Joy Next Door – The Maine

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The Maine released their 10th record, Joy Next Door, a few weeks ago. Its another great record in their discography. “3:31″, and “It’s Not Over Yet” are two particular highlights for me. My one complaint about the record is that I don’t think its mixed well. This one would be a great candidate for a remastered version in 10 years.

Lastly, in the time since the album was released, the band added “Parking Garage Song #5” to the track list at number 8, subsequently pushing all the songs after it down the track listing. I really dislike it when bands do this. That is: change or edit the track listing after the album was released. This is distinct from releasing a “deluxe” version of the album with a few extra songs. Just off the top of my head, I know Blink–182 did this with ONE MORE TIME…, The 1975 just fully removed “Human Too” from Being Funny in a Foreign Language, and Every Time I Die and Chiodos have included “Bonus Tracks” embedded within the original track listing. This is all bad. Once its out, its out; pencils down! Bands, please stop doing this and just release a single or and EP or something.

tvOS thoughts in anticipation of WWDC 2026

Apple and its surrounding enthusiast community are gearing up for WWDC in a little over a week, and I’d like to stake my claim as The Only Person On The Internet That Cares About tvOS.

 

Firstly, I’ll take a being-right-point from my previous post about what they should do with custom video players on the platform, as John Gruber at Daring Fireball recently posted about how terrible some of the custom video players are on tvOS.

 

Secondly, essentially everything I wrote about remains true, with the exception that evidently there is already a way to connect Apple TV profiles to profiles within apps. Its just that no apps use this feature. I’m not sure whether or not its onerous, or there just isn’t demand for it. In any case, Apple should make it easier for developers to use, and then enforce it!

 

The one new thing to add to my list came across my radar as I’ve been looking at some indoor smart-bikes for services like Rouvy and Zwift. Evidently Apple TVs only support 2 bluetooth connections at time, so this industry has found a market in what are essentially bluetooth relays that can package data from multiple sensors on the bike (cadence, power, heart rate, etc), and feed it to the Apple TV in a single bluetooth connection. Apple should fix this. What an embarrassment for a $129 device.

Six Color’s Apple Report Card 2025

Jason Snell released the results from his annual survey of the Apple blogosphere community at Six Colors. I thought it’d be fun to join in the fray and add some of my thoughts, because I’m pretty different from most of those surveyed. For one, my income isn’t at all related to Apple (at work I am required to use a terrible Windows laptop and terrible Microsoft services), and so I really only use these devices in my personal capacity and consequentially really remain on the “happy path” of Apple devices and services.

 

Mac: 4/5

I’m more on the fence about Tahoe compared to most of the respondents. It’s a totally stable OS, I do mostly like how it looks; it’s just a little thoughtless in places and needs to get buttoned up. I regularly use Stage Manager on my laptop, and I think it’s great. In general, the software is good-not-great at the moment, but it is good at the end of the day.

In contrast, Mac hardware is stellar. I bought a Mac Mini this year, and I love it. Its so wonderful having that little guy always ready-to-go on my desk, and regularly running back-ups for me overnight.

 

iPhone: 5/5

The iPhone 17 and iPhone 17 Pro this year is the strongest line-up in ages. The iPhone 17 brought a ton of features down to the primary iPhone line this year, like ProMotion screens. If you’re an update-every-few-years sort of person, this year is the right year to update. The iPhone 17 Pro’s camera is awesome, and the huge plateau is nice to look at. Its great to see more of that wonderful orange sneaking out from my case every day.

I am not nearly as enamored with the iPhone Air compared to many folks, mostly because the camera is such a critical component of the phone for me. It exists. Its fine.

 

iPad: 3/5

I water damaged my third-gen iPad Air over the holidays, and upgraded to a refurbished M1 iPad Air in January. It’s notably faster. My spouse has an M4 iPad Pro. Its super quick.

Even with iPadOS 26, iPadOS still pales in comparison to Mac OS. I think the implementation of the stoplight buttons is just straight-up bad, and everyone being so excited about them is akin to a cold glass of water in hell. Yes, its a huge step forward for the platform, no doubt. But again, the Mac is just so wildly superior.

Still, the iPad is the best tablet on the planet, hands-down. Theres essentially no competition. Theres a few categories like this now, including wearable. Apple just seems to be resting on their laurels a bit, because there is effectively zero competitive pressure from Google or anyone else.

 

Wearables: 3/5

This whole category is buoyed by AirPods Pro 3. They’re great. AirPods Max need some serious love, and are just not taken seriously by the market.

 

Watch: 2/5

I love my Apple Watch Series 9, but has Apple added anything to the last two version to make me upgrade? I usually update on a 3-year cadence, but if Series 12 is as lackluster as 10 or 11, I may not.

The Ultra 3 was a *fine* update, but truly hasn’t added anything compelling since the first Ultra was introduced three years ago. If anything the Series 10/11’s larger screen makes me wonder where Apple wants to take this product.

 

Vision Pro: 1/5

I look at these periodically on eBay, but am consistent dissuaded by how often people with them say they use them.

 

Home: 2/5

The Home app remains usable, but where is the rumored HomePod w/ a touchscreen?

 

Apple TV: 3/5

sigh… Apple TV remains the best TV interface on the market, but similar to the iPad and Apple Water, a lack of serious competition has lead Apple to complacency.

The service, however, is firing on all cylinders.

 

Services: 3/5

Apple News is my primary app for reading the news, and it’s good-to-decent. It would be good if they eliminated low-quality stories, and cleaned up the ads in the articles.

Apple Fitness is good, but I do wish they’d make some generic exercises and you could just listen to your own music, rather than their playlists.

Apple Arcade is nice-to-have, especially when traveling.

Apple Music is great. No complaints.

 

Hardware Reliability: 4/5

Apple OS Quality: 4/5

Apple App Quality: 3/5

Developer Relations: No Opinion

World Impact: 1/5

You know.

Predictions for Apple’s Forthcoming Low-Cost MacBook and Other Announcements

On Monday, Apple is set to begin a string of product announcements culminating in their “Apple Experiences” with press events simultaneously all over the world on Wednesday. Of those announcements, Apple is widely expected to announce a new low-cost MacBook powered by the iPhone 16 Pro’s A18 Pro chip, and will presumably resurrect the “MacBook-no-second-word” brand. Oh, and it’s widely expected to come in Good Colors 🤩.

Theres a lot of speculation regarding how configurable this product will be with respect to chip-binning, RAM, and storage. I don’t think this computer will be any more configurable than the iPhone 16 Pro was: storage options starting at 128 GB and up to 1 TB. I just don’t think Apple can afford to hit a low price, and go about making new configurations of that A18 Pro SoC. That also means it’ll only have a measly 8 GB of RAM, the minimum needed to support Apple Intelligence. This machine may be small and fun, but it may not be a good Mac.

Otherwise, the announcements are expected to be rather milquetoast. Chip-bumps for most products getting an update. There are some on-going rumors that the M5 Pro and Max will have some new-to-Apple 2.5D packaging updates to further separate CPU and GPU thermals and gain performance. This may be interesting considering the gains Apple Silicon had by allowing CPU and GPU to pull from a single pool of RAM. Does one or the other of them slow if the CPU and GPU are no longer on the same die?

Lastly, on a personal note, I am *really* hoping for a new Apple TV. There doesn’t seem to be much enthusiasm for this product, but I have an original Apple TV 4K model that is feeling awfully old now, and I just sent the remote through the wash and killed it. It could use an upgrade, and I think my only chance its updated this week is if it is *such* a small upgrade that its flown under the radar of all the usual leaks in the supply chain.

Circa Survive’s Final Show Before 2022-2026 Hiatus

 

Circa Survive announced a series of reunion shows in Philly and a festival show later in 2026 after a Hiatus dating back to the start of 2022, which had me diving into their catalog this week. They were, and now are once again, one of the best bands in the scene.

I was then looking for concerts of theirs to watch on YouTube and came across the one above opening for Every Time I Die’s ETID The Season show in 2021, which then happened to be Circa Survive’s last show before their hiatus, as well as Every Time I Die’s last show. It’s a great show, but wow what a funeral of a show.