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Do you have an iPhone? I do, and have just been compliantly updating my IOS as recommended for the past year or so. Another recommended update rolled out today - and it updated me from IOS 18.something to 26.1!! What have I missed?

Apparently this is the big one everybody has been waiting for with bated breath - the Liquid Glass Update. Also the "Apple Intelligence" nonsense, but I don't care about that because it doesn't run on iPhone 13. It looks like they have mashed up the User Interface majorly (boo!) but also introduced an infinitude of opportunities for fiddling with your lock screen and wallpaper options, which I admit that I am powerless to resist.

My iPhone just emerged from a very long update with a cheery Hello! and is sitting there simmering, waiting for me to try to use it. *ulp*

If you just upgraded your iPhone, let me know what you found - the good, the bad, and the ugly.

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ETA: Huh. Changes aren't as big as I expected. I think I actually like the tweaks to the camera and Photos interfaces. The 3D lock screens look cool, but setting home screen wallpaper seems to be broken, so that's kind of a wash. There are apparently sweeping changes to Messages, none of which I understand how to use, but plain old text messages look fine. There's some kind of intrusive new Games App, which seems to be obsessed with tracking every game ever downloaded with my AppleID (90% of which are obsolete toddler games that I was loading onto an old iPad). Disturbingly intrusive and completely useless to me, but at least it's removable (unlike the old Game Center). I'm not sure I even understand what Liquid Glass is, but I don't see much difference anywhere.

Hello, friends! It's about to be December again, and you know what that means: the fact I am posting this actually before December 1 means

karzilla reminded me about the existence of linear time again. Wait, no -- well, yes, but also -- okay, look, let me back up and start again: it's almost December, and that means it's time for our annual December holiday points bonus.

The standard explanation: For the entire month of December, all orders made in the Shop of points and paid time, either for you or as a gift for a friend, will have 10% of your completed cart total sent to you in points when you finish the transaction. For instance, if you buy an order of 12 months of paid time for $35 (350 points), you'll get 35 points when the order is complete, to use on a future purchase.

( The fine print and much more behind this cut! )

Thank you, in short, for being the best possible users any social media site could possibly ever hope for. I'm probably in danger of crossing the Sappiness Line if I haven't already, but you all make everything worth it.

On behalf of Mark, Jen, Robby, and our team of awesome volunteers, and to each and every one of you, whether you've been with us on this wild ride since the beginning or just signed up last week, I'm wishing you all a very happy set of end-of-year holidays, whichever ones you celebrate, and hoping for all of you that your 2026 is full of kindness, determination, empathy, and a hell of a lot more luck than we've all had lately. Let's go.

Yikes! 18 to 26??? Seriously?

Look! I remembered to post before December started this year!