Side Project Spotlight

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.