I just use the default iOS 18 wallpaper and lock screen - no changes, no extra widgets.

A rare, levelheaded take.

The changes are fine. Nothing earth shattering, nothing wildly or fundamentally broken, just a visual update to better fit with Google’s new material design language.

No, that’s butter.

‘Better’ is a pre-release stage of software development.

They’re shutting down Assistant everywhere, in favour of Gemini.

Right. There’s plenty to criticise Apple for, both in general and for chasing the AI trend, but looking at it purely in terms of user privacy within AI features they’re miles ahead of the competition.

oglethorpe?

Horrendously editorialised, too; it’s written in such a way as to specifically get people riled up. Tabloid-style rubbish.

YouTubers - especially large channels like this - constantly A/B test with different thumbnails and stick with whatever one drives the most traffic (no pun intended) to the video.

You might not like it, but it’s unfortunately the reality of operating a content creation business on an algorithm-driven platform.

There are plenty of channels I follow that make fantastic videos, but sometimes you have to tolerate the shitty thumbnails because that’s just the reality of the system they’re operating within.