If you have YouTube Premium and are offline with a downloaded video, you can’t like the video. You can’t open the full description, so if you watch a concert, you can’t see the timestamps. You can’t get the URL for the video.
The UI is all over the place. The download indicator is on the same line as the name of the channel. Why? YouTube’s automatic downloads even grab Shorts.
The reason I think it is stupid not to offer likes in offline mode is that the phone has memory, so you can just upload the information later. It is similar with the URL: you can just save the video URL while downloading the video.
Competition is needed for YouTube. I’d love to see an open video protocol get more use. There is PeerTube, which is cool, but almost no one is there.
The Ceramic Shield 2 that Apple introduced last year on the iPhone 17 improves the iPhone Duo. You can use the iPhone Duo in a laptop style, but in that position the outer screen lies on the desk. Thanks to Ceramic Shield 2, you don’t have to worry about scratching the screen, because it vastly improves scratch resistance.
Maybe it was done just to make the iPhone in general better, which it did. Or it was preparation for the iPhone Duo. Or both.
A week ago was my first ever voting that I could attend. And I did. The voting process happened very fast. This year in the Czech Republic has voting for (komunálu) local elections and in some regions even for the Senate, that was my case. I did not bring the voting paper with me, so I got an unfilled paper to fill behind a wall. I got a large paper with all the political sides (more than two parties, imagine that, America) problem was that I had to put the large paper into the envelope. That took me the most time since I already knew how to vote.
Since in the first round of the Senate there was no candidate that had more than 50 per cent. Next week there was another round. It was from Friday to Saturday till 2:00 PM. Since I was not at home that day, I was sad that I would not be attending the voting process. But I managed to get to the local bus stop at 1:30 PM, next bus that was in the direction I wanted was in an hour and a half. In that moment I was pretty hopeless. But thanks to shared bikes, I was able to share one and use it to get to another part of the city in time for voting, all 10 minutes before. The irony is that a week before that was the first time I have ever tried shared bikes. My town pays for the first 15 minutes of the ride. And it took me 15 minutes and 18 seconds. So it cost me around 1 dollar.
That reminded me of what Zohran Mamdani said. What I remember him saying was something like ‘I want to give an option to my critics to use a bus to travel and debate me’.
In the voting booth it was again given to me paper to choose from. And I am 99% certain that I got only one voting paper and one envelope by mistake. Logically I was supposed to get at least two voting papers. I did not say that to the commission because I got the paper that I wanted.
About the HomeView ad I wrote about in my post yesterday: since then, I’ve seen some criticism of it online. The ad is full of chaos, and some people found that stressful.
Apple has been showing real craftsmanship in its recent ads, like the making of the Apple logo for this event and the M6 introduction.
This ad adds real human life, which is great to see from Apple. It even shows someone using the bathroom (remember the HomePod mini mockup house that had no bathroom?) and has a bit of a romantic side.
The ad doesn’t present the family as perfect. They’re humans at the end of the day. The only perfect thing is the all-new $299 device from Apple. Maybe that’s the point of an ad.
First, I like the name. It is for a home, it has a display, and it sees. So I am pretty satisfied with Apple’s names recently: iPhone Duo, MacBook Neo and now HomeView. Cool.
It should have Face ID. Relying on camera recognition and nearby devices is not cool. But maybe the LiDAR sensor doesn’t have a long enough range. And the price may be a reason too.
In this three-minute video by Apple, there is not a single thing done on HomeView that couldn’t be done on an iPhone or even an Apple Watch. Yes, it has a bigger display, so more people can look at it than at the small Apple Watch, and especially the camera view. So it brings a better experience, not a new experience.
In the same video I did not see a single Apple Watch, iPhone, iPad, Mac, etc. I wonder why. Okay, an AirTag was there.
1:07, still in the same video. The mother is looking for her keys while the father is on a FaceTime call on the HomeView. So the mother cannot use the HomeView (time for a personal computer?), but it just so happens that the father finishes the call and now the HomeView is free. Ad magic.
One more little thing: during the FaceTime call, the ellipsis is not a prominent Liquid Glass button, so it doesn’t have a background colour, and because the button is big, you can see everything morphing under the blur. I wonder if there is a setting for the Liquid Glass look.
Using iMessage on this thing is crazy and pointless. I understand Siri prompting and sending messages, but viewing the actual message thread on the screen, I don’t see a world where it would be useful. I guess if you don’t have your phone on you and you want to type.
They have a table made just for the cable to get through and plug in the HomeView. I am so happy that it doesn’t have a fixed USB-C cable like the HomePod mini does.
In this next screenshot: On the left is Apple Music. How do you favorite the song? How does the popup menu look like? What does the top left music button do? I read this a few days ago and I wonder if the controls disappear after some time. The HomeView on the right looks like Google’s Material (M3) or something like that to me.

I like the CarPlay integration of apps. I also like that Apple is reusing Apple Watch faces and all the widgets. Apple is the company that can do this. They have been preparing for this for years, and it shows.
The hardware looks nice and modern. I don’t know if the holes will get filled up and messy in a kitchen. Shame is that it doesn’t rotate on its own. And the bezels could be smaller. You don’t need big bezels for fat fingers like the iPad has.
But all around, I love Apple doing new things. Three years ago, if you had told me that within a year Apple would make a cheaper MacBook, a folding iPhone and a HomePod with a screen, I would not have believed you.
