Overview

September was, above all, an iPhone month. The weeks of leaks, the launch keynote under John Ternus, pre-order day, and the eventual arrival of a silver iPhone 18 Pro Max gave the month its narrative spine, carrying the author from anticipation through delight to the small disappointments that follow any upgrade. But the season had undercurrents too. Apple Intelligence quietly reshaped the author’s daily habits even as a foldable iPhone and a rumored homeOS kept the imagination busy. In parallel, a homegrown tool for querying years of his own writing marked a genuinely empowering use of AI — a sharp counterpoint to the mounting discomfort he felt watching OpenAI parade “Dots” and agents at its DevDay. Between the gadgets and the philosophy ran the steady business of tending a digital life: new routers, retired services, and a birthday spent thinking about the quiet gift of being left alone.

1. 🤖 AI-Assisted Development & Personal Tooling

The month’s most satisfying technical story was also its most personal. In From a problem to a solution, the author describes going from frustration to a working system in a matter of hours: unable to query his Ghost-hosted archive beyond basic search, he stitched together the Ghost API, a Postgres-backed SaaS, an n8n sync workflow, a Claude Skill, and Claude Desktop until the whole corpus became searchable. The payoff arrives in Doing some digital archaeology, where he puts the new “personal digital assistant” to work excavating his own past publications — an exercise he calls fun and empowering, and which leaves him wondering what to name the thing.

That enthusiasm sits beside a note of economic realism. In I sometimes exceed my token usage limits, the author admits to pushing past 100% of a session’s budget when the remaining work feels light, while marveling — with some exasperation — at AI enthusiasts paying $200 a month for Claude. The posts together sketch a pragmatist’s relationship with AI: deeply useful when pointed at a real problem, and worth watching closely at the register.

Key themes: Claude, n8n, Ghost API, Postgres, personal assistant, archive search, token economics

Source links:

2. 🍎 Apple: The iPhone 18 Pro Max Launch & Hardware

This is the heart of the month. The arc begins with pure anticipation — After watching this YouTube video finds the author excited about a foldable iPhone yet committed to the 18 Pro Max because, as he puts it, he’s a camera guy, and Really looking forward to Sept 9th savors the unpredictable weekend of last-minute leaks before Ternus’s first keynote. The foldable itself becomes a running thread: Naming the foldable iPhone bets against “iPhone Duo” in favor of “iPhone Ultra,” only for Someone reacted to my iPhone Duo argument to gracefully concede the point when a reader reframes “Duo” around dual function rather than dual hardware. While waiting for a foldable iPad extends the daydream to a device that would be an iPad mini folded and a full iPad unfolded.

Then the real thing arrives. Silver it will be commits to silver, 512GB, on pre-order day; Such a great day outside has him taking coffee on the porch to intercept the UPS truck; and Impressed and I like this image of my new iPhone capture the first flush of ownership. The honeymoon is not without friction. My dictation success on the 18 Pro Max laments a real regression from the 15 Pro Max, while On 18 Pro colours and The camera plateau’s positive byproduct turn the device over in the hand, finding the light blue tempting and the camera plateau, oddly, a comfortable place to rest a finger. Around the edges sit the smaller observations — Nobody is talking about the Camera Control button, the thicker bezels noted in The bezels on the Series 12, and the developer-eye-view of Developers share first screenshots on the iPhone Duo simulator — that together make this feel less like a review and more like living with new hardware in real time.

Key themes: iPhone 18 Pro Max, foldable iPhone, pre-order, keynote, dictation regression, colours, Apple Watch Series 12, hands-on

Source links:

3. 🍎 Apple: Software, Intelligence & the Road Ahead

If the hardware gave the month its drama, Apple’s software quietly rewired the author’s habits. The most striking admission comes in Since iOS 27 and Siri AI, where he reports that his use of non-Apple AI services for mundane questions has dropped close to zero — proof, he argues, that in-app integration matters more than raw capability. Incoming App updates flow to increase soon greets OS 27 day with anticipation tempered by a mixed Craft beta experience, singling out “Play” and its Private Cloud Compute summaries as a highlight. Looking further out, Apple Intelligence+ speculates that Siri AI will eventually become a billable service layer sitting between developers, users, and Apple, while Typical Apple playbook reads the Series 12’s Audio Intelligence features as a deliberate acclimatization exercise before Visual Intelligence arrives.

The section also tracks Apple’s softer spots and wider ambitions. Manton Reece amplifying a report from Gurman worries aloud about developer discontent with the App Store and the growing ease of simply shipping web apps, I want these multitasking gestures on the iPad makes a direct plea for side-by-side apps, and Apple Will Soon Announce an All-New Operating System reacts with a single emoji of alarm to the prospect of homeOS joining the already crowded platform family.

Key themes: iOS 27, Siri AI, Apple Intelligence, Private Cloud Compute, App Store, homeOS, iPad multitasking, Audio Intelligence

Source links:

4. 📷 Photography & Camera Experiments

New phone, new camera, new puzzles. First photowalk today with my iPhone 18 Pro Max documents the author’s inaugural outing with the device and the discovery of unfamiliar visual artifacts — the familiar dot joined by a strange new shape — which Apple Intelligence can mercifully erase, though not without a sigh. Wondering about iPhone 18 Pro Max main camera visual artifacts? returns to the mystery with a night shot taken at a manual f1.48, puzzling over whether the star pattern comes from the aperture blades and what explains the remaining lens flares. Away from the flagship camera, Posting on Moments records a quieter experiment: a niche platform where he builds images in Snapseed and tinkers with embeds, enjoying the smallness of it. Together the posts show a photographer testing the edges of his new tools rather than simply celebrating them.

Key themes: iPhone 18 Pro Max camera, lens flare, visual artifacts, manual aperture, Snapseed, Moments, photowalk

Source links:

5. ✍️ Blogging, Writing & Personal Reflections

Beneath the gadgetry, September was a reflective month. The Best Gift turns a birthday into a meditation on his quiet break from Meta, noting that the truest friends are the ones who skip Facebook and reach him the right way — making the absence of an automated greeting a gift in itself. My writings is about to pay off anticipates the arrival of a Copilot Premium license at work, where his habit of documenting everything, unusual among his colleagues, may finally compound into an advantage. Reconnecting is the month’s most human piece: a reunion with university computer-science classmates from 1987–1993, many now contemplating retirement, all sharing a mingled awe and vertigo at how fast AI is moving.

The writing life itself stays in view. Quick update on my writing in public project celebrates the first reader comment on his in-progress article about upgrading to the 18 Pro Max, and Sunday is the busiest day for creative people finds joy in a Micro.blog timeline full of makers vibe-coding, blogging, and shooting photos. The section’s outlier, United we stand 🇨🇦, steps into civic territory, arguing that Canadian sovereignty — not just economics — should shape the country’s stance on energy exports and defense contracts.

Key themes: birthday, Meta, Copilot, writing at work, university reunion, writing in public, community, Canadian sovereignty

Source links:

6. 🛠️ Tools, Home Network & Digital Housekeeping

The month carried a strong current of tending and pruning. On the discovery side, CleanShot 5.0 is out, Screen Studio is out is a small conversion story: the new Studio Mode recording is so well implemented that the author sees no reason to return to Screen Studio and expects even his ScreenFlow use to drop. The home lab got attention too — I decided to upgrade my Ubiquiti Dream Machine announces a move to a pair of UniFi Express 7 units, and The upgrade from the Ubiquiti Dream Router reports the mesh complete, with better coverage, Wi-Fi 7, and a snappier network UI, all restored from backup in a process he likens to setting up a new iPhone.

Just as telling is what he let go. Bye Bye Flipboard deletes an account that was once among his first daily iPad apps, its card-flipping novelty long faded, and Bye bye Reddit RSS feeds quietly severs another tie while wondering how long Reddit itself will last for him. Running out of space on my Synology NAS airs an open question about whether to delete raw recording segments and old ScreenFlow projects, and On computer shops in 2026 lingers on a messy local repair shop, musing on how such a business survives at all. Housekeeping, in other words, as a form of thinking.

Key themes: CleanShot, Screen Studio, ScreenFlow, UniFi Express 7, Wi-Fi 7, Synology NAS, Flipboard, Reddit RSS

Source links:

7. 🤖 The AI Industry: OpenAI, Agents & a Growing Unease

September ended on a note of real discomfort. Reacting to OpenAI’s DevDay, Are we in the revenge of the nerds? skewers the “Dots” branding with a mix of disbelief and mockery — the idea of talking to a “dot” or working with a team of them striking him as faintly absurd. Maybe OpenAI is crossing a redline for me develops the reaction into a fuller critique: OpenAI’s growing resemblance to Apple, the courage and the risk of live demos that aren’t ready, a Sam Altman who seemed off, features locked behind expensive Pro plans, and desktop clients — OpenAI’s and Anthropic’s alike — that remain bloated Electron apps rather than the native software their makers’ AI-coding claims would imply. Most pointedly, the author rejects the premise of consumer agents outright, wanting an AI that is invisible rather than cute, and refusing to trust a bot with his to-do list or his shopping. He closes by noting he has never felt his anti-AI reflex this strongly — and wondering why.

Key themes: OpenAI DevDay, AI agents, Dots, Sam Altman, Electron apps, Anthropic, invisible AI, trust, skepticism

Source links:

8. 📺 Watching

A trio of short posts marks the author’s evening viewing. Just finished watching Widow’s Bay Season 1 ends on a weird, unsettling note, its finale clearly setting a table for a second season the author regards warily. The remaining two follow his gradual immersion in a time- and universe-bending series: Watched: Dark Matter S1E3, The Box has him slowly piecing the premise together and quietly favoring one version of the protagonist, while Watched: Dark Matter S1E4, The Corridor registers a storyteller’s quibble — the show’s blurring of time-and-space travel with alternate universes, when he would prefer the latter. Small posts, but a steady reminder of the person behind the tech.

Key themes: Widow’s Bay, Dark Matter, television, storytelling, alternate universes, season finale

Source links:

Mentioned Apps, Products & Services

AI & Automation: Claude, Claude Desktop, Claude Skills, Claude Code, n8n, Apple Intelligence, Siri AI, Private Cloud Compute, Microsoft Copilot / Copilot Premium, OpenAI / ChatGPT, Dot (OpenAI agents), Muse (Meta), Anthropic desktop client

Development & Hosting: Ghost, Ghost API, Postgres, Micro.blog

Content & Publishing: Moments, Snapseed, Craft, “Play”, Flipboard, Reddit RSS, YouTube

Screen Recording & Capture: CleanShot 5.0, Screen Studio, ScreenFlow, Birchfeed

Apple Products & Platforms: iPhone 18 Pro Max, iPhone 15 Pro Max, iPhone 6, iPhone Duo / Ultra (foldable), Apple Watch Series 12, Apple Watch Series 10, AirPods Pro, iPad Pro, iPad mini, iOS 27, homeOS, visionOS, App Store, Apple Store, Live Rewind, Siri Recaps, Audio Intelligence, Visual Intelligence

Networking & Storage: Ubiquiti Dream Machine Router, Beacon HD, UniFi Express 7, Wi-Fi 7, Synology NAS

Media & Entertainment: Widow’s Bay, Dark Matter

Digest covers 46 posts published in September 2026 · Generated October 2, 2026