Hello, and welcome to August, the month when the news is supposed to slow down. Apparently, nobody told the AI models. And if you’re wondering if AI wrote that sentence, more below on what I call AI Slop Vibes™ and my testing of AI detectors.

Also, HBO goes vertical, OpenAI responds to Apple, Casio puts a watch on a ring and some tech glasses even the haters will love. 🕶️

🚨In other news, we have just launched on Spotify. Follow our show there! 🚨

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I wasn’t really annoyed by AI slop until a few weeks ago. I received feedback from a company I was working with, read the first few lines and immediately knew:

1. A HUMAN DID NOT WRITE THIS. 

2. A HUMAN DID NOT EDIT THIS. 

3. A HUMAN DID NOT THINK ABOUT THIS. 

HI. HELLO? IS SOMEONE THERE?

I can mostly avoid the AI slop videos, images and posts on social media. (Thanks to LinkedIn, I can even tap the shiny new “AI slop” reporting button.) I can avoid the AI slop versions of my book, too.

But when we’re communicating directly—working together on an actual thing—I can’t always avoid it. The generic phrasing, directness, pretentious throat-clearing and polished nothingness of AI writing that lands in my inbox from clients, business partners and readers can’t just be deleted. 

That left me with an even bigger problem: How could I prove it? I told my colleagues I was certain the feedback came from AI. They politely nodded, the universal company expression for “OK, let’s let Joanna be mad about this thing for a bit.”

I wanted proof. Sadly, definitive proof is hard to find in the deep, dark pits of AI slop. What we do have are AI Slop Vibes™ and a handful of AI detectors that can help us sniff them out. Here are the best ones. 

Fun fact: OpenAI is aiming to have 8,000 employees by the end of 2026, according to the Financial Times. Apple’s lawsuit against OpenAI states that more than 400 OpenAI employees previously worked at Apple. That would make roughly 5% of OpenAI employees former Apple workers. Not insignificant.

This newsletter was written and curated by Joanna Stern and Adele Lowitz.

Hello! We made it to Friday. It’s going to be a beautiful weekend. Perfect for grilling, swimming, relaxing…and watching our interview with OpenAI President Greg Brockman, if you haven’t already.

But first, some reading: I finally wrote about how a remarkably simple screen saved my family from our calendar chaos and how Big Tech never thought to make it. Then, how to fight the growing tide of AI slop on LinkedIn. And, finally, our oldest Old Thing yet. 

Credit: Skylight, New Things

When I was growing up, I desperately wanted one of those small CRT TVs in the kitchen. Some of my friends had one perched on the counter, but my mom had a rule: no TV screens in the kitchen.

I tried to keep that same rule with my own family. Then a big touchscreen moved onto our kitchen counter and I don’t know how we ever lived without it. 

The Skylight isn’t a Swiss Army knife tablet designed to distract us with videos, games, news or an endless parade of ads. It has one job: keep the family organized. 

“We're not incentivized by getting you and your kids more addicted to our screens. We're incentivized by helping alleviate some mental load,” Aviv Gilboa, the president of Skylight, told me. 

About 99% of the time, the screen displays our weekly calendar. The other 1% of the time? Someone has walked over to check the grocery list or add a reminder. You could call it a “smart home” gadget, though there isn’t actually much that’s “smart” about it. That’s precisely why I love it—and probably why Big Tech (Amazon, Google, Apple) never thought to build it.

It’s simple. We have the $300, 15-inch Skylight Calendar 2. (There are also 10-inch and 27-inch models.) Create an account in the Skylight app, invite the other members of your household and start adding events. You can sync calendars from Google, Microsoft or Apple, but we took a more selective approach. Our Skylight has its own email address, which we add to the Google Calendar events we want the whole family to see. Those events then automatically appear on the screen. 

I can see the eye rolls: A $300 calendar screen? Couldn’t you have just repurposed an old iPad? Sure, but then I’d be the family calendar’s full-time IT department, and we’d still be missing some of the software features we really like. Plus, an iPad, Echo Show, or other home tablet would come with all sorts of distractions. Skylight charges a monthly subscription fee for extra features, but we don’t pay it because we don’t need them.

It solves a real problem. Sure, we could all pull out our phones and open our calendars, but those calendars are already cluttered with work stuff. We found ourselves constantly asking one another what was happening and when. Or we’d have to shuffle through piles of papers to find that day’s school-lunch menu or camp dress-up theme.

The Skylight puts the week in one shared, glanceable place so that everyone—including the kids—can see the family plan. Each event can also be assigned to a specific child, whose photo appears right alongside it: music, karate, Boy Scouts, etc. There’s also a phone app where you can see your calendars and other info but I rarely use it.

It feels safe. “We don't have a microphone or camera on the device because we want to focus on building trust with millions of families, and those things are trustbusters,” Gilboa told me. 

The Skylight, which launched in 2020, doesn’t have the market share—or mindshare—of Google’s Nest Hub or Amazon’s Echo Show. But according to Gilboa, 1.7 million families use a Skylight Calendar every month, and the company is pulling in more than $500 million in annual revenue. Its success is a reminder that a gadget doesn’t have to do everything. Sometimes, dead-simple and single-purpose is exactly what belongs in the kitchen.

So, that scam call wasn’t random. Scammers don’t just guess your number. They buy personal information from data brokers—companies selling your phone number, home address, relatives’ info and much more. That’s how a scam call can turn into phishing, impersonation, identity theft—or someone knowing more about you than they should.

That’s why you need to use a service to clean up your personal info. Incogni removes it from these databases and keeps removing it automatically. There’s never been a better time to try Incogni, especially since New Things readers get 55% off annual plans with code JOANNA55.

Report AI Slop on LinkedIn

If a LinkedIn post reads like it was generated from the prompt, “Write a post that makes me sound like a Partner at Deloitte / a hustle-culture influencer,” you’ve finally got some recourse.

LinkedIn announced yesterday that users can now report suspected AI slop in their feeds. 

In a post on LinkedIn (appropriately), Chief Product Officer Hari Srinivasan declared that “AI Slop is a top priority for all of us.” Which is good, because it’s rampant. Pangram, a tool that detects AI generated content, recently estimated that 41% of longform and 30% of shortform content on Linkedin is written by AI.

When you see a post that seems like AI slop, tap the three dots in the top corner of the screen and select the new ⚠️ Seems like AI slop button to report it.

I wish I could give you a foolproof way to identify LinkedIn slop, but like bad art or a fake Pokémon card, you kind of just know it when you see it. It’s generic. It’s light on specifics. It’s overflowing with buzzwords. It’s got that tone.

But rest assured, everything you see from me on LinkedIn is good old-fashioned, hands-on-keyboard human content. See you there! 

Name: Rob Feldman

What's your old thing? Otis King Pocket Calculator

What year is your old thing from? 1937

Why do you love your old thing? It belonged to my father, who used it when he was in engineering school in the late 1930s. Here’s a snippet taken from the University of Queensland Physics Museum in Brisbane, Australia: “To use it, one would rotate the outermost and innermost cylinders, selecting the required numbers to be multiplied or divided on the logarithmic scales. Successive multiplication and division could be combined in 1 movement.” Thankfully, calculators were around by the time I got to engineering school! This sits on my desk now, a perfect complement to my laptop, desktop and two monitors.

Fun fact: LinkedIn and MySpace launched just four months apart in 2003. Both platforms are still around (MySpace is now a music and culture site), but only one remains the internet’s premier destination for announcing you’re “humbled and excited” to share career news.

This newsletter was written and curated by Joanna Stern and Adele Lowitz.

Hello from the City of Brotherly Love, where I’ve shuttled in for the day to give a talk about AI. Sadly, no AI has offered to bring me a cheesesteak. Yet. Speaking of AI: As promised, our video interview with OpenAI President Greg Brockman just posted.

You can watch it now—and below, I’ve shared a few behind-the-scenes moments, along with the biggest takeaways. 🎥 After that, the ins and outs of Apple’s new device-leasing program, which launched Tuesday. Plus, a LOLz about car screens and the history of the term “computer bug.”  🐜

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Why does ChatGPT’s voice need to sound so human? Why is the ChatGPT desktop app now a mess? What exactly is OpenAI planning to build next? And what happens when you invite ChatGPT to participate in a serious sit-down interview?

Last week, I interviewed Greg Brockman, OpenAI’s president and product chief, to find out all of that and more. Sam Altman may be the company’s public face, but Brockman is the man behind the curtain, helping shape everything from voice and the ChatGPT app to OpenAI’s coming hardware devices.  

We also got into some recent industry news, including the Hugging Face hack and Apple’s lawsuit against OpenAI. You can watch the interview now on YouTube, read the biggest takeaways below OR be an overachiever and do both.  

This was supposed to be a short fun fact about how the first computer bug 🪲 was an actual bug. As the story goes, in 1947, Grace Hopper discovered a moth trapped in the relay contacts of the Harvard Mark II computer. She cleverly labeled it "the first actual case of a bug being found.” But a newsletter written by Bryan Lunduke says there’s a bug in that story; there’s proof of the term being used prior to 1947. 🐜

See you on Friday! This newsletter was written and curated by Joanna Stern and Adele Lowitz.

Hello! I hope you had a great week—and, unlike me, didn’t have to ask ChatGPT why your neck sounds like a bowl of Rice Krispies every time you move it. More below on how many of us are turning to ChatGPT and other AI tools with our health questions.

Then: All your apps would like a word. Spotify, ChatGPT and Claude now want you to talk to them. Plus, a throwback to one of the greatest gadgets of all time, which celebrates its 47th birthday this month.

And coming up next week, my video interview with OpenAI President Greg Brockman. (Check out our clip of me asking him about the Hugging Face hack here.)

How I got a herniated disc isn’t important. (Actually, if you know, please tell me.) What is important: Like a growing number of people, I turned to ChatGPT for help navigating a week of symptoms, appointments, prescriptions and questions—and it was remarkably equipped to follow along.

Three in ten adults use AI for health advice, according to KFF. OpenAI estimates 300 million users ask ChatGPT health-related questions every week. As I said in a Today Show segment this week, AI medical advice has obvious appeal: It’s available 24/7, costs little to nothing and can generate simple answers from complicated links and medical jargon.

But. A big BUT! These tools can be wrong. They’re hungry for data. And they don’t have a complete picture of your health. That same KFF study found 77% of adults are concerned about the privacy of medical information shared with AI—even as 41% of people who use AI for health say they’ve uploaded personal medical information.

On Thursday, OpenAI began rolling out ChatGPT Health to U.S. users after testing it with a small group of users. The feature lets you connect Apple Health, supported medical records and certain health institutions, and then ask questions grounded in that information. Amazon and Microsoft have released health-related AI tools, too. 

It’s a Catch-22 for these companies: People are already asking AI medical questions, so making those conversations more informed and safer is better than pretending they aren’t happening. Yet building a dedicated health product encourages people to hand an AI company even more of their most sensitive information. 

I don’t have all the answers here, but I do have a few guiding principles for using these tools thoughtfully:  

Ask the basics. I didn’t take ChatGPT’s neck-and-back diagnosis at face value, but I did ask what might be causing the pain, how to relieve it and how to sleep better. As NBC News medical correspondent, Dr. Akshay Syal, said on the show, “Use it to learn about potential things going on in your body. Don’t use it to label yourself with a medical condition.” I wish that were obvious, but recent lawsuits show people are trusting these tools that can sometimes get it very wrong.

Watch your data. It’s tempting to upload that full blood panel workup and ask the bot to make sense of it. A safer bet is to paste in only relevant results and strip out your personal data (name, address, Social Security number, etc.) ChatGPT Health lets you log into some of your institutions via MyChart and other common medical-records dashboards. OpenAI says these are securely connected and their information isn't used to train its foundation models or target ads. But once you start talking to the bot about this info it can be part of its memory. And remember AI companies are not generally bound by HIPPA. 

Also, don’t forget to use the incognito, temporary mode in these chatbots. (Here’s my piece on that from a few weeks ago.)

AI is not a real doctor. In my Siri video a few weeks ago, I drew a fake rash on my arm with a marker and asked Siri and ChatGPT for medical advice. Siri flatly refused. ChatGPT, meanwhile, suggested heat rash or an allergic reaction. The point was partly to show Siri’s guardrails—and partly to show what a mixed bag these can be. A real doctor wouldn’t have needed long to diagnose me with “ink.”

Showing my fake rash to a real doctor on the Today Show. Credit: NBC News

All these products warn that AI can make mistakes and isn’t a substitute for a medical professional. OpenAI says it has improved its models’ handling of health questions, including recognizing when professional care may be needed and explaining uncertainty. 

Throughout my week of asking ChatGPT about my neck, it repeatedly told me to seek medical care if certain symptoms worsened. They did, so I did. Of course, when I got to the doctor’s office, we talked about what ChatGPT said. 

Every day, data brokers profit from your sensitive info—phone number, DOB, SSN. You name it, they sell it to the highest bidder. What happens then? Best case: Companies target you with ads. Worst case: Scammers and identity thieves breach those brokers, leaving your data vulnerable or on the dark web. 

This is where Incogni comes in. It scrubs your personal data from the web, confronting the world’s data brokers on your behalf. Incogni also helps remove your sensitive information from all broker types, including those tricky People Search Sites.

Help protect yourself from identity theft, spam calls and health insurers raising your rates. Plus, just for being a New Things reader, you get 55% off Incogni using the code JOANNA55.

Talk to Spotify—and Everything Else  

A few weeks ago, I wrote about the end of typing and how many now spend their days talking, talking, talking to computers.

Next week, I’ll go deeper on all of this in my interview with OpenAI President Greg Brockman, where we discussed ChatGPT’s new voice mode and our increasingly chatty relationships with machines. Until then, here are this week’s new voice tools to talk to, test out and possibly argue with:

Name: Kevin Radzewicz

What's your old thing? Sony Walkman WM-F 36

What year is your old thing from? Manufactured from 1987-1989 

Why do you love your old thing? This was revolutionary to me: portable music, so I wasn't anchored to the immobile stereo anymore. Also, the cassette tape was an international standard. I remember buying a Bon Jovi tape in Yokohama, Japan, and a Dire Straits tape at a souk in a Middle Eastern country. Finally, its greatest value was the ability to play the half-dozen or so bootleg Grateful Dead concert tapes that I had collected. Those were unique.

I’m tired of ending every newsletter with “See you next week,” so…did you know Nintendo was founded in 1889, before powered airplanes and commercial radio broadcasts? It originally made handmade playing cards. 🎴 This signoff is basically the back of a Snapple cap now.

This newsletter was written and curated by Joanna Stern and Adele Lowitz.

Good morning! We’re in your inbox early with all the Samsung phone news you could possibly unfold 📱🗺️: the new sizes, what they mean for the market, the coming Apple foldable competitor and an interview with one of Samsung’s top executives.

Plus: a new Light phone that’s basically the anti-foldable, Apple’s device-leasing program, OpenAI’s rogue hacking model and, naturally, watching “The Odyssey” on the tiniest screen possible—just as Christopher Nolan intended. 🎬

What’s the difference between a Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 8 Ultra, Fold 8 and Flip 8? Two fold, one flips and all three unfold your wallet. (Sorry.)

Making fun of Samsung’s product names is an old tradition. But what the company announced today is genuinely new, and far more consequential than its usual summer foldable refresh. Apple is expected to unveil its first foldable iPhone in September and RAMmageddon continues to drive up all consumer electronics prices. 

I spoke with one of Samsung’s top executives about Apple’s expected entry into the market and Samsung’s own seven-year head start. But first, let’s break down the differences between the three devices, so you don’t have to run the product names through a Samsung-to-human translator.

See you on Friday! This newsletter was written and curated by Joanna Stern and Adele Lowitz. 

Hello, and a very happy 📅 to you! Yes, it’s July 17—the one day a year your calendar emoji is actually correct. Why is 📅 permanently stuck on today’s date? You’ll have to scroll down to Old Thing #1 to find out. And yes, there’s an Old Thing #2. Making up for all our lost time last week!

But first: A recap of all the OpenAI device news and Apple drama in a deeply serious letter to OpenAI’s mysterious new gadget. Then, some weekend viewing: my latest feature video on how I’ve taken up a side hustle as a robot trainer.   

‼️ REMINDER: If you’re enjoying this newsletter, consider becoming a paid subscriber. You’ll get Wednesday’s subscriber-only newsletter, special editions and a lot more of my technology adventures. ‼️

PHOTO ILLUSTRATION: Reuters, ChatGPT

Dear mysterious OpenAI device,

I don't know what you are yet. A desk puck? A speaker? A pendant? A pair of glasses? A dog collar? A spelunking helmet? But I do know you've already started a fight.

Last week, Apple sued your maker, OpenAI, alleging that two former Apple employees who now work at OpenAI misappropriated Apple trade secrets to help build OpenAI's hardware business.

And, well, you. 

OpenAI denies the allegations. The company said in a statement: “We have no interest in other companies' trade secrets. While we take these allegations seriously, we’re not aware of any evidence that this complaint has merit."

The funny thing is, the lawsuit isn't really about you. It's about the possibility of you. Or, more accurately, the possibility of what happens if OpenAI becomes the next great hardware company.

Which brings us to the Ive in the room. For nearly three decades at Apple, Jony Ive helped design the company’s most iconic products, including the iMac, iPhone, Apple Watch and AirPods. He left the company in 2019, and six years later OpenAI acquired one of his companies, called io Products, and now it’s working to build whatever you are. 

Reports have suggested everything from a wearable companion to a device that sits on your desk. The leading theory right now, according to reporting from Bloomberg and the Information, is that you are a smart speaker. But from years of listening to OpenAI chief Sam Altman talk about AI hardware, here's what I know about you:

• You are not a smartphone. While there are reports OpenAI has plans to build one, the initial device isn't a phone. “You might want to interact with it in a different way than typing and looking at a screen,” Altman said on the OpenAI podcast in 2025, discussing why he thought AI required a new type of computer.

• You have a voice and sensors. Altman said on his brother’s Uncapped Podcast last year that AI enables a new sci-fi-like computer. “The form factor really matters, if it’s with you all the time and full of sensors,” he said, adding that it should understand what’s happening around you, keep track of lots of stuff and respond to small, simple commands. 

• You have brothers and sisters. When announcing the iO acquisition, Altman and Ive both said they were building a family of devices. 

Will this lawsuit delay your arrival? Who knows. But I understand why Apple is worried about you.

For years, ChatGPT was just an app on the iPhone—and, awkwardly, a service Apple itself integrated into Siri. Now Apple is confronting the possibility that OpenAI, with the designer behind some of its most iconic products, could build a new kind of computer that rivals its own. 🍿

Looking forward to meeting you. Whatever you are.

All best,

Joanna

Your identity sells for less than $1. Seriously, in the data broker market, personal profiles are cheap. For a few dollars—or sometimes cents—buyers can access detailed records about real people.

Addresses. Phone numbers. Relatives. Property history. That information fuels scams, spam and identity fraud. All things we try to help you prevent here at the New Things. Incogni helps shut down that pipeline by removing your personal information from hundreds of broker databases automatically.

Stop your data from leaking into more places and try Incogni today. Plus, readers of the New Things get 55% off annual plans with code JOANNA55.

Did you miss our latest video, where I strapped an iPhone camera to my head, did chores and attempted to personally usher in the robot revolution in exchange for about $55?

This weekend, sit back, relax and learn why humanoid robots have a massive data problem—and why companies are now paying regular people to film their hands folding laundry, loading dishwashers and picking up dog poop.

This Old Thing is not from a community member, unless you count Steve Jobs as a community member.

If you’re a frequent emoji user, you may have noticed that the calendar emoji says “July 17.” 📅 Every. Single. Day. And today, for once, it’s right!

So, why that date? Exactly 24 years ago today, Steve Jobs unveiled Apple’s iCal at Macworld Expo 2002.

"I’d like to introduce a new app today called iCal,” Jobs said. “We have created the best calendar that I’ve ever seen on a computer.” 

And by 2002 standards, iCal was pretty great. Jobs called it the first calendar built for the internet age. It allowed you to view multiple calendars in a single interface and share them with other people. Features we take for granted today, but ones that felt genuinely novel at the time.

No wonder Apple wanted to have memorialized in everlasting emoji history. 📅 📆 🗓️ Because of this, today is World Emoji Day. Send at least one 📅 to a friend in honor of the occasion.

Name: Clayton Dewberry

What's your old thing? HP 100LX strapped to an Ericsson MOBiDEM

What year is your old thing from? Early ‘90s

Why do you love your old thing? In the early ’90s I worked for a U.S. firm, RAM Mobile Data. It was an Ericsson-Bell South partnership to promote the growth of their packet-radio network, Mobitex. We sold two-way wireless data before two-way pagers existed. It was pretty cool. Using software called RadioMail, you could send a wireless email from point A to B in under five seconds. We used an HP 100LX strapped to an Ericsson MOBiDEM, connected by a short serial cable. That was the precursor to the two-way pager, and eventually the Blackberry. 

Have a great day 📅 ! This newsletter was written and curated by Joanna Stern and Adele Lowitz. 

And we’re back! I hope you missed me as much as I missed you. As you’re about to see, I mostly spent my break training the robots by strapping a phone to my head and recording myself doing chores around the house. Very restful. Very normal.

We’re out with a new video feature and column about my side hustle as a robot trainer.  It’s fun, dystopian and a pretty good preview of what happens when the gig economy goes “Black Mirror.” Also ahead: a handy tool for figuring out the speed of your USB-C cables, plus a preview of OpenAI’s first wearable. Kinda.

Just call me Wayne Szalinski from Honey, I Shrunk the Kids. I'll answer.

For the past three weeks, I’ve been wearing a phone harness—complete with a chin strap—on my head and recording myself doing chores around the house. Then the footage is uploaded to MicroAGI, a German startup that collects data to train robots, in exchange for up to $20 an hour. 

That’s the pitch, anyway: Teach future robots to fold laundry, clean the tables and—my proudest contribution—pick up warm dog poop. Make money in return. 

And I’m not alone. People around the world are doing the same thing, including apartment cleaners in New York City. Through its Shift program, MicroAGI pays the cleaners, while customers get a free cleaning. The company, which recently raised $55 million, gets hours of first-person video. Yes, I saw it in action. And then I strapped myself in. And you can see it in our new feature video.

Here’s what I learned.

This newsletter was written and curated by Joanna Stern and Adele Lowitz. Not by the robots. 🤖 See you tomorrow! 📆

First, a recap of our reporting. 

We found that in at least 30 states, people were offering services on Facebook Marketplace to drill out the LED indicator on Ray-Ban Meta glasses—the light that alerts people when you are recording. I had the service done myself in New Jersey. All I did was pay a guy $100, and I walked out with a pair of glasses that could record without any indicator at all. 

Our video and story circulated widely. Today Meta responded in a big way to this issue. Here’s how: 

OK, now back to vacation with… my new Meta glasses. ⛱️ Seriously, I’m testing the new Adventurer edition—working LED and all. See you next week. 🕶️

Hello. Is anyone out there? Just nod if you can hear me. Is anyone working today? (Yes, you have to sing that to the Pink Floyd classic.) I hope everyone’s holiday weekend is off to a good start—or whatever this week is now. I’m about to take a break myself; see programming note below.

But first, I dictated this whole newsletter—or at least I tried. More below on how Wispr Flow and other AI voice tools are taking over, and why I fear my kids will never learn to type. Plus: how to reserve your WhatsApp username and ChatGPT invades the real world.

📆  Programming note: This newsletter is off Friday, and the newsletter and video series will be off next week too. It’s been a wild couple of months, and I need a little rest. Don’t worry, we’ll be back the week of July 13. Have a great holiday weekend. I’ll miss you all! 📆

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We have gathered here today to mourn the keyboard. Rest in peace, typing with fingers.

It feels very strange not to type this newsletter but to write it with my mouth. Yes, I dictated this entire column—or at least the first draft—using Wispr Flow, an AI-powered software.

Some call this being “voicepilled” or “voicemaxxing.” Whatever you call it, more people are embracing AI . And startups like Wispr Flow, which says it has a few million users, are pushing Apple, Google and others to make voice input dramatically better. (See Android’s new Rambler feature. See Apple’s improved dictation in iOS 27 that promises better accuracy.)

For me, it’s still weird. When I have an idea I want to think through or an important note to write, my hands instinctively want to tap-tap-tap a laptop keyboard. Typing feels like thinking. But my 9-year-old son barely knows how to type. They don’t teach it in school anymore. What he does know: how to find the microphone icon and dictate on his iPad and school Chromebook. (This summer, I’m starting Mom Teaches Typing Camp. He’s thrilled.)

AI has quietly fixed many of the things that made voice-to-text so frustrating for decades. The result is that voice is becoming the fastest—and in some cases the best—way to get words into a computer. Why now? Three big reasons…  

For those in 🇺🇸 America, I hope your holiday weekend is full of  ☀️ sunshine, 🌭 hot dogs, 🎆 fireworks and as little screen time as possible. See you the week of July 13.

This newsletter was written and curated by Joanna Stern and Adele Lowitz.

Hello from Aspen, where the altitude is high and I am NOT. I’m speaking this weekend at the Aspen Ideas Festival, so come say hi if you’re around these parts. But before you head off to enjoy your weekend with a good book, make sure it’s not an AI clone from Apple Books. The platform is riddled with AI ripoffs of real books—including mine and so many others.

Then, Apple and Microsoft have started raising prices on gadgets in a big way. Why buying refurbished might not save you much. And instead of an Old Thing this week, we’re taking a peek into your cord closets. Yes, all those savvy cable organizers finally get their moment.

‼️ REMINDER: If you’re enjoying this newsletter, consider becoming a paid subscriber. You’ll get Wednesday’s subscriber-only newsletter, special editions and a lot more of my technology adventures. ‼️

Apple has an AI book slop problem. A big one.

Last month, just days after my book went on sale, AI knockoffs of the ebook version flooded Apple Books. There was Joanna Stern On I Am Not A Robot by Sophie Mercer. I AM NOT A ROBOT by Finn Tech. I AM NOT A ROBOT by Joana Stern—with one “n.” (Watch our latest video showing all these titles and more.)

The Knockoffs 

In total, I found ten AI-generated ebooks clearly riding on mine, with AI-generated covers mimicking the style of my real one—the same blue, yellow and red color palette. Most were priced at $9.99, but some have gone as high as $20.99.

So I bought a few to see just how close they came to the original. Sophie Mercer’s version was essentially an AI-generated summary, with chapters and a structure that closely mirrored mine. This and the other counterfeits I looked through all seemed intended to fool readers into thinking this was the original—or at least a summary of it. 

We tried tracking down Sophie Mercer, but she doesn’t exist. Well, other than as a character in a show named “Warrior.” We also tried to track down her purported publisher, “Apex Press,” but instead found only Apex Book Company, a legit independent press. 

“Unfortunately, Apex is a popular name for knockoffs. We receive several queries each week from people with fraudulent or bad dealings with apparently crooked Apex publishers,” Jason Sizemore, who owns the real Apex, told me.   

Apple’s Whac-A-Mole Problem  

After I contacted Apple about my own book’s clones back in May, the knockoffs quickly disappeared.

An Apple spokeswoman told me Apple Books strictly prohibits content that misleads customers or infringes on copyrights. Apple also requires authors and publishers to clearly disclose when a book is AI-generated (but not “AI-assisted”). It investigates publishers who upload lots of books that appear to mislead customers or exploit others’ intellectual property. If you think a book violates Apple’s rules, you can submit a claim here. 

But now, a month after that first Apple cleanup, the problem is back. At the start of this week, there were at least three other I AM NOT A ROBOT counterfeits on Apple Books. (They seem to have since been removed.)

And I’m not alone. Lena Dunham’s Famesick has multiple lookalikes on the platform. Haley Sacks’s Future Rich Person has copycats that even use AI generated images of women on the cover that resemble the real author.  

These aren’t obscure titles. They’re bestsellers. If Apple can’t keep AI knockoffs of its highest-profile books out of its store, how can independent authors or small publishers feel confident theirs will be protected?

Apple declined to comment further.

Amazon, Too 

Amazon’s issue wasn’t AI clones of popular ebooks, it was print “workbooks.” I found two of these based on I AM NOT A ROBOT, so naturally I bought those, too. And for $15 a pop! What arrived were thin paperbacks with a few generic discussion questions followed by lined-notebook pages. 

Amazon removed the workbooks. A company spokesman says Amazon has guidelines around which books can be listed, and it uses both proactive and reactive systems to remove violations.

While the workbooks were arguably less deceptive than the AI slop on Apple Books, they’re another example of how easily low-effort “publishers” are exploiting successful titles.

The real problem here is consumer deception. If someone searches for a bestselling book, can they trust that’s what they’re actually buying? 

Right now, on Apple Books, the answer is a hard no. 

Credit: GETTY IMAGES

Last Friday, we told you Apple price hikes were coming. This Friday, we’re telling you they’re here. Apple jacked up prices on Macs and iPads this week by as much as $200. Up until now, the company has largely absorbed rising component costs, driven by the AI boom, but as Apple said in a statement, “we have never seen a component price increase this much, this quickly." 

While the company said it’s “working tirelessly to find solutions,” it's tempting to skip buying new, more expensive products and head toward refurbished ones in moments like these. Yet Apple has raised prices there, too.  

Refurbished devices often require new parts—memory, storage, etc.—so their costs are increasing as well, an Apple spokesperson said. Since refurbished products are cheaper than new ones, price hikes on new products can also push up the costs of their refurbished counterparts.

Still, you might want to check out refurbished device sites like Back Market or Amazon Renewed to avoid paying top dollar—and then some—for the latest gadgets.

Cord organization courtesy of Laura Fong, Pat Byrne and Amanda Jefferson (left to right).

A few weeks ago I shared my Museum of Ancient Cords (MoAC)—a collection built over the past 30-something years, along with my sorting system of cable wraps, Ziploc bags and boxes. Turns out many of you are fellow cord hoarders, with very impressive organizational systems. Honestly, I’m not surprised. Great minds keep 15 spare Mini-USB cables.

Your submissions were so good they deserved their own feature:

All I know is I feel better knowing I am not alone. There are many others out there who understand the sacred cord-hoarder creed: YOU NEVER KNOW…WHEN YOU MIGHT NEED FOUR 30-PIN CHARGING CABLES. Amen.

Have a great weekend! 🏌This newsletter was written and curated by Joanna Stern and Adele Lowitz. Amaya Austin contributed to reporting on Apple Books.

Hi! Happy Amazon Prime Day(s) to all who celebrate. May your week be filled with discounted home goods and impulse gadget buys. Today’s Useful Thing: how to tell if a deal is actually a deal.

But first, I fell for an AI spearphishing scam. Well, sort of. Then AI helped me spot it. Here’s how large language models are making scams much harder to detect—and what you can do about it. Plus, another week, another pair of smart glasses. This time: more stylish, more Kylie Jenner.

🔔 Reminder: Today’s full newsletter—with all the tips, advice and recommendations—is for paid subscribers. You can sign up here to read the full edition. 🔔

Joanna Stern and the email scammer who pretended to be author Mitch Albom. Photo illustration: Getty Images, New Things

Obviously I should have known: Mitch Albom has better things to do than email me. 

But I grew up reading Tuesdays with Morrie and The Five People You Meet in Heaven, so when famed author “Mitch Albom” popped up in my inbox to say he enjoyed my new book—that it had “stayed with me longer than most”—I was excited. So excited I texted my mom immediately. And my wife. 

Now, to be clear, my spidey senses went off. The email address wasn’t from Mitch’s website domain. It was close, but not quite. Plus, the email included the line, “I’m not writing to pitch anything,” which, in my experience, is something people say right before they pitch you something.

So I wrote “Mitch” back and asked for more proof. A Mitch Albom CAPTCHA, I joked.

“Mitch” replied with a compelling answer, full of details about his life and books. But most of that could have come from the internet. So I asked for a voice memo or audio recording about his favorite section of my book. 

“Mitch” said he couldn’t do that. By then, I knew “Mitch” wasn’t the real Mitch. I even confirmed it with HarperCollins, the publisher of both my book and many of Mitch’s—the real Mitch, not air-quotes Mitch.

But I kept the conversation going to figure out why “he” had gone to such lengths to spearphish (a highly targeted phishing attempt) me. Around email eight, “Mitch” finally explained. “The honest version: I started this with a loose intention of eventually connecting you with someone I work with, a book marketer who’s exceptional at getting the right books in front of the right audiences.”

Ah ha! For weeks, I’d been hearing from book-marketer spammers. Finally, one got me with a smart impersonation and clean, straightforward writing. I asked “Mitch” if he was using AI to write this. “Honestly? No chatbot. No LLM,” he wrote back. “Just me, a keyboard, and apparently way too much time to craft emails to a tech reporter who was determined to catch me out.” Sounds like AI to me! 

I share this not only to risk my reputation as an eagle-eyed tech journalist, but because this is exactly how AI-era scams work now. Broken English and Nigerian princes have been subbed for believable flattery, crisp prose and a lot of personal detail.

Here’s what I learned about how to protect myself in the future:  

This newsletter was written and curated by Joanna Stern and Adele Lowitz. 

We meet again! Three days in a row. What will you do without me tomorrow? Don’t answer that. In case you missed it yesterday, we published our latest video: my week with the new Siri AI. If you’re a subscriber, you can read my column on it, too.

But that was yesterday. Today, I’m here to tell you it’s the worst time to buy an iPhone. Actually, sorry. It’s the best time to buy an iPhone. I argue both sides below.

Then, this week’s Old Thing is a fan favorite—or rather, four fans’ favorite. Lovers of the HP 12C unite!

‼️ REMINDER: If you’re enjoying this newsletter, consider becoming a paid subscriber. You’ll get Wednesday’s subscriber-only newsletter, special editions and a lot more of my technology adventures. ‼️

The next iPhones will be more expensive. Thanks, AI. 

On Wednesday, outgoing Apple CEO Tim Cook announced the company is raising product prices because AI chip demand has hiked the costs of memory and storage. “Unfortunately, price increases are unavoidable,” Cook told the Wall Street Journal. He didn’t say exactly which products would be impacted or how much prices would rise. But analysts—and another Wall Street Journal report—suggest they could climb as much as $200 on the next iPhone. 

Fans of my long-time WSJ column know that when school is out for the summer, I give the same annual advice: Do NOT buy a new iPhone right now. The logic is always the same. In early September, there will be new iPhones. And even if you don’t care about the new devices, the current ones will get cheaper.

But now Mr. Cook has kicked sand all over my routine advice. So if you need a new phone, buy now before prices go up. Actually, wait, don’t do that. Welcome to iPhone Buying Fight Club, where I argue both sides. 

Do NOT buy a new iPhone right now.  

OK, sure, your battery is depleting and your phone is slow, but what’s a few more months, you wuss? The next iPhone is around the corner. If you buy now, you’ll miss out on the new features Apple announces in September. There’s talk of a foldable iPhone! Pro models getting better cameras! A smaller Dynamic Island! New colors! 9to5Mac has a good roundup of the iPhone 18 Pro rumors.

In the meantime, go to the Apple Store and see if you can get a battery replacement for around $100. Replace the cracked screen. Both will help your resale or trade-in value when the time comes. Get a microfiber cloth and wipe off that gross layer of mystery grease. Delete some photos or get a higher tier of iCloud storage. Believe in yourself.

Plus, iOS 27, which comes out in the fall, is going to improve performance, so maybe you won’t even need a new phone. (I’ve already seen apps launching faster in the beta on my iPhone 17 Pro.) 

Most important, we don’t actually know what Apple will do. It might raise prices by $200. Or only $50. Buying a $1,000-plus device because of a hypothetical future price increase is exactly the sort of panic buying that leads people to stock their basements with toilet paper and canned beans.

DO buy an iPhone right now.

If Apple really raises prices by as much as $200, you’re going to be wiping your tears with those extra dollar bills. And is that new iPhone really going to be that much different than the current iPhone 17 or 17 Pro out now? Ooooh, a new shade of blue. 

There’s the reality that these phones don’t change much year to year anymore. Most people don’t buy iPhones because they’re excited about a slightly better camera or a smaller Dynamic Island. (Most people: What is a Dynamic Island? Is it included with Disney World admission?) Most buy new phones when their current phone is at its end of life.

So yes, that nice-looking iPhone 17 Pro—especially in that orange color, and with RAM and storage still priced before the AI chip apocalypse—looks enticing. I’d way rather pay $1,099 for it right now than, say, $1,299 for it in three months. 

OK, so those are the arguments. And honestly, there is no wrong answer here. You either wait, get more features and spend more money, OR buy now and save some money and get slightly older technology. In other words, everything is going to be fine. At least for Apple. 

One of the less glamorous parts of running New Things? Figuring out where the money goes. After a week of shoots in California, I had receipts for a straw hat, coconut cookies and other highly necessary journalism supplies scattered everywhere.

Luckily, Mercury just introduced an AI helper called Command. I can ask questions about my business finances in plain English, like: “How much did we spend in California?” Instead of digging through statements and spreadsheets, Command pulls together the answer. And it does this without asking why I bought a new bathing suit and straw hat for a work trip.  

You can also ask Command to do financial work for you, like: “Pay David $100 for going to the beach with me.” It asks you to confirm the information and then quickly sends off the payment.  

And because all of those expenses were on my Mercury IO Mastercard, everything is already organized in one place. It’s a far better experience than the traditional business banking tools I used before.

Banking that works the way modern software does: fast, clean, no branch visits, no hold music, no fax machine energy. Exactly what I needed right now. Check them out here.

Mercury is a financial technology company, not a bank. Banking services provided through Choice Financial Group and Column N.A., Members FDIC. The IO Card is issued by Patriot Bank, N.A., Member FDIC, pursuant to a license from Mastercard International Incorporated.

In the span of a few days, four different readers sent in their HP 12C calculators. There has always been an alarming amount of enthusiasm for this calculator. So I present this week’s quadruple-feature Old Thing.

What's your old thing? HP 12C Financial Calculator

What year is your old thing from? Introduced in 1981

Why do you love your old thing?

One last thing before we go: This morning we crossed 100,000 subscribers on YouTube! That’s just two months after publishing our first video.

To everyone who subscribes, watches, reads, comments, emails and tells their friends about New Things: thank you! 🙏🏻 We honestly didn’t know what would happen when we started this thing a couple of months ago and the support has blown us away.

We’re so grateful to have you as part of this community. Now let’s see if we can get new Siri to subscribe, too.

This newsletter was written and curated by Joanna Stern and Adele Lowitz. Have a great weekend! ☀️

Hello again! It’s a special breaking-news Thursday edition of the newsletter. Well, breaking if you’ve spent the last decade yelling at Siri.

The unbelievable has happened: Siri is finally good. Or at least it will be when iOS 27 arrives this fall. I’ve been testing Apple’s new AI-powered Siri beta for the last week. Our feature video just hit YouTube. If you’ve followed my work, you know I’ve been one of Siri’s most loyal critics. This is a big deal for AI, for Apple and YOU. Much more on it all below. 

If you aren’t a paid subscriber, sign up here to read the full newsletter.

You can see the shock on my face as I’m standing on a street in Santa Cruz. (You can actually see it in the video.)

“I’d like to get some souvenirs for the kids. Based on what you know about them, what should I get them here?” I asked the new Siri in my iPhone 17 Pro. 

The AI-powered assistant paused for a few seconds, then blurted out a long answer, identifying my kids by their first names and suggesting:

The answer was dead on. It was exactly what my eldest son, who had just gotten a real-life snake (pray for me), would want.

Then, in some strange miracle, I crossed the street and there it was: a stuffed animal snake sitting in a shop window. The real miracle? Apple’s assistant delivered a highly personalized, highly accurate answer based on one detail buried in a message my uncle sent me on May 31.

Last week at its developers conference, Apple announced that its new AI-powered Siri is coming to iOS 27 this fall. But! Apple also demoed a smarter Siri back in 2024 and never shipped it. So you can understand why I immediately downloaded the early beta and spent the past week testing every Apple demo—plus plenty that no executive would ever dare show during a keynote. Yes, of course, I’m talking about trying to make Siri my AI girlfriend.

Sure, the Siri bar has been lower than a limbo stick. But over the last week, I found myself choosing Apple’s assistant over ChatGPT more than once—and not because this experiment required it. Here’s why.

Hello! Hope you’re having a great week. Let’s do a little calendaring: Today’s paid-subscriber newsletter is a bit shorter because tomorrow we have a special edition column with a video we’ve been working hard on. Then I’ll be back again on Friday. So many newsletters.

Below, some exciting anti-smartphone gadget launches that have caught my eye, including a “callback” to the Commodore. Plus, Snap’s new Specs might just crush it—and by it, I mean your ears.

CREDIT: Snap, Commodore

There are two camps in the anti-smartphone movement right now.

The first wants less technology. They cheer for flip phones! MP3 players! Point-and-shoot cameras! And really anything that can’t send a push notification.

The second camp wants different technology. They aren’t trying to go backward, they’re trying to move beyond the smartphone. Their vision involves AI glasses, earbuds, pendants, pins and whatever gadget can eliminate or at least cut down our dependence on rectangular screens. 

These two groups probably don’t agree on much—I haven’t tried to get representatives from both sides together at Camp David to confirm. But they do share a core belief: We spend way too much time looking down at glowing slabs.

Around half of Americans want to reduce their screentime, which averages around five hours a day, according to a YouGov survey last summer. The last 24 hours brought two fresh gadget announcements from both camps that I thought were really interesting. Let’s review them.

This newsletter was written and curated by Joanna Stern and Adele Lowitz. Don’t miss us too much. We’ll be back tomorrow!

Hello! I don’t want to become one of those people who opens every newsletter with “Happy Friday,” but after making the round-trip cross-country trek to Apple HQ, I am ready to marry Friday.

I’m also going to admit something: I need a brief break from thinking about AI and big tech news. Not a permanent break. More of a long weekend. So today’s Thing of the Week is about cord organization. Yes, I’m going to tell you how I straightened out the mess of cables in my closet. This is where I am now. 

Then, how to take control of your Instagram algorithm—kind of. And an old Apple Newton that reminds us Apple can be wrong, wildly early and still somehow right at the same time.

Here’s the assumption I’m making today: If you subscribe to this newsletter, you’re interested enough in technology to feel sentimental about old cords and connectors. You—or at least someone you love—are nerdy enough to look at an old DVI cable and think, “Well, you just never know.”

As I often tell my wife: If someone needs a Micro USB cable—or 10 of them—I want to be the one they call. The same goes for some ancient dongle that once connected my laptop to a projector in 2009. You laugh now, but when the day comes and you urgently need a MiniDisplayPort-to-VGA adapter, I will be at the ready. 

So when I left the Wall Street Journal and started New Things, I had to reorganize my entire home office/attic to make room for the new studio, cameras and gear. That also meant a bunch of cords and old tech came home from my WSJ office and joined the already thriving Museum of Ancient Cords (MoAC) in my closet. Its permanent collection was robust but needed some curating. 

I thought hard about this job. Did I ask Claude and ChatGPT for a little help? Maybe. But mostly, I studied photos of other people’s cord-storage systems. I’m not promising this is the correct way to organize your cord closet, cord box or cord satchel. I simply offer my way—which, by the way, is a cheap and easy way:

The pride I now feel looking at my work? I assume it’s what Monet felt looking at his water lilies. I’d love to see your cord systems OR your cable chaos. Maybe we’ll feature some of the best next week. We’re building a community here at New Things, one that’s safe for people who still have at least five FireWire cables.

Customize your Instagram algorithm

This week, Instagram head Adam Mosseri announced “Talking to Your Algorithm,” where users can tell Instagram what they want to see in their feeds—cooking videos, interior design inspiration or whatever hyper-specific rabbit hole they’re deep into at the moment. 

This isn’t a radical move, to be fair. Instagram has long let users tell the algorithm they want to see less of certain kinds of posts. What’s different now is that Instagram is making it much clearer what it thinks you’re interested in and giving you a more direct way to steer it.

Meta’s summary of my algorithm was pretty dead on: “Lately you've been into machine learning breakthroughs, investigative reporting and high-performance vehicles.” Not sure where the vehicles came from, but sure. Actually, wait, I did watch one Mark Rober video with a Rivian R2.

This all points to the bigger trend across Instagram and social media: It’s no longer just about who you follow. It’s about what you watch, linger on and engage with. So yes, this new feature gives you a little more control. But let’s be clear: these companies still want to preserve algorithmic control over your feed while giving you the impression that you’re in the driver’s seat.  

Here’s how to review and tailor those recommendations so you’re more in control:

No promises that this will completely alter your feed, but here’s to trying!

Name: Donald Hawk

What's your old thing? Apple Newton Message 120

What year is your old thing from? 1994

Why do you love your old thing? I had the original Newton and later upgraded to this model. A friend at work and I were the only ones who had them, and we used to take notes in meetings with them. I remember the weird character squiggles that you needed to make with the stylus. I just popped in four AA batteries, and it still works! I had to try it.  

This newsletter was written and curated by Joanna Stern and Adele Lowitz. Have a great weekend. I’ll be spending mine with the new Siri, trying to convince her we can be more than just friends.

Surprise! It’s me. On a Tuesday. From Cupertino. Yesterday was a jam-packed day at Apple Park, where the company announced a whole lot of new software. I wanted to make sure you had the latest on Siri, Apple Intelligence and all the other notable iOS 27 features so the newsletter is here 24 hours early. More on the biggest Apple announcements below and in our new video here!

🚨 REMINDER: Today’s newsletter—normally the Wednesday edition, though let’s just call it the midweek newsletter—is for paid subscribers. Subscribe here to become one and read everything below. See you again on Friday. 🚨

Yesterday, as Apple’s WWDC keynote wrapped up and I emerged from watching the show on a giant outdoor screen surrounded by Apple developers and other event attendees, I had two unexpected thoughts: That was fast. That was boring.

Usually Apple’s annual software keynote is much longer and it leaves me feeling many things: curious, skeptical, wondering what Craig Federighi’s prop budget is. But bored? That’s a new one.

Then I realized that was exactly the point. 

After last year’s Liquid Glass hubbub, which wasn’t exactly universally beloved (see: yesterday’s new lessen Liquid Glass slider), and 2024’s WWDC, which promised a smarter Siri and then made everyone wait two years for it (see: yesterday’s “It’s finally here!” Siri update), Apple seemed determined to steady the ship.

Apple’s mission: Improve and patch the software billions of people use. Deliver the Siri upgrades it’s been promising for years on end. Do not make Craig jump out of a plane. (Seriously, even yesterday’s video presentation was full of less crazy transitions, special effects and stunts.)

In that respect, Apple’s event was exactly what it needed to be: focused on the foundation. Here’s my recap of what I found most interesting, why the company is treating this rather boring reset as a foundational moment and why that comes as a relief.

Today’s newsletter was written and curated by Joanna Stern and Adele Lowitz. 

Hello! Happy WWDC Eve. 📱On Monday, I’ll be in Cupertino covering Apple’s developer conference. Stay tuned for special coverage next week right here and on the New Things YouTube channel. Below, you’ll find my top wishes for iOS 27, including, yes, a better Siri. You’ll also want to check out our video looking back at 15 years of Siri promises.

Then, how to use Meta glasses without Meta’s cloud storage. And an Old Thing I could really use right now so I don’t get distracted by… Oh, look, another browser tab. 

🚨 REMINDER: Friday’s newsletters are free, but Wednesday’s are for paid subscribers only. Upgrade here so you don’t miss the deeper columns, extra reporting and other stuff we have in store. Thanks for supporting our independent journalism. 🚨

To prepare for WWDC, I did what any normal person would do: watch 15 years of Siri keynote demos.

I learned two things. First, Apple really loves saying, “Now, let’s talk about Siri.” Second, Apple has always believed Siri would be—as it said at the now-teenage product’s debut in 2011—the “intelligent personal assistant that goes everywhere with you.”

Apple has steadily built out that second part of the vision. Siri really is everywhere: in our iPhones, cars, HomePods, Apple TVs, AirPods, Macs and watches. The “intelligent” part? Not quite. I won’t rehash the history of Apple’s failed AI and Siri promises. It’s well known. So are my efforts to call out Apple executives on it.

But on Monday, Apple gets another do-over. Its hotly anticipated, Google Gemini-fueled Siri revamp is a fresh—and perhaps its last credible—chance to show how Siri can become the intelligent personal assistant Apple has been promising since 2011.

Here’s what I’m hoping to see from Siri, plus a few other iOS wishes that are far less ambitious and more about just giving us the basics:

1) A conversational, competent Siri. 🎙️

Apple has already announced that Gemini will “power future Apple Intelligence features, including a more personalized Siri coming this year.” That’s what I expect we’ll see previewed on Monday—the long-awaited version that can access your information across apps and use what’s on your screen to answer useful questions in contexts specific to you. This Siri will likely sound and look more like the AI we already use. Bloomberg has reported that Apple is working on a Siri-like chatbot you could text with, mirroring the experience of using ChatGPT or Gemini. Watch my our looking back at 15 years of Siri promises—from voice changes, upgrades and redesigns, despite a flatlined IQ.

2) Autocorrect that actually works. ⌨️

As I wrote a few weeks ago, something has happened to iOS autocorrect—and the iOS 26.4 update didn’t fully fix it. I’d love to see a new AI engine behind the keyboard, better dictation and something closer to a Wispr Flow-style keyboard. At the very least, I’d like my iPhone to stop “fixing” words I very much meant to type and then completely changing typos to words that don’t make any contextual sense! 

3) Split-screen apps. 🗺️

Samsung and other Android phones have long let you put two apps side by side on larger screens. On an iPhone Pro Max, there’s plenty of room to stack two apps vertically or place them side by side when holding the phone horizontally. And with all the reports of a foldable iPhone on the way, there’s no better time for Apple to bring real multitasking to iOS. Let me keep Notes open while I browse the web. Let me watch a video while answering a message. Let the big phone act like a big phone.

4) Airpods app.  🎧

I mentioned this a few weeks ago on X and it got quite a reaction. Give us one place for the noise cancellation controls, hearing features, gestures, battery details and all the other tiny toggles we can never find in Settings when we need them.

5) Parental controls that work.  🧑‍🧑‍🧒‍🧒

It shouldn’t be that hard. If I set a time limit on an app, it should sync instantly from my phone to my kids’ iPads. If I approve a download request, it shouldn’t take multiple tries. It’s been years since Apple gave parental controls meaningful attention. I wrote about these problems while I was at The Wall Street Journal. So did my former colleagues. Parents have been dealing with the same frustrations for far too long.

Maybe this is our year. Apple is already navigating new child-safety requirements, including age-verification rules tied to app downloads in Texas. 

Stop Meta Glasses Cloud Uploads

CREDIT: META and GETTY IMAGES

Wednesday's newsletter featured our recent reporting on Facebook Marketplace sellers who disable the recording light in Meta Ray-Bans, allowing wearers to record in what they call “stealth mode.” But another Meta glasses concern I hear often is, “I don’t want my photos and videos shared or stored with Meta.” So today’s Useful Thing is a quick check to make sure footage recorded on your Meta Glasses stays local and does not make its way to Meta. Here’s how to do it on the Meta AI app:

1. Tap Glasses in the top right corner 

2. Go to Device Settings 

3. Swipe down from the top of the page and tap Glasses Privacy 

4. Make sure Cloud Media is toggled off

Recordings will still save to the Meta AI app gallery and directly to your iPhone’s Photos app, so they can still be backed up to iCloud. That means you can go back and review first-person footage of yourself to confirm that, yes, you absolutely nailed that ski mogul jump. Or whatever it is you record hands-free.

Name: Kelly Skovron

What’s your old thing? Renaissance Learning AlphaSmart Neo 2

What year is your old thing from? 2007

Why do you love your old thing?  Back in 2011, I was on a really tight deadline and my colleague told me that if I needed to crank out a novel fast, I should write it on an AlphaSmart. It's just a keyboard and a monochrome LCD screen, and it stores up to eight plain text files that can be exported to a computer via USB. It runs on three AA batteries that last for literally months. No distractions, no temptations, no futzing, just raw prose output. Oh, and it only cost me $30. I do wish the LCD had back-lighting, but otherwise it's perfect. I've been using it on and off for 15 years and it's never let me down.

This newsletter was written and curated by Joanna Stern and Adele Lowitz. Have a great weekend! And may all your Siri dreams come true.

Hello! Warning: I’m about to cram a lot into this newsletter. First, I take you into the garage of a stranger, where I get the recording light removed from my Ray-Ban Meta glasses. Turns out, turning smart glasses into stealthier smart glasses is now a nationwide phenomenon.

Then the biggest headlines from Computex, where there’s exciting innovation in Windows PCs. Seriously. And finally, a Google app-icon meme that made me laugh way more than it should have.

And a reminder: the Wednesday newsletter is for paid subscribers. You can subscribe here to read the full story.

A week ago, I found myself in a stranger’s garage in New Jersey with $100 and a pair of $250 Ray-Ban Meta camera glasses.

This stranger, whom I met on Facebook Marketplace, had prepared by laying out a drill, a dental probe and some tape. The goal: Remove the LED recording light that tells people in my vicinity when they’re being filmed, a privacy PSA feature that comes built in to the glasses.

The things I do for journalism. To be clear, I did not go alone. David Hall, New Things’ head of video, was with me. And with help from our partners at NBC News, we ran a background check on the service provider before showing up to his house.

The man agreed to be interviewed and show us the process as long as we kept his name and face out of the story. He told us he does this process multiple times a week. And he’s not alone. According to our reporting, people are offering this service in at least 30 states—despite Meta’s attempts to stop it. 

You should watch our latest feature video to go inside the light-removal process, learn why people want these modifications done and hear an expert’s take on whether it’s legal. But I also wanted to share some of the reporting that didn’t make it into the final cut, and explore what happens as smart glasses spread beyond Meta to devices from Google, Samsung and, almost certainly, Apple.

Today’s newsletter was written and curated by Joanna Stern and Adele Lowitz. Additional reporting for the Meta story by Amaya Austin and David Hall.  

Let’s check out some data. Despite research showing AI doesn’t always provide the best medical insight, about a third of people are using chatbots for health information and advice, according to a survey from the nonprofit KFF. Meanwhile, 55% of respondents in a TD Bank survey reported using AI to help them make financial decisions.

In other words, people are increasingly turning to AI for some of the most sensitive parts of their lives: their health, money and personal decisions. You know, exactly the kind of information you wouldn’t want shared with the world—or at least used to train the next AI model.

Today’s newsletter is NOT a judgment on your choice to use these tools for sensitive stuff. Nor is it a deep dive into what could happen to that data once it’s in these systems. We’ll save that panic spiral for another day. Instead, after talking to a lot of people, I’ve realized there are some basic AI hygiene tips that many aren’t using. If you’re going to use AI for personal tasks, at the very least, make sure you’re doing these three simple things: 

1) Turn on temporary chats or incognito mode. Use this whenever you’re sharing something sensitive with an AI chatbot. These chats don’t get saved to your chat history or memory, and they aren’t used to train the models. You start with a blank slate, meaning the AI won’t remember anything from your previous conversations.

At least it’s consistently in the same spot across the major apps! Use these modes for anything even a little bit sensitive: medical questions, financial questions, relationship issues, work concerns or anything else you wouldn’t want showing up in your chat history or being remembered in future conversations. The companies may hold on to information in these chats for a short period of time before deleting them.

2) Strip out personal info. Even in temporary chats, never share highly sensitive information. No Social Security numbers, bank account details, passwords or other personal identifiers. Share just what’s necessary. And if this level of personal data is somehow necessary to your query, that’s how you know you shouldn’t be asking it to a chatbot in the first place.

So if you’re uploading blood test results to figure out whether your cholesterol is really high (clearly not speaking from personal experience), a tax form or anything else with personal information, first crop it out or cover it with a black box. On a Mac, you can do this in Preview. On Windows, use the built-in Snipping Tool or Paint. On iPhone or Android, use the built-in Photos/Markup tools.

One extra step for the ultra-cautious: After redacting, take a screenshot of the document and upload that instead. This can help ensure you’re not accidentally sharing hidden metadata. 

3) Opt out of model training. Even though the companies say temporary chats and incognito mode won’t be used to train future AI models, it’s still a good idea to turn off the setting that allows your regular chats to be used for training. Here’s where to find it:

Am I saying this is foolproof protection? Nope. You’re still taking a risk by uploading private information to any AI chatbot. But follow these tips and at least you’ve put up something more substantial than a cardboard wall.

❤️ Loving today’s newsletter? ❤️ The tips above, the news recap, the awesome old watch below? Now imagine getting all that (and more!) twice a week. New Things paid subscribers get the full Wednesday edition, which includes my longer weekly column, more tips and soon big interviews.

Illustrations created by Bloomberg show what Siri will look like in iOS 27. Credit: Bloomberg

• iOS 27 Siri Preview. It’s coming: the long-awaited Siri update. According to Bloomberg’s one and only Mark Gurman, Siri will live in a chatbot-style app, with new AI capabilities woven throughout Apple’s native apps and the web. Along with the report, Bloomberg released design mockups of the interface. Siri and the new AI tools will also take up residence in a new interface designed for the iPhone’s Dynamic Island, that horizontal blob at the top of the screen where your front-facing camera lives. Lots more to come on this at WWDC on June 8! I’ll be there in Cupertino to cover it all. 

• Meta Subscriptions. Instagram, Facebook and WhatsApp are getting an upgrade—if you consider paying for them an upgrade. For $3.99 a month per app, users can now subscribe to a Plus tier to access features like super reactions, advanced Story insights and the ability to post without it appearing on the feed. All the more reason to snoop through someone’s profile. Meta also announced new AI subscription tiers for users, creators and businesses, which it will begin testing in the coming months.

• Oura Ring 5. Oura, which recently filed confidentially for an IPO, just launched the fifth generation of its smart ring. The new model is 40% smaller than its predecessor. Oura Ring 5 will track the full range of advanced health metrics with a new focus on predictive health trends. I tested the previous generation last year and I'm already eyeing the upgrade, or downgrade if you’re talking about size.

Name: Richard Factor

What's your old thing? Hewlett-Packard HP-01

What year is your old thing from? 1977

Why do you love your old thing? This was the first LED calculator wristwatch. I was a big HP fan when they were the real HP of test equipment fame. I wore this for years while it was still “special.” When LED watches became common and cheap, I had it repristinated by HP, and kept it in its original box with accessories where it remains to this day.

Today’s newsletter was written and curated by Joanna Stern and Adele Lowitz. Enjoy the weekend! 🕶️

I’m typing this on a Lenovo ThinkPad X1 2-in-1 with a feature I wish every laptop had.

Looking at the screen straight on, it seems like your everyday 14-inch display. But if you were sitting next to me at this coffee shop or in a cramped coach seat, you wouldn’t be able to see much. It’s like one of those stick-on privacy shields, except built right into the laptop’s display. No plastic sheet to snap on and off. No weird gaps between screen and protector. No “why does my $2,000 laptop look like it’s wearing a pair of discount transition lenses?” 

If you follow tech news closely, you also know this sort of technology is already coming to phones. The Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra has a Privacy display. Enable it in settings and the screen becomes harder to see from an angle. I love it. I wish my iPhone 17 Pro had it. Sadly, it doesn’t so I now have a plastic privacy protector covering my screen.  

Why? Because it’s become a lot easier for regular people to become screen snoopers. Visual hackers. Shoulder surfers. Whatever you want to call them, the idea is simple: Why hack into a phone or laptop when I can just look at it from across the room—or the plane aisle—and collect information? And with a smartphone camera zoom, everyday onlookers have reasonably effective spy tools.

This isn’t paranoia. I started looking into this because I kept hearing stories. On an airplane recently, a source of mine spotted a competitor’s slide deck from a well-known media company, snapped photos and sent them around. At a well-known big tech company, employees share things in Slack that they’ve learned by looking at other people’s screens on flights in and out of SFO. 

So what’s the solution? Use protection. Here are a few ideas: 

Today’s newsletter was written and curated by Joanna Stern and Adele Lowitz. See you Friday!