Good morning. Today I’m finding some peace playing Lumines Remastered, deciding whether to get my kids one of the new 4th-gen Yoto players, and trying to figure out why everyone is freaking out about this recent Tom Cruise interview.
Inbox is written by Daniel Bader. Read previous issues here, and then catch up with Ben Schoon’s excellent Weekender column published every Sunday.
Over the past few months, I’ve been using MCP (Model Context Protocol) to connect with my bank, my to-do app (TickTick), my personal database (Obsidian), and anything else I can get my hands on. I find it intuitive to have a conversation with a chatbot about stacking tasks, performing a complex set of calculations, or just figuring out the answer to a difficult problem.
Now Google is getting in on the MCP action with Home MCP, a way to connect coding agents like Claude, Codex, Antigravity, Hermes, and OpenClaw to Google’s Home ecosystem and the products connected to it.
Right now, the tool is limited to Google Home Premium Advanced subscribers in the US, but it’s an ambitious first step toward making it easier to interact with what is usually a digital rat’s nest of brands, categories, and compatibility layers. Google has already rolled out Gemini for Home in an attempt to make automation more straightforward, but I commend the company for dipping its toe into the DIY space and seeing what happens.
According to Google, MCP “gives your favorite AI agent real-world physical context—allowing it to analyze and answer questions about home activity, summarize camera footage across rooms, manage devices on your behalf, or even create your own smart home dashboards using everyday language.” I’m totally going to use it to teach my Nest Cam Outdoor that the cat who wanders onto my driveway every morning isn’t, in fact, a person. Wish me luck.
It’s iPhone review season, and because this seems like an “S” year, the camera is rightfully getting the most attention. That’s why I watched basically every second of all the new iPhone 18 Pro reviews from channels like PetaPixel, Tyler Stalman, The Verge, and Matti Haapoja.
I’m still not sure what to think about the aperture control. Most reviews are saying that it has very little real-world utility, while others are claiming that it was the only way to offer an f/1.48 lens without sacrificing depth control (or overly relying on software bokeh). Either way, once Apple decides to offer a hardware feature it tends to stick around whether or not it’s any good (see Camera Control), so we’ll likely see a few more generations of this tech.
Sticking with the iPhone theme, two of my favorite podcasters convened this week to discuss the iPhone Duo and how it fares next to the multitude of Android competitors.
(And if you enjoy the conversation with Stephen Radochia and want to hear more from him, he and I host a little podcast called Old’s Cool that looks at new tech from a vintage point of view.)
This section has some of our favorite stuff from around the internet. Great videos, weird memes, fun reads, recommended apps, whatever. Send us your recommendations!
Over the past couple of days, I’ve been trying out a new launcher on my Fold 8, a launcher unlike anything I’ve used on Android before. That’s because it’s defined by its adherence to the UX found on iOS — specifically the upcoming iPhone Duo.
From the demented mind of Reddit’s u/wolftech029, Folio is a love letter (for better or worse) to the way Apple’s home screen drastically differs from the ones found on various Android phones. From predefined grids to Apple’s App Library to the Duo’s funky blur effect, Folio has it all.
I’m not sure it’s going to stay on my phone for long, but its existence (and the speed at which it was vibe-coded) is a testament to Android’s versatility and openness.
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Daniel is a writer, editor, podcaster and analyst covering the big stories, small milestones, and amazing people behind tech’s biggest moments. He was previously editor-in-chief of MobileSyrup, Android Central, and Android Police, and has been a content director of tech publications since 2010.
