Link: Apple locked me out of its walled garden. It was a nightmare
This kind of stuff scares the daylights out of me when I read it. I had a similar experience once with Gmail where they purposely locked my account for half a day. No rhyme. No reason. No explanation.
That was a free service though. So much worse when it’s something you’ve paid for (either directly or with numerous Apple hardware purchases).
It’s now several decades later and I still remember this movie review word-for-word. I have no idea who the author was, or how many similar gems were hidden in the pages of that weekly TV guide over the years. But I credit this tiny act of defiance with inspiring me in multiple ways.
And “Set as Default Later in Wallet” doesn’t even look like a button.
I don’t think this is quite as bad as everyone is making it out to be. The buttons look pretty clear to me and the “non button” is really a common style we’ve seen elsewhere since iOS 7.
Apple Employees Listen to Siri Audio Samples
100% agree. Recordings bad.
Bottom line: It doesn’t matter to me if this is Amazon or Apple. I don’t want human beings listening to the audio these devices record. In fact, I don’t want recordings made of my audio, period—I want the audio processed and immediately discarded.
Fast Software, the Best Software
Worth a read for sure. Wish we had more “fast” software in the world.
I love fast software. That is, software speedy both in function and interface. Software with minimal to no lag between wanting to activate or manipulate something and the thing happening. Lightness.
Slug: how-the-retweet-ruined-the-internet
Some real food for thought here.
But the button also changed Twitter in a way Wetherell and his colleagues didn’t anticipate. Copying and pasting made people look at what they shared, and think about it, at least for a moment. When the retweet button debuted, that friction diminished. Impulse superseded the at-least-minimal degree of thoughtfulness once baked into sharing. Before the retweet, Twitter was largely a convivial place. After, all hell broke loose — and spread.
Apple, meet WYSIWYG; it’s the way Macs used to work
This does seem confusing and wrong.
…rather than TextEdit using the colour you selected, it chose the light lilac instead, but just to fool you, when a dark background is enabled, it changed the display colour to what you thought you were using.
WSJ: Apple Planning to Buy Intel’s Modem Business
Rapidly headed to a world where Apple owns almost ALL its core chip technology. First for their phones, then everything else (ARM laptops, etc).
It seems like Intel’s new CEO didn’t have interest in being in this business, and Apple is reportedly staffing up a major effort to build its own modem chips in the long term. So, at least from this outside perspective, this transaction seems to make an enormous amount of sense.
Rumor: 2020 Apple Watches to move from OLED to microLED screens
How come I’m just now hearing about MicroLED?
Unlike an OLED display, a microLED screen doesn’t rely on organic compounds to make light. They should also should offer perfect blacks, excellent color, and near-perfect off-angle viewing, but be even brighter, slimmer, immune to burn-in, offer better battery life, and, in the long run, less expensive to make than OLED.
We Tested 5G Across America. It’s Crazy Fast—and a Hot Mess
The headline just about sums it up. The original headline also (from the slug): “all-the-reasons-not-to-buy-a-5g-phone-right-now”
After nearly 120 tests, more than 12 city miles walked and a couple of big blisters, I can report that 5G is fasten-your-seat-belt fast…when you can find it. And you’re standing outdoors. And the temperature is just right.
What popped to me:
[“a”, “b”, “c”, “b”].tally #=> {“a”=>1, “b”=>2, “c”=>1}
No, You Can’t Make a Person Change
Perhaps worth a read if you’ve been trying to change someone you care about.
You can’t make somebody change. You can inspire them to change. You can educate them towards change. You can support them in their change. But you can’t make them change.
So good:
People who have survived trauma, who have been abandoned or shamed or felt lost, they’ve survived that pain by latching onto worldviews that promise them hope. But until they learn to generate that hope for themselves, to choose their own values, to take responsibility for their own experiences, nothing will truly heal. And for someone to intervene and say, “Here, take my value system on a silver platter. Would you like fries with that?” only perpetuates the problem, even if done with the best of intentions.
Link: How I practice at what I do
Great short little read.
A few of you were skeptical, but it is long since established that practice improves both your writing and your memory, so surely it can do much more than that for your thinking.
Link: Why does APT not use HTTPS?
Interesting. Worth a quick read if the title strikes your fancy. Seems sometimes HTTPs isn’t all the shizzle.
Link: WWDC Feedback.md
I am definitely an introvert, and for a number of reasons I was already incredibly nervous going to pick up my badge this year already, and this was nearly overwhelming, I was shaking by the time I got my badge and got out of there. Having badges, pins or lanyards that indicate level of interaction desired would be great.
Color-coded badges for this is a great idea. This kind of makes me glad I don’t attend WWDC. I am NOT an introvert in the least but the way they describe all this cheering and excitement describes makes it sounds all VERY ridiculous and over the top.
So while I likely wouldn’t find it “overwhelming” personally I feel for those who do - and pretty sure I’d find it at the very least super annoying.
Mauve:
If you go looking for the truth, get the whole thing. It’s like a good fuck. Half is worse than none at all.
Link: Apple Is Sending Out Another Silent Update To Fix the Webcam Flaw in Zoom’s Partner Apps
Gruber: I also think Apple is doing the right thing by going to the press and explaining when they issue such updates. If I could tweak anything, it would be to have these updates show up in the regular list of pending software updates if you have “Install system data files and security updates” turned off.
Yes, feels right to me.
Fernando Corbató, a Father of Your Computer (and Your Password), Dies at 93
My, my… how far we’ve come. Once upon a time computers had no passwords…
In the course of refining time-sharing systems in the 1960s, Dr. Corbató came up with another novelty: the computer password.
C.T.S.S. gave each user a private set of files, but the lack of a login system requiring a password meant that users were free to peruse others’ files.
Link: Why did moving the mouse cursor cause Windows 95 to run more quickly?
Sometimes things that make no sense are actually true for the strangest reasons.
Thus wiggling the mouse causes the application to process I/O messages faster, and install quicker. The effect was quite pronounced; large applications that could take an hour to install could be reduced to 15 minutes with suitable mouse input.
Makes me want to pick it up again and see what I might find in it as an adult.
Finally, I’m not sure what compelled me to pick Fahrenheit 451 back up but I’m so glad I did because I was able to see the book in a very different context. Bradbury’s message (made explicit in his 50th Anniversary Afterword) is much less a warning against government control and much more about a road to hell paved by people attempting to rid the world of offensive speech and conflicting ideas. In a world of microaggressions and outrage porn, this is an important idea to see in such a timeless work of fiction.
Sings: Where have all the pastebins gone, long time passing…
Link: Shape Up: Principles of Shaping
Pretty good read so far, but I’m just getting started.
Over-specifying the design also leads to estimation errors. Counterintuitive as it may seem, the more specific the work is, the harder it can be to estimate. That’s because making the interface just so can require solving hidden complexities and implementation details that weren’t visible in the mockup. When the scope isn’t variable, the team can’t reconsider a design decision that is turning out to cost more than it’s worth.
Ugh. MOBI looks pretty awful compared to EPUB as far as ease of getting into it from a programming standpoint.
MobiPocket Creator is a tool used to build MobiPocket MOBI eBooks. It is only available for the Microsoft Windows.
Link: Leverage? No thank you.
Some refreshing thinking. I bet Basecamp is quite a remarkable place to work in many ways.
Jason Fried: The suggestion is that if we tell people exactly what we pay for a specific position, and they would have accepted less, but we’re now on the hook to pay them more than we “needed” to, then they have a leg up on us rather than us on them. … I find this line of thinking abhorrent.
Link: Apple Sans Ive by Matthew Panzarino
“Many of Apple’s critics are purely nostalgic,” Ben Bajarin of Creative Strategies puts it. “Wanting Apple to go back to the days when some of the designs were more bold, iconic, possibly polarizing, but in that time Apple was selling tens of millions of products not hundreds of millions of products. This is a crucially important point that many in the public sphere miss.”
Very good point. Sadly the article he’s quoting from is behind a paywall. Luckily his article is worth a read entirely on its own.