VI
basicappleguy.com turns six years old today, launching on this day back on April 21, 2020.
Every April 21, I take a day to look back at everything that’s happened over the last year. Running a site that’s now entering its 7th year has personally been a tremendous accomplishment for me (I thought blogging was supposed to be easy), and I am honoured to have so many people reach out to share their appreciation for the site, the content, and offer their support for the work I do.
I don’t have the words to properly express the impact your kindness has on me, but I’m always blown away by how people take the time to reach out, share their appreciation for the site and the work I do. In a world where there is just so much content and seemingly less and less time, getting to be a small, hopefully worthwhile part of what people choose to spend their attention on is something I’ve never taken lightly.
Since last years recap I’ve continued to work to develop the site on numerous fronts. I continue to sell and update the Silicon Inside stickers (I just released the A18 Pro, M5 Pro & M5 Max ones last month), and have added a couple of Lil Fin stickers to my merch shop recently that I hope people find and enjoy.
In May of last year, I wrote about changing my approach to supporting the site in a post titled The WinRAR Approach. Because I never want cost to be a barrier to accessing my content or wallpapers, I shifted to an optional donation model for wallpaper downloads. It’s a goodwill-based approach that I hope feels fair, and one that people seem to have genuinely appreciated.
I keep working as hard as I can to put out new wallpapers, though I’ll be the first to admit the pace is slower than I’d like. Between my other commitments and periods of psychological burnout, finding the time and energy for creative work can be a real challenge. That became even harder during parts of last year, when the facility I work at was significantly understaffed and operational demands often seemed to outweigh attention to staff well-being. All that to say it’s tough to come home from that type of environment and sink into the same flow states I found so much easier to find during the first couple years of the blog.
That said, I’m still really proud of a lot of what I put out over the past year, including sets like Skyline I, Skyline II, the Gradients of September, Fluted Gradients of February, my iPhone 17 Pro Internals, and my latest collection, Sound.wav. There are still plenty of wallpapers sitting on the back burner that I want to make, internals for the iPhone Air being one example, but the amount of time those projects take continues to be difficult to carve out.
But wallpapers are not what this site was built on. I started this site writing about Apple products and Apple history, and I still find myself drawn back to those roots again and again. Posts like my AirPods Pro 3 issues piece, my Ode to the EarPods, and my favourite app roundups from July 2025 and January 2026 remain some of my personal favourites from the last year.
I’ve also really enjoyed spending time on some deeper dives, including my post from earlier this year on Apple’s Lunar New Year iconography, which is still the most comprehensive piece on the topic that I’ve been able to find, along with my ongoing archive posts documenting the history of Apple’s macOS and iOS icons (though I admit I need to update both of those promptly).
And finally, I took some strides to modernize the site a bit, adding a bit of custom CSS to improve the overall aesthetic and adding a often requested dark-mode version of the site.
So that’s what’s been going on BAG-side. Once more, I’m honoured to have you on board and I hope you continue to find value in the work I produce.
One More Thing…
When I first launched my website and social media account, I briefly used a different logo before updating it a few weeks later. To mark the anniversary, I thought it would be fun to release a special limited run of original-logo BasicAppleGuy stickers. You can pick one up, along with any of my other merch, by clicking the image below or visiting the Mercantile. Enjoy!
