Sparmerica

"Two little arrows that now appear that will automatically hide menu bar items, and then you can click the two arrows to expand them." That's how Stephen Robles introduced one of the smaller, more telling changes in macOS 27: a fix for the notorious notch problem that had been hiding functional menu bar icons from users. It is a microcosm of an entire episode of Mac Power Users — the hosts David Sparks and Stephen Robles work through a dense collection of Apple Intelligence updates, app ecosystem shifts, and personal automation experiments, all while keeping one eye on the tradeoffs that come with each new capability.

The AI Stack: Siri, Local Models, and Frontier Services

A major throughline of the conversation is the emerging shape of what David calls the "AI stack" for personal and small business users. He breaks it into three layers. The newest and most personal is Siri AI, arriving with iOS 27 and macOS 27. Its defining advantage is access to local, on-device data. David demonstrated this with a real-world test: he asked Siri AI, "When's my new shirt gonna arrive?" and because his Gmail was mirrored into the stock Mail app, Siri found the purchase and shipping emails and told him the delivery date. He also asked it to set a twenty-minute timer and play Pat Metheny music — and it did both, in sequence. Stephen had similar success, asking vague questions like "Wh