Last week was one of the wildest experiences of my life. As part of my Testing Editor role at Hearst Autos, I tagged along with Car and Driver for their annual Lightning Lap event at Virginia International Raceway.

While I didn’t get to drive cars at full speed, I did get to move around cars that cost more than twice as much as my home and managed to get a Mustang Dark Horse to a meager 70MPH around the track while lining it up for the full-car photo shoot.

In addition to snapping photos and videos for forthcoming Car and Driver e-commerce articles, I also lugged around my trusty Contax 645 and snapped a few photos of the cars we had on hand for the event. It’ll be a while before I send off the film and get back the scans, but it’s been a while since I’ve shot 120 film, so we’ll see how the Kodak Gold 200 turns out.

There needs to be a way to turn an old iPhone or iPad into a CarPlay module. I have a few old devices I could mount onto my dash and use for Maps/Music/Etc. And you’d assume the tech for Wireless CarPlay is there from a current iPhone given AirDrop and other wireless capabilities.

I’ve spent a bit of time this week reducing my online footprint.

I’ll never get it to zero. After all, I’ve spent the past 13 years building an online portfolio of writing, photography, and video work under my own name for various publications whose content I no longer have any control over. But aside from the publications I’ve written for over the years (and continue to in my current role), my goal is to get my footprint as small as possible in terms of deleting social profiles and other content that shows up in search.

In an ideal world, I would’ve started my career with a pseudonym and kept with it over the years. But as an 18 year old with a unique name, I figured I’d run with it. Not to mention I started in photo/journalism, where pseudonyms are rather frowned upon. Alas, it is what it is and all I can do now is to delete, discontinue, and remove what I can in hopes the inevitable link rot will do the rest.

After a week of high-80º and low-90º days, this forecast is very much welcomed. Now all we need is some rain. We’ve only had ~1” of rain in the past 30 days or so, which is ridiculous for a Michigan spring.

FaceTime for Apple TV is long overdue and will be very welcomed. As someone with two children who often FaceTime grandparents and aunts/uncles, it’ll be supremely nice to be able to toss an old iPhone atop the TV and FaceTime w/o worrying about holding a device in hand.

The ability to make Webb apps from any website in Safari will be fantastic. Too many native apps lack feature parity with their web versions (or are far behind), particularly enterprise-grade services used for work.

Standby mode for iPhone is also long overdue. I was never sure why Apple didn’t drop this when its AOD was introduced. Seemed like a no-brainer, given the Apple Watch had/has a similar mode.

Live Voicemail and FaceTime Messages are going to be a favorite of mine. I’m a slightly anxious and introverted-ass human who doesn’t like talking on the phone or picking up unless I absolutely have to. Let me see what someone wants before I pick up the phone.

Autofill passwords from mail. Auto-fill from messages is already one of the greatest features of macOS/iPhOS/iPadOS. Seeing it come to Mail just improves upon it.

Check-in is going to be great for those times when we’re leaving family’s house and traveling back home. I always tell them I’ll text them when we get home, but I always forget to do so. I have set up geofence reminders in the past, but this is more elegant.

AirDrop improvements are nice. AirDrop is one of my favorite Apple ecosystem features and the new tap-to-drop feature will be a nice improvement, particularly when sharing photos and videos of the kids with family.

I’m more of a paper journaler, but I’m inconsistent and don’t always take the time to document my days (quite frequently, unfortunately). My hope is the Journal app will be able to let me at least get down a few key notes of each day alongside any photos and other data to refresh my mind should I want to come back and document a particular day.

Safari Profiles look nice. Curious to see how they feel when using them on a regular basis. Seems like Apple is taking a little nod from Arc Browser on this one.

Love the iPad Lockscreen upgrades as well. I would’ve liked to see Apple introduce a proper media center-like mode to turn old iPads into Home Hubs of sorts like many Android Smart Displays, but I guess we’ll have to wait for that.

Interactive widgets will be a nice addition as well. As always, the usefulness of these will likely come down quite a bit to developer creativity. I have no doubt many will create impressive little widgets. And I’m sure many more will make apps that are designed to almost be invisible, designed only to be used in the form of a widget.

Bringing proper Preview-like PDF support and editing to iPad is so long overdue it’s not even worth praising. This should’ve happened the day the Apple Pencil came out.

Apple says (supported) iPads will soon be able to ‘Use the built-in camera in your external display for FaceTime and conference calls.’ Apple doesn’t specify whether or not this is only for the Pro Display XDR and/or Studio Display, but that seems to be the case. I’d love to see Apple include third-party webcam support.

As for hardware, the 15" MacBook Air is a great addition to the lineup and will sell like hotcakes. Especially starting at $1199. Mac Studio and Mac Pro are both nice pieces of hardware but are so far out of anything I would need it’s not worth my commenting on them at all.

Apple Vision Pro is an intriguing proposition. I’ve used both the Nreal Air and Rokid glasses, and while neat, real-world use was less than impressive. These are far better made, but the value proposition seems to be more or less the same, which isn’t compelling.

Maybe new apps and better integrations could change that, but as it stands, I can’t imagine myself getting this first-gen version. At $2499, I might consider forgoing my next iPhone or iPad for it and shelling out. But at its MSRP? Not happening, barring a lottery win.

This list may or may not be updated in the future.

My four-year-old son calls “convertible” cars “carnivores,” and I’m not sure I’m prepared for the day when he corrects his mistake. It’s too damn cute.