5
basicappleguy.com turns half a decade old, launching five years ago, on April 21, 2020.
Today BasicAppleGuy turns 5! That's half a decade old!
Since launch, nearly 10,000,000 people from over 100+ countries visited the site! In that time, I've had a chance to create wallpapers regularly featured by influential social media & YouTube accounts, collaborate with amazing developers and design icons for some of my favourite apps, create products I could never have envisioned having the opportunity to create, meet people I've grown to consider my friends and make a creative writing and design outlet that has been so important for my well-being.
Bento box capturing some of the developments of the past year.
Keeping a blog alive these days isn't easy, especially with fragmented social media and the emphasis shifting toward podcasts and video for content consumption. On top of that, I've been navigating my own evolving identity and the purpose of this site. I'm not a dedicated reviews site, I'm not an Apple news site, and I'm not just a wallpaper site either. I'm a bit of all of those things, depending on the day. But that's what I love about it: the freedom to write what I want, when I want, in a way that (hopefully) complements the fantastic work from the broader Apple community.
Summarizing the Year
One of the biggest challenges I faced last year was a deep creative block that took a toll on me. Feeling mentally diminished from work, my ability and desire to create were nearly extinguished for nearly half a year. And while that burnout has ebbed and flowed throughout the second half of 2024 and into 2025, life beyond the blog remains exceptionally hectic. Ever-increasing work demands and a frustrating mix of micromanagement and disengaged leadership have left me feeling more disheartened than ever with a career I once felt so passionate about. Amongst all this, I took on a second and then a third part-time job to help improve career satisfaction and offset the cost of living, at the tradeoff of personal time to work on this site and spend time on my other hobbies and interests (I still haven't finished The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom).
As a result, I made a slight shift this year, pivoting away from an emphasis on wallpaper creation and leaning more into writing content entries, including writing about my experiences with the iPad Pro, my Weekend EDC, my opinion on the 'new' AirPods Max, and beginning to look at writing more about some of my favourite apps. But in saying that, I still created some wallpapers I am incredibly proud of, including Fluted Gradients, updated Ugly Christmas Sweater wallpapers for the iPhone & Mac, Stripes, and a perennial favourite: my iPhone 16 Pro internals.
Additional creative ventures have also released some new merchandise, including a Severance-inspired Scary Numbers tee & tote, Pixel Macintosh, Click to Create, and a couple of click wheel tees.
And in February, I finally launched a project I'd been quietly working on for months: the Silicon Inside stickers. Getting them off the ground meant building out the infrastructure from scratch—revamping my website, creating a storefront and merchandise backend to manage stock, securing a (surprisingly pricey) PO Box, designing 32 unique stickers, and gathering all the supplies needed to ship them out: envelopes, stamps, label makers, protectors, seals—you name it. At the same time, I had to devote time to customer support (e.g., if a parcel gets lost in transit). So, for the past few months, this tiny sticker operation has legitimately turned into yet another part-time job. It's taken a considerable time and money, but I'm incredibly proud of what I've built and deeply grateful for the incredible response from everyone worldwide who's ordered.
Finally, I've worked on some behind-the-scenes website improvements, including creating a revamped "About" page, a new "My Gear" section, a new Mercantile store layout, and dedicated pages for the Silicon Inside stickers.
Through it all, keeping my site ad-free has remained a top priority. Yes, I sell some merch, but I'm proud that the articles and wallpapers remain free. And I'm especially grateful that merch sales help offset the costs of running the site this way, allowing me to maintain a clean, focused experience for everyone who visits.
So that's my year in a nutshell. I'm grateful for all the support, the conversations, and the kindness so many of you have shown me. And now, it's heads down and time to forge into the second half of this decade.
one more thing…
To mark the anniversary, I had a couple dozen super-duper glittery BasicAppleGuy stickers made; now available over in the mercantile. Enjoy!
