By Dan Moren

May 28, 2025 11:50 AM PT

Apple reportedly trying to revamp gaming for the 1735th time

It’s time, once again, to talk about gaming and Apple.¹

Yes, it was just yesterday that Apple copped to acquiring studio RAC7, makers of Sneaky Sasquatch, bringing the two-person team under its own roof. But shortly after that became public, Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman reported that the company has bigger gaming designs:

Apple Inc. is planning a dedicated app for video games on its devices, seeking to sell gamers and developers on the idea that it’s a leader in the market.

The company will preinstall the app on the iPhone, iPad, Mac and Apple TV set-top box later this year, according to people with knowledge of the matter. The software will serve as a launcher for titles and centralize in-game achievements, leaderboards, communications and other activity, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the plans haven’t been announced.

If that sounds a lot like Apple’s Game Center well…yes, yes it does. Gurman says the app will replace Game Center, which, okay. It’s not as if Game Center is really a destination these days; it was long ago demoted from app to system feature offering a framework for developers to hook into, but there’s no there there. Given that, I can’t fault Apple for wanting to throw out something with little to no brand equity in favor of something new and, hopefully, more compelling.

But if I seem skeptical about all of this, it’s because it feels like I’ve been writing about Apple and gaming for twenty years.² There’s nothing new here: every few years, like clockwork, Apple gets excited about games again, which is code for “remembers what a lucrative market they are.”

In all my time covering Apple, I have never seen Tim Cook, or, frankly, any Apple executive get up on stage and talk about games in a way that makes me believe they play games or are passionate about gaming. Which is surprising, because we’re talking about video games, not dental surgery. Chances are somebody high up in Apple management plays games regularly, beyond Wordle, right? To suggest otherwise seems as implausible as saying that nobody in Apple’s management watches movies, or TV shows, or listens to music. Or reads books.³ And yet it feels more likely to find somebody on Apple’s leadership page who’s excited about Klingon opera.⁴

Anyway, back to the matter at hand. Gurman’s report also says this new app will feature promotional tie-ins to Apple Arcade, because of course it will: that’s a $7/month subscription and, despite a lack of hard data on subscriber numbers, I’m going to go ahead and assume there’s plenty of headroom to grow it and, consequently, Apple’s Services revenue.

I remain skeptical that this new app will move the needle significantly for Apple in gaming. The hardcore gamers who want to see more triple-A headline titles are not going to get them as a result of this, and there’s a lot of competition in this “game marketplace” category from the likes of Steam and Xbox (which would still like to make its own game streaming app for the iPhone if Apple can get out of the way, thank you very much). Even with Apple’s game porting toolkit, which remains an impressive piece of technology, the gaming floodgates haven’t exactly opened wide in the last couple years.

If I have any hopes for this latest endeavor, it’s the comment that “Apple is also planning a Mac version of the app that can tap into games downloaded outside of the App Store.” But honestly it would be silly of Apple not to do this, since a lot of games on the Mac are not available via the Mac App Store. Even if the company hates the idea of reminding you that you can ever buy software outside of an App Store.

Still, despite everything, the iPhone remains an incredibly popular gaming destination, in no small part because it is one of two major platforms in the most significant consumer electronics device category, and people like to play video games, which continue to only be available on electronic devices.⁵ But the more times Apple tries to make gaming on the Mac happen, the more it looks like Steve Buscemi toting a skateboard.⁶

[Dan Moren is the East Coast Bureau Chief of Six Colors, as well as an author, podcaster, and two-time Jeopardy! champion. You can find him on Mastodon at @dmoren@zeppelin.flights or reach him by email at dan@sixcolors.com. His next novel, the sci-fi adventure Eternity's Tomb, will be released in November 2026.]

By Glenn Fleishman

May 26, 2025 8:00 AM PT

Service, please! Manage multiple Mac network interfaces’ priority

Six Colors reader Philip asked some specific networking questions that centered on this dilemma:

How does the choice between using Ethernet vs. Wi-Fi get made? Does one particular transaction solely use Ethernet or Wi-Fi, or can it be a mixture of the two?

Home, home on the range of choices

One of the joys of the modern Mac is that you can attach all sorts of networks to it, and macOS just figures it out. Gone are the days of installing drivers or digging deep into network configuration settings. Just plug a cable into the right jack where the other end is connected to an Ethernet hub, an iPhone with Personal Hotspot enabled, or even another Mac. You can add Wi-Fi to the mix, too. (This is called multihoming.)

There are reasons you might want multiple connections configured:

• You prefer the performance of Ethernet in your home or office and plug in a laptop (or luggable Mac mini) when you’re in a fixed location. When you detach the cable for travel or another location, Wi-Fi kicks in.
• Your Internet connection is flaky, and you want to have a backstop in place, like keeping your iPhone connected over USB.
• You use a lot of bandwidth over the local network, and multiple interfaces increase your maximum throughput.

Philip noted a particular case: his household Wi-Fi works fine for nearly all purposes, but when they try to use Zoom or other live video sessions, they often receive a message about an unstable connection.

First things first

Fortunately, you can prioritize which network connection gets used via Set Service Order. You may have never used this option or find it hard to find due to reorganization over the years. It’s always been in the Network pane in System Preferences or Settings Settings, but the icon used to access it has shifted from a gear under the left-hand interface list to a More … button in the same location to its current System Settings More … button to the right and below the interface list.

Here’s how you use this old feature:

1. Go to System Settings > Network.
2. Control-click/right-click any network interface or click the More button under the interface list.
3. Choose Set Service Order from the menu.
4. In the Service Order dialog, you see a list of all network interfaces. Drag these into the order you want them used.
5. Click OK.

Note that VPN and Firewall appear in the Network settings pane, but because they aren’t network interfaces, they do not show up in the Service Order dialog box.

What you’re telling macOS through this ordering is which network interface to consult first. It doesn’t take into account which of them are currently active. Nor is it precisely responsive to flakiness: an unreliable network set first, as long as it appears to have an active connection, will still be the preferential destination of your data packets.

You can shut down a flaky connection via the Network pane, too: Control-click/right-click an interface and choose Make Service Inactive. Use the same process to Make Service Active when you want it back in the fray.

If you’re curious about how much data passes through your various multihomed interfaces, you used to be able to do so via Apple’s included app Network Utility. Unfortunately, that app has been discontinued, but DEVONtechnologies created its own version called Neo Network Utility, which packages the same Unix network tools behind a friendly interface.

In NNU’s Info tab, you can choose an interface from the popup menu and then look at the Transfer Statistics sections to see how much data has transited in and out. (I believe this is reset whenever you restart your Mac.) In my case, as you can see in the figures, the Ethernet connection carries the vast majority of all data from my machine—under 2% passed over my Wi-Fi link.

For more in-depth details, you might like

I have written extensively about networking, particularly for the Mac, for decades. Most recently, I’ve kept three Take Control Books up-to-date:

• Take Control of Wi-Fi Networking and Security, which is focused on Wi-Fi but has a lot of general information about DHCP/NAT and other network issues
• Take Control of Apple Screen and File Sharing, which explains setting up remote access into your network to access screen and servers
• Take Control of Untangling Connections, a surprisingly popular book that deciphers the hardware side of Thunderbolt, USB, Ethernet, and other standards

[Got a question for the column? Anyone can email glenn@sixcolors.com. Six Colors subscribers can also use /glenn in our Discord community.]

[Glenn Fleishman is a printing and comics historian, Jeopardy champion, and serial Kickstarterer. His latest book, which you can pre-order, is Flong Time, No See. Recent books are Six Centuries of Type & Printing and How Comics Are Made.]

By Jason Snell

May 23, 2025 12:05 PM PT

Sam and Jony and skepticism

Ever since OpenAI announced a couple of days ago that it’s integrating Jony Ive’s hardware startup, I’ve been struggling with what to write about it.

Struggling because it’s obviously an important technology topic, and needs to be taken seriously. But also struggling because I’ve seen a lot of people who think, talk and write about this stuff for a living reacting to the announcement with enthusiasm and positivity, and I just don’t feel that, not even a little bit.

And struggling because I don’t want to judge any project based entirely on the red flashing light going off in my head suggesting that it’s a load of bullshit. It’s the same light that flashed when I first heard about Quibi or the Humane Ai Pin.

So OpenAI and Apple’s legendary design lead are embarking on a journey to build some new AI-enabled hardware. They’re coy about what it will be—probably not a phone, definitely not a watch, maybe not “something you wear”—but my gut feeling is that it’ll be something we’ve actually seen before. My true prediction is that it’ll be more like the Humane Ai Pin or that AI Pendant but they’re embarrassed to be associated with those products, so they’re going to wait a little longer to let the stink clear.

I’m skeptical about OpenAI in general, because while I think AI is so powerful that aspects of it will legitimately change the world, I also think it has been overhyped more than just about anything I’ve seen in my three decades of writing about technology. Sam Altman strikes me as being a drinker of his own Kool-Aid¹, but it’s also his job to make everyone in the world think that AI is inevitable and amazing and that his company is the unassailable leader while it’s bleeding cash.

I’m skeptical about the premise that people want to give up their smartphones. Two rich guys, one of whom made a fortune by designing the iPhone, have decided that the most successful and important tech product in history is bad for you, actually, and that the solution is, unsurprisingly, a new and different tech product.

But people love their smartphones. Really love them.

Just as with the Humane pin, it strikes me as unlikely that there’s much an AI accessory device can offer that can’t already be done by a powerful smartphone and maybe some earbuds or smart glasses or a smartwatch working in concert. It’s not impossible, but it feels unlikely that there’s a space for something to unseat the smartphone given all of its advantages and the fact that people really, really like it.

I’m skeptical of the composition of the io leadership team, which features an awful lot of product designers and not a lot of hardware engineers. I’m sure there are talented engineers there too—the OpenAI announcement refers to “physicists, scientists, researchers” among the team members—but the fact remains that this is a startup whose leader and key lieutenants appear to all be designers.

Designers aren’t bad. They’re good. But designers are part of a team. You can’t make a football team out of quarterbacks or a baseball team out of pitchers. I’ve worked with some very talented designers over the years, and while they can be incredibly creative, the magic happens when they work in collaboration with the other members of a team, where their design sense can be steered by practicalities and, in turn, steer non-designers away from bad approaches.

Which brings me to Sir Jony Ive himself. Ive is undeniably one of the most famous and important designers of our lifetime. His early days at Apple were frustrating, but when Steve Jobs arrived, the two of them clicked, and the results were spectacular. We all know what they did. It’s undeniable.

I would argue that what worked about that partnership is that Jobs grounded Ive, bringing a sense of the customer and user of Apple products that perhaps tempered some of Ive’s design tendencies. When Jobs died, Apple made a great effort to push Ive to the forefront, mostly as a signal that the magic of Apple hadn’t died with Jobs, but was still alive and well, even though an operations guy was now the CEO. Ive provided Apple with cover until the rapid acceleration of iPhone sales made it unnecessary.

But in that post-Jobs era of Apple, Ive was unfettered. He was put in charge of software design, so his portfolio expanded. And who at Apple was going to say no to Sir Jony Ive? Who was going to tell him, in Steve Jobs fashion, that some of his ideas sucked? (And who is going to do that at io and OpenAI? Forgive me if I’m dubious about Sam Altman having both the skill and desire to do that.)

The post-Jobs Apple era was one of great financial success, but the design failures and bizarre dead ends are there for all to see, and it’s hard not to imagine that an unchallenged Ive was a major part of that dynamic. Solid gold watches, butterfly keyboards to meet impossible laptop design goals, removing unsightly ports on pro laptops, and the introduction of a $3500 VR headset with sparkling chrome and a luxurious 3D knitted headband and a set of outward-facing displays to “encourage human connection.” To me, all of this is the legacy of Ive’s design culture.

Meanwhile, Apple’s success made Ive a very rich man. He was knighted, did work for the King, drove fancy cars, designed a bunch of expensive jackets… it is hard not to look at Jony Ive’s last decade and a half and not wonder if he’s entirely lost touch with the part of him that collaborated with Jobs on the iMac, the iPod mini and the original iPhone. He seems to move in luxurious circles, among billionaires (like Sam Altman), with expensive tastes and interests. It felt like he was bored at Apple, and he seems to be excited about working with Altman on this new project, but are a bunch of designers who’ve been to the mountaintop and reaped the rewards really going to be tied in to the next big consumer hardware product?

I’ll say this: Never count out Jony Ive and the talented people that surround him. They’ve gotten the band back together, thanks to an enormous investment of AI money, and we’re going to find out—eventually—what they want to put into the world.

But right now, all we have are words and an awkward video of Sam and Jony drinking espresso. The words are all vague. I’ll believe whatever they’re going to release when I see it. Until then, like so much in the AI world in particular and the tech world in general, it’s meaningless hype, signifying nothing.

By Joe Rosensteel

May 22, 2025 9:48 AM PT

To improve CarPlay Ultra, Apple needs to fix CarPlay

Here’s the problem with CarPlay Ultra: It’s still CarPlay.

Based on what we’ve seen of CarPlay Ultra, Apple believes that if it controls the appearance of the displays in cars, then using the car will be a good experience. I’m not sure that’s an assumption I’d make, especially when styling isn’t directly connected to function—as is the case with most of what distinguishes CarPlay Ultra from CarPlay.

There’s so much more Apple needs to do with CarPlay, fixes that would also benefit CarPlay Ultra. I use CarPlay all the time, and there are plenty of issues that don’t seem to be on Apple’s roadmap. If Apple improves CarPlay, it also improves CarPlay Ultra. That being said, here are some of my biggest outstanding issues with CarPlay today.

At the center of things

Whether you’re driving a fancy car with CarPlay Ultra or you’ve just got basic CarPlay, the interface in your vehicle’s central touchscreen is the main stage of things. In early CarPlay Ultra demos, that very familiar CarPlay interface is still front and center.

The entire approach to notifications needs to be rethought. When a new notification appears, it displays for a second and then fades away. If you’re busy driving the car and, you know, paying attention to the road, you won’t know that you have missed the text message that your friend is running late or has canceled. If Messages is not in the dock, there is no visible badge, and it’s not added to the dock based on incoming notifications, but rather on when you last used it.

A glanceable, non-distracting indicator that there are active notifications that need attention would be nice. Perhaps Apple could even use some of that vaunted Apple Intelligence to detect what sorts of messages were a priority in the context of driving a car.

When notifications appear, they also float above existing tap targets in the interface. If I am parked and trying to select my dentist’s office in Apple Maps, a calendar alert reminding me to go to the dentist will appear and block me from completing my task. CarPlay Ultra adds even more new overlays, like vehicle warnings and climate controls. I don’t know what the answer is—push down the screen? have a dedicated area of the screen for warnings?—but it’s a problem in need of a solution.

Organizing the apps displayed on CarPlay could also be improved. Right now, this is accomplished by using the Settings app to reorder the list of apps on a per-vehicle basis, but the vertical list offered in Settings doesn’t match how those items are displayed in their icon grid in the car! Since the settings are per-vehicle, Apple knows the exact dimensions of the screen, so it knows how many rows and columns there are, and where the page breaks will be. It should also be easier to sync these layouts across devices. I’m not a current Apple Music subscriber, but it’s the second app in any default CarPlay homescreen, and there’s nothing I can do to prevent that from appearing in every rental car I connect to my phone.

Connectivity quirks

I had a Honda with CarPlay, and my boyfriend and I currently share an Audi with CarPlay. Even though both use wired connections, both periodically flake out. We’ve rented numerous cars with both wired and wireless CarPlay when traveling, and there has been no consistency in connectivity in any of these vehicles. The wireless version in one Chevy car had unacceptable lag that made the screen unusable, requiring a wired connection. In a recent Toyota rental, the wired connection didn’t work, but the wireless connection was rock solid.

There’s no quality guarantee from Apple or automakers about how well CarPlay will work with any given car, but I’ve built a mental list of which cars seem to work better than others through trial and error. That list informs my animus toward certain makes and models that can persist even if the CarPlay experience has improved, because there’s no rating system or seal of approval. I’m not sure what Apple can do here, but some sort of CarPlay certification process might allow Apple to inform automakers about choices that lead to unreliable connectivity and unhappy customers.

Apple also needs to improve its attention to detail when it comes to CarPlay: it recently broke CarPlay connectivity for some people with the release of iOS 18.4, and it took two weeks for Apple to ship a fix in 18.4.1.

CarPlay Ultra disconnects won’t affect the instruments and essential functions of the car because they’re rendered locally by the vehicle. I have no safety concerns about dropped connections. However, we haven’t seen how gracefully the phone-generated part of the non-essential interface degrades when there are connection issues. I don’t believe Apple wants to be the one to show people anything less than ideal function, even if we all know that’s not realistic.

Regardless of what the connection failure states are: If Apple pushes out a buggy iOS release again, will people drive their CarPlay Ultra cars around with only essential, locally-rendered instruments for two weeks, or revert to their car’s interface and be hesitant to go back?

Talking to Siri

Ideally, when you’re driving, you’re not fiddling with touchscreens, but talking to Siri and keeping most of your attention on the road. I believe it’s one of the reasons Apple marketing VP Bob Borchers said, “This next generation of CarPlay gives drivers a smarter, safer way to use their iPhone in the car.” (Emphasis added.)

CarPlay Ultra isn’t adding or augmenting lane guidance, crash avoidance, or self-driving features, but in theory, it’s safer because you can now tell Siri to turn on the seat warmer.

But we’ve all used Siri. It doesn’t just fail, but can also execute the wrong command with utmost confidence, causing a distraction! With CarPlay Ultra, Siri can now cause a distraction over car functions, not just by playing the wrong music.

There’s also another issue at the crossroads of Siri and connectivity, and that’s what happens when Siri can’t connect to the Internet. I’m sure you’ve all had the pleasure of getting in the car, pulling out of the driveway, and saying, “Hey Siri, give me directions to a place,” only to have it spin or glow and give up. Not only can it not get the directions, but it also eats the command, and you have to say the whole thing over again.

This needs to be smarter. The iPhone should recognize that since it’s just connected to a car, its nearby Wi-Fi connection is likely to disappear, so prioritizing the cellular network might be a smart move. And if there is a temporary connectivity failure, perhaps Siri should hang on to that command and send it again when connection resumes, or offer to resubmit the request instead of requiring me to do it personally.

(Remind me: I’m a person and my iPhone is a computer. Which one of us should be doing the repetitive tasks, again?)

In the event of a failure, I also never notice Siri attempting to use the iPhone’s on-device dictation model to decode my instructions and pass them on to Apple Maps, which has been helpfully preloaded with offline maps.¹ Remember to be online when you want to use your offline maps.

When sharing isn’t caring

The car has a volume settings for audio playback, and separate ones for navigation audio, but it isn’t per-device, so the different audio settings on my iPhone and my boyfriend’s iPhone result in one of us getting into a very loud or very quiet car, or the navigation audio being too loud for him in Google Maps and too quiet for me in Apple Maps.

This is the lowest level annoyance of all the annoyances, but it’s worth mentioning in light of how it might apply to CarPlay Ultra. To what degree are my settings carried over to my iPhone, including climate, radio, and instrument cluster layout? To what extent does my iPhone simply set those things in the car at the time of my request, and then pick up whatever state the settings are in when my iPhone reconnects later?

If it’s like audio settings are right now, where the settings are just whatever they were when the last person drove the car, then what are we even doing with our smartphones connected to these cars instead of relying on Android Automotive profiles?

It’s even more complicated when both of us are in the car with our individual devices. With wired CarPlay, the phone plugged in is the CarPlay phone. But with wireless CarPlay and multiple phones, it’s a crapshoot—it’s which phone gets in range first, or maybe which one was connected most recently. CarPlay doesn’t offer a switcher if it connects to the wrong phone, or if you just want to switch from one phone to another.

When the locally rendered instrument cluster in CarPlay Ultra boots up before it connects to my iPhone, is it what my boyfriend had the instrument cluster set to? Does it change to mine while I’m using the car, and back to his, or will we be overriding each other each time we connect to the car, as we are currently with volume settings? Are we overriding each other’s climate settings?

I would love to know if CarPlay Ultra offers a more seamless user switching experience, but I’m unsure if it has occurred to Apple that we’re not a two-Aston-Martin household.

Put it in the parking lot

Apple improving CarPlay would help everyone. It would be a better sales pitch for CarPlay Ultra, because “All the same annoyances as before, but across your whole dashboard!” is not a great slogan.

I would never buy another car without CarPlay, because even when it’s flakey, or Siri bumbles something, it’s handling my media and my personalized navigation better than any car can. I can’t say the same thing about CarPlay Ultra, which feels more like applying an iOS-styled WinAmp skin to the speedometer. For CarPlay Ultra to succeed, Apple needs to do more than woo reluctant automakers. It needs the discipline to address the long list of existing CarPlay annoyances. A rising tide lifts all boats. Er, cars. You get what I’m saying.

[Joe Rosensteel is a VFX artist and writer based in Los Angeles.]