The Enthusiast Weekly — September 5, 2025

We’re in it now, folks — it’s well and truly iPhone season. I’m really looking forward to the keynote event on Tuesday. With rumours of a refreshed design for the Pro phones, new AirPods Pro, Apple Watch Ultra 3, and the iPhone 17 Air, it feels like we’re in for an exciting event. It’s been a long time since a September keynote had this many unknowns going in, and I think it’s going to set up a really exciting Fall season.

The announcement of an iPhone event always brings a flurry of activity. It kicks off a week of programming on my podcasts that I absolutely love — with the Upgrade Draft and The Rickies on Connected. I really enjoy doing predictions in these game formats. Our listeners clearly enjoy them too, and it’s such a fun framing device for what are, at their core, just prediction roundups. Adding the gameplay aspect with my best friends makes it all the more fun.

September also means the full kick-off of our fundraising efforts for St. Jude. Since it’s Childhood Cancer Awareness Month, it’s the perfect time to partner with them every year. As I write this, we’ve just passed $100,000 raised for the kids of St. Jude and their lifesaving work they share with the world. It would mean so much to me if you considered donating or even starting your own fundraiser.

This September feels very different for me personally, as I’m now involved on the development side with Cross Forward, working especially on Widgetsmith. I have a newfound respect for just how hard it is for indie developers to be ready for day one of an iOS release — especially in a redesign year. It’s absolutely been a trial by fire so far, and while I haven’t been able to contribute as much as I would like to yet, there are lots of fun things coming. I’m really excited to see the reaction from our users.

By the way, you may notice I’ve changed the name of this post. Previously it was called Enthusiastic Recommendations, but today I’m going with The Enthusiast Weekly. I think this better reflects what this post really is — part diary entry, part ‘what I’m up to’, and part recommendations. The format stays the same, but with a new framing.

And now, on to this week’s recommendations:

• Some of my work on Widgetsmith required me to refresh the Help videos for the app, showing users how to perform certain actions and highlighting new features. I spent a few hours building a workflow: recording my iPhone with QuickTime, editing in Final Cut, and then using the app Shareshot to add a nice background. Shareshot does a fantastic job framing screenshots with lots of customisation options, which gave me the perfect frame to overlay my videos on top of.
• I also wanted captions for these videos. I started with Final Cut’s built-in options but found them lacking in customisation. So I turned to the Edits app from Instagram, which is excellent. It generates captions you can really style and control, and it has a superb set of tools for breaking them up and fine-tuning the look.
• Finally, another recommendation for one of my favourite podcasts: The Rest is History. They’ve just published the next instalment of their epic World War One series. They’re tackling the war in large yearly chunks, and this six-part series covers some of the early battles after the outbreak. I never imagined I’d be so engaged by this kind of history, but the way they tell these stories is utterly enthralling. I’m genuinely glad to be learning more about the world from this podcast.

Don’t forget: September is Childhood Cancer Awareness Month, and we’re raising money for the kids at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. Please take a look at all the ways you can get involved at stjude.org/relay. Thank you for your support, and have a wonderful weekend.