Linked List: September 11, 2026

Friday, 11 September 2026

Last Year’s iPhone Share Amongst Users of Widgetsmith ★

David Smith, developer of the widely-used Widgetsmith, on Mastodon:

The eve of iPhone 18 Pro pre-orders seems a good time to look back at the iPhone 17 family’s adoption. Here’s the 17 family data as a percentage of overall usage for Widgetsmith.

Generally they followed the usual adoption pattern, and overall did very well ending at around 20% of total usage.

With the exception of the Air really struggling to find market share. For comparison the 16 Plus ended its first year at around 1.4% (vs the Air’s 0.3%).

The chart looks rough for the iPhone Air. Amongst all Widgetsmith users, here’s the share as of September by model:

        iPhone 17   7.2%
iPhone 17 Pro Max   5.9%
    iPhone 17 Pro   5.8%
       iPhone 17e   0.5%
       iPhone Air   0.3%

But if we only consider the 19.7 percent of Widgetsmith users using one of these new 17-generation iPhones, the percentages look like this:

        iPhone 17   36.5%
iPhone 17 Pro Max   29.9%
    iPhone 17 Pro   29.4%
       iPhone 17e    2.5%
       iPhone Air    1.5%

In the entire year since the iPhone Air was announced, I’ve never seen Apple advertise it. No billboards, no commercials. It raises a chicken/egg question: did no one buy it because Apple didn’t market it, or did Apple not market it because no one wanted it?

It’s a shame, because I truly believe not only that it’s the nicest iPhone Apple has ever made, but that if most people tried it, they’d love it. They don’t need a bigger battery and, wouldn’t take better photos with a Pro model, and would love the thin feel and low weight. But the shame of these low iPhone Air sales reminds me, very much, of the late great iPhone 12 and 13 Mini — also a truly great design, also terribly disappointing sales numbers.

If the iPhone Air 2 rumored to be coming in the spring doesn’t turn things around, it might follow the Mini as a twice-and-done design.

That said, the 17e seemingly isn’t setting the world on fire either. That’s a bit surprising to me. (Maybe the sort of people who buy the “e” models (and the SE models before them) aren’t the demographic for an app like Widgetsmith.)

Clarus the Dogcow Easter Egg in Apple’s OS 27 Settings ★

Benjamin Mayo, 9to5Mac:

Many have complained that Apple design has been sapped of some of its trademark whimsy in recent years. Well, here’s the latest example of how the tides seem to be changing.

Buried in the Settings app on iOS 27, Apple has hidden an easter egg that hails back from classic Mac OS; Clarus the Dogcow. Here’s how to trigger it …

Very fun. Alas, this easter egg isn’t present in MacOS 27, only iOS 27. But the MacOS 27 version of the Liquid Glass settings panel does have a drawing glitch that makes the magnifying glass in the fake search field flicker terribly, so Golden Gate does have that going for it.

Update: A bunch of readers have kindly reported that the Clarus easter egg is present in MacOS 27 Golden Gate, illustrated on X by Andreas Storm and at 512 Pixels by Stephen Hackett. I still can’t get it to work on the MacBook Neo I’m running the latest beta of Golden Gate on though. One of the readers who sent a note says they don’t see the magnifying glass flicker, either.

XCancel Is Back ★

XCancel:

Following the legal progress as announced in the Nitter GitHub project. The XCancel service is resumed.

More details will be shared on the Nitter GitHub project page.

Glad to hear it and I wish them well, but I think Zhenyi Tan’s Litterbox Safari extension is a much better solution for viewing tweets on X without going to X.

iPhone Duo Only Works With the $80 USB-C Apple Pencil, Not the $130 Apple Pencil Pro ★

Juli Clover, MacRumors:

It’s likely the iPhone Duo doesn’t support the Apple Pencil Pro because there’s no magnetic surface for charging the pencil. The Apple Pencil Pro charges magnetically when connected to a compatible iPad, while the Apple Pencil with USB-C charges with a USB-C port hidden behind a sliding cap.

Charging is the least of the problems. Because the Duo doesn’t have the magnetic attachment for Pencil Pro, there’s no way to even pair a Pencil Pro. The easiest way to think about it isn’t to compare which devices support which features (like pressure sensitivity, or double-tapping) — it’s just to think about which devices can even pair with which Pencil models. Unless I’m missing an exception in Apple’s compatibility support document, if a Pencil-compatible iPad or iPhone can pair with a certain Pencil’s connector, then it can use that Pencil. The iPads with both the magnetic attachment point and USB-C can use either the Pencil Pro or regular Pencil, and the devices without the magnetic attachment can only use the regular Pencil.

But the bottom line is that Apple’s entire Pencil compatibility story remains a mess. Imagine you own an iPad Pro and a Pencil Pro, and you love using the Pencil. You’ve always wanted to be able to use a Pencil with your iPhone. Now you can, if you buy a Duo. But you also have to buy a different Pencil — and then pack two different Pencils whenever you leave the house with both your iPad and iPhone. That’s ridiculous.