Weekly Download #107: 30-minute Amazon deliveries are coming

iPhone dots explained, Apple’s favorite 2025 apps, and why you might want a flip phone again

Author

Kevin Raposo
December 07, 2025

In partnership with

Hey , it’s Sunday, December 7.

Quick confession: I spent way too long this week trying to figure out why my iPhone had a mysterious black dot near the top. Turns out it's not a dead pixel — it's iOS 18.4's new way of telling you when apps are creeping on your camera or mic. More on that below.

Also in today's packed edition: Apple just announced their 2025 App Store winners (spoiler: AI is everywhere), ChatGPT started showing ads and people are losing their minds, and Amazon thinks we need toilet paper delivered in 30 minutes. Beca

Fair warning — this email is so stuffed with good stuff, it might get clipped. But I know you're the type who clicks through anyway.

😉 Let's dive in!

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📝 How-To

That mysterious black dot on your iPhone

Updated to iOS 18.4 and suddenly seeing a tiny black dot near the top of your iPhone screen next to the Dynamic Island? That’s not a dead pixel — it’s a new way iOS shows you when apps are using your camera or mic.​

  • Green dot on black background = an app is using your camera.​

  • Orange dot on black background = an app is using your microphone.​

  • The black “pill” behind them is just a visual tweak Apple added in iOS 18.4 to make these indicators easier to spot.​

How to make the dot go away

You can’t disable these indicators completely, but you can stop them from showing up by killing whatever’s using your camera or mic.​

  1. When you see the dot, swipe down from the top-right corner to open Control Center.

  2. Look for the small banner at the top that tells you which app is using the camera or microphone.

  3. Close that app, or force-quit it if it’s stuck; tehe dot disappears when the app stops using your hardware.​

Lock down camera and mic access

If you don’t want certain apps ever triggering that dot:

  1. Go to Settings.

  2. Tap Privacy & Security.

  3. Tap Camera or Microphone.

  4. Toggle off any apps you don’t trust or don’t want accessing those sensors.​

Once you revoke access, those apps won’t light up the indicator anymore, and the dot won’t appear for them going forward.​

When the dot is a red flag

If the dot shows up and you’re not recording, on a call, or using any obvious app, it can be a signal something sketchy is running in the background, like malware or a rogue app. That’s a good moment to:​

  • Check Control Center to see which app is responsible.

  • Delete anything suspicious and run a security scan with a trusted security app.

📩 Newsletters Worth Reading

Big Desk Energy
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tl;dr sec
The best way to keep up with cybersecurity research. Join >90,000 security professionals getting the best tools, talks, and resources right in their inbox for free. [LINK]

The Rundown AI
Get the latest AI news, understand why it matters, and learn how to apply it in your work. Join 1,000,000+ readers from companies like Apple, OpenAI, NASA. [LINK]

 📚 Tech Terms Worth Knowing

Gigawatt
(noun)

Definition: A gigawatt is a unit of power equal to one billion watts, used to measure big amounts of electricity like what power plants generate or entire regions consume

Usage: "The new solar farm can produce up to 2 gigawatts of power, enough to supply hundreds of thousands of homes."

📰 The Big One

🏆 Apple’s and Google 2025 App & Google Play Store Awards:

Apple handed out its 2025 App Store Awards this week, spotlighting 17 apps and games that “enriched people’s lives” across iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple Watch, Apple TV, Apple Arcade, and Vision Pro.

On paper, it was business as usual; in reality, AI quietly stole the show.​

Instead of crowning a single “AI app of the year,” Apple rewarded tools that bake machine learning into everyday workflows—planning, editing, reading, fitness, and accessibility

Here’s the list of winners:

Best apps of 2025 (Android)

[LINK]

⚡ Fast Five

1.) Spotify Wrapped 2025: How to actually get yours 
You waited all year for it! New year, new me. [LINK]

2.) ChatGPT starts showing in-chat ads, and users are not having it
ChatGPT ads, yes, ads, are popping up. It was nice while it lasted. [LINK]

3.) Amazon now wants to deliver your essentials in 30 minutes
Truly, what a time to be alive. [LINK]

4.) Sydney school bans smartphones, mandates flip phones
The program doesn’t kick in until 2026, but this is a promising start to banning phones in schools [LINK].

5.) Microsoft to raise 365 prices up to 33% in July 2026
Pricing will jump from $2.25 to $3 per user per month [LINK]

💾 Extra Bytes

Google adds a warning for scammy phone calls on Android [LINK]

These are Apple’s top apps of the year (2025) [LINK]

ChatGPT could become your health coach with Apple Health [LINK]

Windows 11 leads, yet a billion PCs continue with Windows 10 [LINK]

You can now buy in-game items directly on Discord [LINK]

Anthropic finds an AI that learned to be evil (on purpose) [LINK]

Experts say LLMs aren’t intelligent and never will be [LINK]

⚙️ Tools

CastReader: AI text-to-speech reader [LINK].

Quillbot: AI-powered writing assistant that helps users paraphrase, summarize, check grammar, and more. [LINK]

Taskmagic: Eliminate manual web tasks by capturing the process once with this AI-powered automation tool [LINK]

Softr: No-code platform that lets you quickly build custom web and progressive web apps. [LINK]

Thanks for reading!

Alright! Thanks for getting all the way to the end. Until next week…….

-Kevin

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