LocalCents

48:33 Collisions and Schema Evolution

01:01:57 Fighting for the Users

01:04:37 Keyhive and Access Control

01:07:33 A Little Doom and Gloom

01:10:23 Outro & One More Thing...

01:11:33 Tag

## Show Notes

- Mike Zornek returns to PhillyCocoa and jokingly takes full credit for the iOS gold rush.

- App Store distribution rules helped push Mike from Apple development back to the web and Elixir.

- Mike explains why local-first means more than offline support: collaboration, longevity, privacy, and user ownership matter too.

- Automerge handles persistence and merging independently of the UI, with APIs for different language ecosystems.

- Steve and Mike unpack how a cloud relay can help equal peers exchange changes without becoming the authoritative copy.

- Mike's LocalCents proof of concept syncs expenses between a Mac app and a browser, including edits made offline.

- Collision UI and schema evolution leave plenty of work for application developers even when merging is automatic.

- Mike argues that harder technical problems are worth tackling to give users more power.

- Keyhive's access-control diagrams get scary enough that Mike recommends brewing a pot of coffee first.

- After a little internet doom and gloom, Kotaro shares that BarCamp Philly is back, and Mike plans to attend.

## Links

**Mike Zornek**

Website: https://mikezornek.com

LocalCents: https://mikezornek.com/posts/2026/8/local-cents

**Local-first Software**

Previously on SPS (#117): https://podcast.phillycocoa.org/episodes/117-assumption-one-youre-a-hoarder

Mike's local-first post: https://mikezornek.com/posts/2025/2/what-is-local-first-software/

Ink & Switch paper: https://www.inkandswitch.com/essay/local-first

**Tools and Further Reading**

Automerge: https://automerge.org

Martin Kleppmann: https://martin.kleppmann.com/

Conflict-free replicated data type (CRDT): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conflict-free_replicated_data_type

Keyhive: https://www.inkandswitch.com/keyhive/notebook/

**One More Thing**

BarCamp Philly: https://barcampphilly.org/

**PhillyCocoa:** https://phillycocoa.org

Intro music: "When I Hit the Floor", © 2021 Lorne Behrman. Used with permission of the artist.

John Ternus is Apple’s new CEO, and The Trio have a wish list ready. Kotaro, Steve, and Aaron size up his practical hardware legacy, imagine a stronger developer story for the age of bespoke AI-built apps, and ask whether Apple’s first foldable iPhone can justify its compromises and rumored $2,000-plus price.

## Chapters

00:00:00 Hello, John Apple

00:11:24 What Apple Should Fix

00:15:06 The Future of Apps

00:22:10 Vibe Coding a Better Jira

00:28:02 The Foldable iPhone

00:31:01 Touch ID and Camera Tradeoffs

00:34:30 A Prosumer Foldable

00:39:41 Foldable Apps and Multitasking

00:45:44 The Two-Thousand-Dollar iPhone

00:53:05 Eyes on the Outside

00:56:05 One More Thing: Mike Zornek

## Show Notes

- The Trio know little about John Ternus’s leadership style, but Kotaro sees a practical streak in the ports, keyboards, and workhorse hardware that returned during his rise.

- Kotaro wonders if the thin iPhone Air could eventually become Apple’s mainstream phone while Pro models stay chunky and purpose-built.

- Aaron’s first request for the new CEO is simple: bring back a 27-inch 5K iMac worthy of the Studio Display.

- Steve wants Apple to fix its developer back ends and explain how apps, flexible interfaces, and developer businesses fit into an AI-shaped future.

- Kotaro imagines Apple making private, bespoke apps easy for ordinary users while giving professional developers better frameworks and services.

- Jira becomes the proof that complicated professional software still needs expertise, even if software factories help smaller shops build and maintain more.

- The rumored foldable trades Face ID and a telephoto lens for Touch ID, extreme thinness, and an iPad-like inner display.

- Steve sees a strong prosumer pitch in a giant camera viewfinder, mobile photo and video editing, and true side-by-side app workflows.

- A $2,000-plus first-generation phone has The Trio debating corporate plans, monthly payments, and whether the money is better spent on tokens.

- Aaron proposes Vision Pro-style eyes for the outer display, which leads to games, heat, scratched screens, and features Apple might allow in three years.

## Links

**Apple Leadership**

John Ternus: https://www.apple.com/leadership/john-ternus/

**Previously on SPS**

#110: So Long, Tim Apple, and Thanks for All the Fish!: https://podcast.phillycocoa.org/episodes/110-so-long-tim-apple-and-thanks-for-all-the-fish

**Foldable iPhone**

MacRumors iPhone Fold Roundup: https://www.macrumors.com/roundup/iphone-fold/ | New iPhone Ultra Details: https://9to5mac.com/2026/09/01/new-iphone-ultra-details-arrive-for-specs-multitasking-launch-timing-more/ | Samsung Galaxy Z Fold8: https://www.samsung.com/us/smartphones/galaxy-z-fold8/

**One More Thing**

Three Years Coding with AI: https://mikezornek.com/posts/2026/7/three-years-coding-with-ai/ | Local Cents: https://mikezornek.com/posts/2026/8/local-cents/

**PhillyCocoa:** https://phillycocoa.org

Intro music: "When I Hit the Floor", © 2021 Lorne Behrman. Used with permission of the artist.

Bill Atkins put a Mac mini in his spare room so local models can handle the coding chores he would rather skip, all without sending Stylebook's code to the cloud. Bill joins Kotaro, Steve, and Aaron to unpack his setup with OpenCode, Ollama, and Gemma, including SwiftUI migrations, crash-report utilities, RAM limits, and permission guardrails. Bill and The Trio also compare local models with their bigger cloud counterparts, explore Xcode's growing agentic toolkit, and confirm that even LLMs hate Jira.

## Chapters

00:00 Meet Bill Atkins

01:36 Why Keep AI Local

04:37 From Aider to OpenCode

09:17 Mac mini RAM and Model Choices

14:22 Permissions and Guardrails

17:17 Putting Local Models to Work

19:24 Coding Workflows and Xcode Agents

27:59 Smaller Models, Macros, and Planning

37:14 Cloud Brains and Local Tradeoffs

43:14 Bill Bot and What Comes Next

44:34 One More Thing: Stylebook

45:52 Tag

## Show Notes

- Bill has developed Stylebook with his wife since 2009, and the app is entering its seventeenth year.

- Keeping Stylebook's proprietary code away from third parties pushed Bill toward local models.

- Aider and Devstral proved the idea, but running them meant closing Xcode and Safari on Bill's 32 GB MacBook.

- Apple's WWDC26 MLX session inspired a smoother setup with OpenCode, Ollama, and Gemma on a 24 GB Mac mini.

- Bill finds Gemma particularly helpful with UIKit and SwiftUI, while smaller models still need tighter prompts and context.

- Bill locks down OpenCode so anything beyond safe directory listings and searches requires permission.

- A local model built Bill a Mac utility that turns crash reports into symbolicated stack traces.

- Aaron explains custom ACP agents in Xcode, while Steve praises its headless builds and improved SwiftUI preview tools.

- Swift macros, tests, migrations, and small utilities are ideal jobs when the work is mechanical but worthwhile.

- Aaron lands the final verdict after Steve describes Jira's API: even LLMs hate Jira.

## Links

**Bill's Local AI Setup**

Aider: https://aider.chat/ (terminal AI pair programming with local model support)

Run local agentic AI on the Mac using MLX: https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2026/232/ (WWDC26 session on MLX, OpenCode, Xcode, and multi-Mac scaling)

OpenCode: https://opencode.ai/ (open source terminal, desktop, and IDE coding agent)

Ollama: https://ollama.com/ (runs and serves open models)

Gemma models: https://ai.google.dev/gemma/docs (Google's lightweight open models)

**Coding Agents and Workflows**

Writing code with intelligence in Xcode: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/xcode/writing-code-with-intelligence-in-xcode (Apple's agentic coding guide)

Skills for Real Engineers: https://github.com/mattpocock/skills (Matt Pocock's skills for planning, testing, and debugging)

SPS #105, How Alex Hillman Built an AI Assistant with Claude Code: https://podcast.phillycocoa.org/episodes/105-how-alex-hillman-built-an-ai-assistant-with-claude-code (a VPS assistant using Tailscale and safety guardrails)

**Notes, Tasks, and Experiments**

Obsidian: https://obsidian.md/ (local-first linked notes)

Shadertoy: https://www.shadertoy.com/ (create, browse, and share real-time shaders)

**Additional Resource**

OmniFocus: https://www.omnigroup.com/omnifocus (task management for projects and next actions)

**One More Thing**

Stylebook: https://www.stylebookapp.com/ (Jess and Bill Atkins' closet app for outfits, value, and wear)

**PhillyCocoa:** https://phillycocoa.org

Intro music: "When I Hit the Floor", © 2021 Lorne Behrman. Used with permission of the artist.

The desktop has barely changed in decades, even as we’ve all become digital hoarders. Scott Jenson’s Local-First Conf talk, “How the Desktop UX Needs to Evolve to Keep Up With Local First,” gives The Trio a jumping-off point to explore spatial window management, document context, customizable dashboards, private workflows, and the surprising return of widgets. Kotaro then catches the game development bug and weighs rebuilding Retro Sparkle against the much more ambitious idea of a mobile-first pixel fighting game.

## Chapters

00:00 Introductions

01:15 Local-First Computing and the Future of Desktop UX

11:16 Widgets, Dashboards, and Personal Workflows

21:58 The Future of Software and AI Automation

38:35 Building Games in the AI Era

50:04 Closing and Community Updates

50:48 Tag

## Show Notes

- The discussion begins with Scott Jenson’s Local-First Conf talk, shared by Mike Zornek, a former PhillyCocoa organizer and one of its OGs who now works in Elixir.

- Overlapping windows made sense on tiny early displays, but modern screens and growing piles of context expose the metaphor’s limits.

- Scott’s prototypes rethink window management, attach research context to documents, and turn desktop history into a navigable timeline.

- Brett Terpstra’s TerminalWidget lets scripts power personal dashboards for network health, revenue, GitHub activity, and almost anything else.

- Apple’s old Dashboard sparks nostalgia for web-built widgets, glorious skeuomorphism, and the GPU-powered ripple effect.

- Kotaro and Steve imagine desktops that help people assemble private, local workflows without needing to become programmers.

- Steve argues that safer abstractions, plug-ins, and focused local models make more sense than asking everyone to generate raw application code.

- Kotaro wonders whether the app era is giving way to workflows that connect software, data, and automation at a higher level.

- Kotaro weighs rebuilding [RetroSparkle](https://tomatoboy.co/retro) with a pixel-inspired look against making a mobile-first fighting game in Godot.

- PhillyCocoa meets in person Thursday, August 13, from 5:45 to 8:00 PM at Vanguard, 2300 Chestnut Street, with talks by Bill Atkins, Kotaro Fujita, and Chris Hiester.

## Links

**Desktop UX and Local First**

How the Desktop UX Needs to Evolve to Keep Up With Local First: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-IOLRcFC6OY | Mike Zornek: https://mikezornek.com

**Widgets and Personal Workflows**

Brett Terpstra’s TerminalWidget Dashboard: https://brettterpstra.com/2026/08/10/my-terminalwidget-dashboard/

**Kotaro’s Project Ideas**

Retro Sparkle: https://tomatoboy.co/retro

**PhillyCocoa IRL Meetup**

Beyond the Simulator: Perspectives on Modern App Development: https://luma.com/mwcqd1cl

**PhillyCocoa:** https://phillycocoa.org

Intro music: "When I Hit the Floor", © 2021 Lorne Behrman. Used with permission of the artist.

Steve puts BentoFit in the loop, using agentic coding to add themes and straighten out the app's Swift package structure. The Trio digs into Mike Zornek's three-year AI-coding journey, the skills and harnesses shaping Steve's workflow, and why human judgment still matters when the robot says it is done. Even with better models in the driver's seat, Xcode always finds a way to keep things interesting.

## Chapters

00:00 Introductions

01:10 Side Projects & the AI Moment

07:38 Agentic Coding Tools & Harnesses

16:22 AI Workflows & Decision Fatigue

28:13 Software Factories & Loop Engineering

38:19 Building BentoFit with AI

48:15 Where AI Coding Breaks Down

55:01 IRL Meetup & Signoff

56:27 Tag

## Show Notes

- Steve introduces BentoFit, a HealthKit dashboard getting a new round of AI-assisted development.

- A good harness can matter as much as the model because it keeps tools, feedback, and code changes moving in a loop.

- Steve prefers Codex and OpenCode outside Xcode, then reaches back into Xcode through its MCP tools for builds, tests, and Simulator.

- Mike Zornek's three-year AI-coding notes spark a conversation about thoughtful adoption instead of blindly chasing every new workflow.

- Matt Pocock's skills help turn fuzzy ideas into explicit decisions, shared terminology, specifications, and tickets.

- Answering dozens of agent questions can sharpen a design, but it also trades coding flow for relentless decision fatigue.

- Steve's practical loop has an agent implement the spec, review its own work, fix what it finds, run the tests, and stop for human verification.

- The Trio remains skeptical of software factories when a project cannot be fully specified or automatically checked.

- For BentoFit, agents built theme infrastructure and reorganized local Swift packages in a few hours instead of several evenings.

- Widgets, watchOS targets, worktrees, and Xcode project files still invite expensive loops, crashes, and the occasional hard reset.

## Links

**BentoFit**

Website: https://bentofit.app

**AI Coding**

Mike Zornek, "Three Years Coding with AI": https://mikezornek.com/posts/2026/7/three-years-coding-with-ai/

Matt Pocock's Skills: https://github.com/mattpocock/skills/tree/main

**Upcoming PhillyCocoa Event**

Beyond the Simulator: Perspectives on Modern App Development: https://luma.com/mwcqd1cl

Thursday, August 13, 5:45 PM - 8:00 PM

2300 Chestnut St, Philadelphia, PA

**PhillyCocoa:** https://phillycocoa.org

Intro music: "When I Hit the Floor", © 2021 Lorne Behrman. Used with permission of the artist.

Steve drops serious cash on an M5 Max MacBook Pro right as Apple's Rampocalypse price hikes hit, then immediately bricks his iPhone 14 Pro Max installing iOS 27 Beta 3. The Trio unpacks Apple pulling the liquid glass opt-out after its promised one year, and spins out increasingly unhinged ideas for what a foldable iPhone's split screen could actually be good for. They close out with post-WWDC side project pitches: Kotaro weighing a Retro Sparkle or Fav 10 revival, Aaron dreaming up the ultimate foldable app, and Steve making BentoFit updates with a photography app on his mind.

## Chapters

00:00 Introductions & Token Economics

10:11 Hardware Upgrades and the RAM Apocalypse

17:47 Bricking an iPhone Installing iOS 27 Beta 3

21:34 UIKit Updates & Reading the Folding Phone Tea Leaves

35:26 Exploring New App Ideas Post-WWDC

47:20 Wrap-Up & Dad Jokes

48:19 Tag

## Show Notes

* Steve bit the bullet on a mid-tier, on sale M5 Max MacBook Pro (the best config Amazon had discounted) after Apple's Rampocalypse price hikes made waiting for the redesigned model a bad bet.

* The Amazon Prime Day deal saved him around $850 versus buying the same config direct from Apple.

* He's already seeing real speed gains in Lightroom, with AI denoise dropping from about ten seconds a photo to three to five.

* Steve bricked his iPhone 14 Pro Max installing iOS 27 Beta 3 and had to DFU restore it from an iCloud backup.

* iOS 27 removes the liquid glass opt-out entirely, exactly one year after Apple said it would, and it's ugly on unmigrated UIKit apps.

* The Trio speculates Apple's foldable iPhone, rumored to run two screens with unusual aspect ratios, is driving the push to force UIKit and scene delegate updates.

* They riff on absurd split screen app concepts for the foldable, from a permanent AI chat pane to a Tetris style game that dumps everything onto the bigger screen on unfold.

* Kotaro is weighing a Retro Sparkle revival (his three second match three game) or a long overdue Fav 10 rebuild for the next side project.

* Aaron wonders who could possibly afford a foldable iPhone that will probably cost as much as a MacBook.

* Steve is making BentoFit theme manager updates and floats a photography app as a future project.

## Links

**Side Project Apps**

Retro Sparkle: https://tomatoboy.co/retro | Fav 10: https://tomatoboy.co/fav10

**Tools & Services Mentioned**

Gas Town (Steve Yegge): https://steve-yegge.medium.com/welcome-to-gas-town-4f25ee16dd04 | GLM 5.2: https://z.ai/blog/glm-5.2

**Bento Fit**

Website: https://bentofit.app

**PhillyCocoa:** https://phillycocoa.org

Intro music: "When I Hit the Floor", © 2021 Lorne Behrman. Used with permission of the artist.

Steve is back from a Royal Caribbean cruise to Bermuda just in time for the WWDC26 wrap-up, and Kotaro wastes no time YOLOing onto the macOS beta to demo Siri AI live. Things go sideways fast when Siri deletes Kotaro's Redfin emails instead of listing their subjects, sparking a wide-ranging conversation about what it actually means to ship AI features to everyday users. The Trio also maps out their WWDC-inspired side project plans for the year ahead.

## Chapters

00:08 Introductions

00:56 Side Quest: Steve's Cruise Adventures

13:23 Transitioning to AI and WWDC Discussions

17:23 WWDC26 Highlights

22:04 Kotaro Beta Tests macOS & Siri AI

24:17 Xcode & macOS UI Changes

27:10 Kotaro Tries Out Siri AI Live

31:26 Siri Deletes Kotaro's Emails!

41:04 Exploring Siri AI and User Experience

43:25 WWDC26 Insights and Future Projects

52:25 Wrap-Up & One More Thing...

52:46 Tag

## Show Notes

- Steve returns from a 5-night Royal Caribbean cruise to Bermuda: escape rooms, cliff climbing, 17k daily steps, and the best lasagna of his life.

- The Trio catches up on WWDC26 after Steve's cruise delay, covering Siri AI, SwiftUI improvements, and Swift Data's new results observer.

- Kotaro has already YOLOd the macOS beta onto his laptop and shares first impressions of the more refined, less opinionated UI.

- New Xcode hides your current branch but gains liquid glass segment controls and an AI assistant for identifying dead code.

- Kotaro demos Siri AI live: it correctly locates the Rocky statue and renders a map widget, building some initial optimism about Apple's AI integration story.

- Siri AI then accidentally deletes Kotaro's Redfin emails when he only asked it to list their subject lines.

- Siri also fails the classic "how many Rs in Raspberry?" test on the local on-device model.

- Steve worries that mainstream Siri AI shipping on devices like his dad's new MacBook Neo will create a new wave of family tech support nightmares.

- Steve plans to add conversational health assistant features to BentoFit; Kotaro wants to vibe-code Fave10 using only Xcode AI tools and port Retro Sparkle to Godot.

## Links

**WWDC26**

Videos: https://developer.apple.com/videos/wwdc2026/

**One More Thing**

AppJawn LLC: https://appjawn.com/

Apps: Clipdish, Mio Vino, Minimalist Meditation Timer

**PhillyCocoa:** https://phillycocoa.org

Intro music: "When I Hit the Floor", © 2021 Lorne Behrman. Used with permission of the artist.

Music licensed through Soundstripe. Code: RLF9P8ZZ6MPKNOGX

Recorded thirty minutes after the WWDC26 State of the Union keynote ended, The Trio delivers a hot-take reaction to everything Apple just announced. Steve makes his boldest claim yet: 2026 is the year the "Universal UI" era begins, anchored by a Siri demo that appeared to actually work in real time. Xcode quietly Sherlocked the Codex app, SwiftUI got reorderable containers and (finally) AsyncImage caching, and Aaron spotted some very suspicious folding phone tea leaves in the new Simulator replacement.

## Chapters

00:08 Introductions

01:31 Reviewing The Trio's "Universal UI" Concept

02:39 Comparison of "AI" Apps: Siri, Claude, Codex, ChatGPT

05:43 Multimodal Prompts & Private Cloud Compute

07:26 Foundation Model Device Requirements

09:50 Dynamic Profiles and Custom Model Configurations

13:41 Xcode 27 Sherlocked the Codex App

15:42 Xcode and Developer Tool Evolution

21:47 SwiftUI Updates: Reordering and AsyncImage Cache

26:14 A Grab Bag of Random Stuff

28:23 App Actions and Siri Integration

35:04 No Apple Claw?

39:09 Swift Compiler Unable to Type Check Error

40:37 Final Impressions

42:02 Folding Phone Tea Leaves

43:07 Snow Leopard Speed Improvements

43:53 Wrap Up & One More Thing...

45:50 Tag

## Show Notes

- Steve declares 2026 the start of the "Universal UI era," with a live Siri demo that actually worked as his primary evidence.

- Aaron clocked the demo as mostly staring at a loading spinner; Steve argues Apple had to prove the on-device inference wasn't faked this time.

- The Foundation Models framework supports dynamic profiles: configurable system prompts, temperatures, and thinking budgets per scenario within a single app.

- Xcode 27 ships an agentic coding UI seemingly inspired by the Codex app, prompting Kotaro to ask point-blank: "Are you saying they Sherlocked Codex?"

- SwiftUI finally has a reorderable container, which The Trio immediately wants in Bento Fit after a previous attempt even an "AI" agent couldn't pull off.

- AsyncImage gets a built-in cache after years of third-party workarounds; Steve suspects some intern with an unlimited Claude Code budget finally got it done.

- App Actions now supports natural language invocation without requiring specific phrases or app name mentions, though exact limits remain fuzzy.

- Aaron flags resizable iOS windows (previously iPad-only) and an arbitrary-aspect-ratio Simulator replacement as very suspicious folding phone tea leaves.

- Kotaro closes on Snow Leopard-style speed wins across the board, including 80% faster AirDrop, because speed is still a feature worth shipping.

## Links

**One More Thing**

Cleo Family: https://www.cleofamily.app/track

**PhillyCocoa:** https://phillycocoa.org

Intro music: "When I Hit the Floor", © 2021 Lorne Behrman. Used with permission of the artist.

With WWDC26 just around the corner, The Trio burns off some Google I/O feelings before getting to the speculation they actually care about. Steve breaks down why AI-slopified search might be quietly destroying the Web's economic model, Aaron wonders what any of these agentic tools actually do right now, and Kotaro lays out a case for why this might finally be the year Siri stops being a punchline. Also: Xcode Pro is coming. Probably. Apple, please don't.

## Chapters

00:00 Introductions

00:52 Google I/O — "AI" All the Things

09:12 Google I/O — Killing Search with "AI" Slop

13:32 Google I/O — "Agentic Commerce" is Coming For Your Business

15:09 WWDC26 Speculations — Dynamic Widgets

17:58 WWDC26 Speculations — New Siri (Finally)

20:36 WWDC26 Speculations — AppleClaw & Xcode

26:27 WWDC26 Speculations — Folding Phone Tea Leaves

28:24 WWDC26 Speculations — HomeOS

31:11 WWDC26 Speculations — Out of the Box

37:32 WWDC26 Speculations — New Foundation Model

41:49 Outro & One More Thing...

42:51 Tag

## Show Notes

- Google I/O 2026 went all-in on AI, with Kotaro noting the near-total absence of Kotlin, Jetpack, and Flutter talks at this year's developer sessions.

- Gemini 3.5 Flash launched as the new "affordable" model and turned out to be significantly more expensive than its predecessor.

- Steve takes apart Google's AI search redesign, arguing it quietly destroys the economic model that funds the Web, including Google's own ad revenue.

- Aaron's deadpan verdict on Google's AI search demos: "the only thing it showed was it generating these giant slop docs. Who wants to read those?"

- Kotaro and Aaron speculate that WWDC26 could bring more dynamic, context-aware widgets, ones that are smarter about timing and context than the current static rectangles.

- The Trio agrees the headline WWDC feature is a Siri that actually understands intent, with Shortcuts workflow building as a hopeful bonus.

- Kotaro floats an "AppleClaw" style personal assistant via iMessage, letting developers submit agentic tasks to an Xcode Cloud backend.

- The folding iPhone question comes up: does it run iPadOS, iOS, or something in between, and how will apps scale across the form factor?

- Steve expects Apple to plant HomeOS seeds at WWDC, APIs and features that will only make full sense once a HomePod-with-a-screen arrives later in the year.

- The Trio caps the WWDC wishlist by accidentally inventing Xcode Pro, Apple's inevitable premium developer subscription tier.

## Links

**Google I/O 2026**

Google I/O 2026: https://io.google/2026/

Everything Announced at Google I/O 2026 in 13 Minutes: https://youtu.be/qCfARlv74jQ | 100 Things We Announced at I/O 2026: https://blog.google/innovation-and-ai/technology/ai/google-io-2026-all-our-announcements/

**WWDC26**

WWDC26: https://developer.apple.com/wwdc26/

**One More Thing**

AppJawn LLC: https://appjawn.com

Apps: Clipdish, Mio Vino, Minimalist Meditation Timer

**PhillyCocoa:** https://phillycocoa.org

Intro music: "When I Hit the Floor", © 2021 Lorne Behrman. Used with permission of the artist.