Enthusiastic Recommendations — July 4, 2025

Thank you for all the positive notes about this post format. I’m going to try to make this a weekly thing. Over the past few days, it’s been refreshing for me to pay attention to the things I’m enjoying so I can share them with you. It feels like a good reinforcement of why this blog exists in the first place.

It’s been a busy week, but a good one. I really enjoyed Upgrade on Monday. While I’m frustrated that we’re talking about DMA-related App Store changes again, I think we did a good job covering it, and I enjoyed the conversation. Also, it was really fun to finally reveal to Federico what the Ticcilympics was on Connected.

Right now, I feel I’m in a period of high creative thinking. I’m working on a bunch of things—some you see and some that may amount to something later. I’m surprised my brain is in this mode that moment, as I thought this would be a time to take a bit of a break, but I think these are my instincts kicking in to provide for my family. It’s really interesting and, luckily for me, manifests in ideas I am enjoying.

Lastly, I just wanted to note this New York Times article that was published late last week that gave a great recommendation for Cortex — that was lovely to see.

Now onto the list for the week:

• I really enjoyed this video from Hank Green, where he talks about the realities and concerns of social media addiction, but also provides a hopeful outlook on how we may move past this period in history.
• I also found this video from Hank’s brother, John Green, really fascinating. John answers questions about how he thinks about his faith. It was an interesting look at how someone can balance their views of the modern world against an ancient religious text and still make sense of everything. I like how he talks about his faith acting as a guide for him, as it helped set his principles.
• Christian Selig made this truly exceptional video detailing the choices and process of building a gaming PC. Ignore that description and just watch this video—it doesn’t matter at all if you care about the subject. I was blown away by the production quality and comedy. Add ‘really great YouTuber’ to Christian’s already impressive resume.
  • Movie producer Jason Blum joined Matt Belloni on The Town to talk about the failure of Megan 2.0. It was fascinating — and inspiring —to hear someone openly discuss a project’s shortcomings while it’s still in cinemas. It was refreshing to hear someone share their thought process during such a challenging time.
  • Widgetsmith 7.3 just added an excellent feature for generating widget themes based on images. They offer a large selection of wallpapers you can add to your phone and match your widgets to, but I love that I can also theme widgets based on any image I use as a background. It quickly improved my home screen.
  • While listening to NPC this week, Brendon mentioned the Not Boring Camera app and how fun it was. I immediately checked it out and am thoroughly enjoying it. It provides a fun and tactile experience to set up and use the camera, and the pictures it produces are amazing. It includes some unique processing and a selection of filters you can easily preview and apply.
• Speaking of photo editing, Ben McCarthy just released Obscura Studio, a new photo editing app for the iPhone. I’ve always enjoyed Ben’s app design, and this is another great example. I’ve been a Darkroom user for years, but I plan to run my images through Obscura Studio to achieve the edits I want.

I want to finish this week with a mini-review of a new Apple Arcade game, Suika Game+. I’ve been aware of Suika Game for a while; there was a time you couldn’t avoid it if you watched any streamers. Essentially, the game combines elements of Tetris, matching games, and Threes—which, if you know anything about my iPhone gaming tastes, sounds like a perfect combo.

In Suika Game, you drop various fruits into a box. When you match two fruits, they merge into a larger type of fruit. The goal is to keep matching fruits to achieve a higher score without exceeding the height of the box.

The game’s strength lies in the physics of the fruits merging together. When they combine, they cause surrounding fruits to move, potentially triggering chain reactions. These physics can be somewhat unpredictable, adding excitement to the gameplay.

All of this is wrapped in a somewhat janky presentation, adding to the game’s charm. To me, this is an ideal iPhone game, played in portrait mode—though there is also a landscape mode that includes additional controls rather than simply tapping to drop fruit.

Suika Game+ is an instant addition to my long-term rotation of iPhone games. I could see myself playing this indefinitely due to its simple gameplay and infinite replayability. It joins games like Threes, Peglin, Holedown, Alto’s Adventure, and Balatro.

As an aside, I appreciate the ‘+’ initiative in Apple Arcade. Initially, Arcade games were exclusive to the service. Over time, the Arcade team adjusted their approach to include games also available for purchase on the App Store, with ‘+’ versions exclusively available on Arcade. This isn’t perfect, but I appreciate the Arcade team’s efforts to navigate the App Store’s constraints to offer these games.

They’ve added classic games this way—like Threes+ and Fruit Ninja Classic+—as well as highlighting anticipated upcoming games like Balatro+ and Suika Game+, making the service even more appealing.

Check out Suika Game+, especially if you already subscribe to Apple Arcade. It’s perfect for commuting.

Have a great weekend, everyone. I’ll be back next week with more recommendations, if not before.

By the way, apologies to email subscribers for last week. It was very difficult for you all to read the list of items. I worked with Ghost support to fix the text color bug they had, and hopefully, it’s resolved now. This can also serve as a reminder that you can sign up to get these posts by email if you’d like.