OLED iPad mini may cost more and stay at 60Hz
Bloomberg expects Apple to charge noticeably more for its first OLED mini, arriving around October 27 with an A20 Pro and a refresh rate still in doubt.
iPhoner — iPhone apps, games, guides, deals, and home screens
Notes
HomeView trademark may name Apple's October 13 home hub
A likely Apple shell company filed HomeView around the same time as homeOS, and the visionOS and xrOS filings show how far that can be trusted.
RemoveMacAI deletes the AI models macOS 27 won't let go
Even with Apple listing up to 14GB, MacRumors measured over 20GB of Apple Intelligence models on a Mac, and macOS 27 leaves no official way to delete them.
Apple Watch Series 12 and Ultra 4 still glue screens shut
A new battery pull tab earns the Series 12 one extra repairability point, yet both watches sit at 4 out of 10 against the Pixel Watch 5's 9.
Videos
October has two Apple dates now. The same day Apple sent its "Welcome home" invite for October 13, Bloomberg reported
Apple's October 27 event may bring a touchscreen MacBook Pro
Fifty percent in 20 minutes over USB-C with a 65W charger, or 30 minutes on MagSafe. Charging is the
iPhone Duo charges fast, but its main camera trails the Pro
The Apple TV 4K hasn't changed since 2022, and Matt Talks Tech expects that to end at Apple's
Apple TV 4K leaks point to an A19 chip and double the RAM
The rumor has a date now. Apple's "Welcome home" invite sets an Apple Experience for October 13 at 9
Apple's October 13 event points to a home hub and Apple TV
Home Screens
A dark theme usually still shows off its icons. This one hides them. It's a pure-black home screen for a minimalist iPhoner, a few thin neon outlines floating in the OLED with nothing else competing for attention.
The wallpaper is just black, so on an OLED panel the empty space reads as switched-off screen. Six apps sit on the main page as colored line art: a blue paper plane for Telegram, a pink square for Instagram, a red rounded rectangle for YouTube, a green ring for WhatsApp, a gray cog for Settings, and a blue f for Facebook. The dock folder does the rest. Open it and the icons become plain text labels, each app's name in a different neon color on a black tile.
Inside that folder the labels are the icons, each a colored word on black:
- App Store and 1.1.1.1 (Cloudflare's DNS app) as the utilities
- Clash Royale and FotMob for a game and match scores
- Snapchat and Yalla Go for chat
- Photos, Camera, and Clock as the stock trio
Anyone who finds a wall of glossy icons more stressful than useful is the audience here, and a minimalist iPhoner ends up with a screen that looks powered off until it's tapped. The pure black sips less OLED battery too. It's a home screen built to disappear, and on this phone it mostly does.
Pure-black setup with neon and word icons
A minimalist iPhoner runs a pure-black home screen where the dock folder turns every app into its name, set in a different neon color per tile.
A rainbow Apple logo up top, a menu bar reading File, Edit, Goodies, Font, and a beige Macintosh parked where the wallpaper usually goes. This is a retro iPhoner rebuilding the classic Mac desktop on an iPhone, menu bar and all.
The theme, credited to a Stellario signature by the search bar, leans hard on skeuomorphism. The top of the home screen is a Widgy widget dressed as an old SimpleText window, complete with a title bar, a scroll track, and a working agenda list inside. Below it, twelve app icons sit on a glossy black shelf with mirror reflections, the exact look of early Mac OS X. The lock screen keeps the bit going, a chunky retro clock on a black monitor, then the cream Macintosh case underneath with its floppy slot, vents, and a Macintosh nameplate.
The icons are the love letter. Calendar is the tear-off July block, Mail is the old postage-stamp bird, Photos is the palm-tree iPhoto shot, and the Finder smiley, the silver Safari compass, and the geared System Preferences all come straight from an old Mac OS X dock. iTunes even shows up as a CD with the rainbow note, an app Apple retired years ago. The dock swaps in matching skeuomorphic Phone, Mail, Safari, and Messages, so nothing gives away that this is a modern iPhone until you read the status bar.
Copying this is a real commitment, since every icon is a custom Shortcut and the menu bar is just a widget faking it. But for a retro iPhoner who grew up on the beige Macs, or just misses when software had texture, it turns the phone into a tiny museum piece you actually carry.
A classic Macintosh theme down to the menu bar
A retro iPhoner rebuilds the classic Mac look, from the rainbow Apple logo to skeuomorphic Finder and iTunes icons over a beige Macintosh.
Claude, Obsidian, and Reddit in the app row tell you the story. This is a productivity iPhoner's setup, a clean light-gray canvas built on Widgy widgets and a notes-first workflow.
The background is a pale dotted grid, almost graph paper, which keeps the whole thing feeling like a workspace. Widgy runs the top of both pages: an hourly forecast graph on one, and a weather block, a big Thursday calendar, and a time-and-battery panel with the next reminders on the other. The widgets are black on white and information-first, no decoration, so the data is the design.
The apps split between color and grayscale. Folders for Games, Music, Entertainment, and Smart Home keep their real icons in full grids, while a separate Widgy folder holds black glyph versions of X, Threads, Instagram, and NetNewsWire for the apps checked most. Down in the row, Photos, Claude, Obsidian, and Reddit stay in full color, and the dock stays stock with Phone, Mail, Safari, and Messages. It's a power user's compromise, pretty widgets up top and fast icons where speed matters.
Worth copying if you live in a notes app and want the home screen to read like a control panel, not a photo gallery. The Widgy widgets don't build themselves, but once they're set they show the whole day at a glance.
A light Widgy dashboard for Obsidian and Claude
A productivity iPhoner keeps Obsidian, Claude, and Reddit one tap away, under Widgy widgets that turn a plain gray grid into a control panel.
Apps
Avec turns a Gmail inbox into a swipeable card stack
Avec wins App Store praise for voice replies that draft a Gmail response from a few spoken points, though Outlook and iCloud users are still left out.
Eva planner tops your calendar with a 30-plus-block digest
Eva's digest runs past weather into biorhythms and a natal chart, but one App Store reviewer still asked for a Pomodoro timer Eva already ships.
Granola writes meeting notes and keeps no audio
Even App Store reviewers who love Granola's transcripts report calls that never uploaded, and with no recording on file, those meetings don't come back.
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Games
Servant of the Lake mixes Vanderboom chores with alchemy
Rusty Lake's prequel to Roots casts you as the Vanderbooms' servant for one weekend, and in my book it leads the series as a newcomer's first stop.
TOEM on iPhone turns the phone into its camera
Pocket Gamer says TOEM's gyroscope camera feels like shooting with the actual phone, though App Store reviews keep calling the hand-drawn trip short.
Duck Survival buries a sharp zombie siege under menus
Even with App Store reviews flagging red-dot shop prompts, Duck Survival's build-by-day, defend-by-night zombie loop holds up for short sessions.
Deals
Eight paid iPhone games get cheaper, a fox mother among them
Endling drops to $1.99 and PARANORMASIGHT to $8.99 in the US App Store, with six more between $1.99 and $9.99, every price confirmed at publish time.
Streets of Rage 4 and other best-sellers with discounts
Streets of Rage 4 falls to $1.99 and Skul to $2.99 in the US App Store, part of a seven-game sale with every price checked live at publish time.