Good morning. Today Iâm mourning the end of BioWare, running my Google TV setup through Claude to remove all the bloatware, watching all the iPhone Duo reviews without spending $2,000, and attempting to understand everything I can about PHP in light of two massive vulnerabilities that AI helped uncover.
As a reminder, Inbox is the tech newsletter that goes beyond the news cycle. We cover the most important 9to5Google stories from the last couple of days along with a few highlights from around the web. We publish every Tuesday and Thursday, and if you like what you read, please subscribe.
Inbox is written by Daniel Bader. Read previous issues here, and then catch up with Ben Schoonâs excellent Weekender column published every Sunday.
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The through-line in every iPhone Duo review yesterday was this: excellent hardware (though a bit too heavy) and a chaotic software experience. When Appleâs foldable launches on Friday, it will remind early adopters of what Android used to feel like whenever a new form factor was introduced: exciting, janky, and slightly aggravating.
I think 9to5Google readers understand that Android is for tweakers. Itâs why so many of you sign up for Android betas on daily-driver hardware; itâs why thereâs a thriving community of indie developers filling gaps in the ecosystem. Androidâs freedom and flexibility (and cost) make it particularly well suited to the cavalcade of use cases and designs we see in the market today.
That openness confers other, more nebulous benefits; itâs far easier to emulate games on Android along with other legally grey activities that wonât be mentioned here. If thereâs something you want to do on Android, chances are you can figure out a way to do it.
It seems like the iPhone Duoâs early adopters will be faced with a similar conundrum: the ability to do more on a device that is likely to frustrate…