-
The Unifi Dream Machine gets a major update! (@ubnt #udm #update)
My home router got an update this week, version 1.8.3. I’ve been running the Unifi Dream Machine since spring without any issues. This update was long in the works and highly expected. Among the changes, a redesigned and simplified controller dashboard with real-time statistics which are really helpful. The device management UI also received a redesign. Some of the previously available information has been removed or moved around. CPU, Memory consumption and internal temperature are higher than before (around +10%-30%), though. Overall, its’a solid update. Oh, and it is running an 4 cores ARM processor.
Remember, this router replaced an aging Apple AirPort Extreme. If you are still looking for a great home router, please, do yourself a favor and buy this one. This post is not sponsored.
-
Using Twitter Fleet, why not! (#twitter #creativity)
As you know, Twitter came out with Ā«Ā FleetsĀ Ā», its clone of Snapshatās Stories. People donāt really like it. Or do they? My timeline is constantly filled with my followers posting fleets. I guess some do like them. I decided to give it a serious try. I think they add another dimension to Twitter that I happen to find interesting for highlighting purposes. Itās simple to use, just enough design flexibility. There are is one drawback: they only show up on the iPhone (not the iPad or the web), which I find strange and somewhat arbitrary.
Following are screenshots of my experiment. Letās see where it goes from here.
-
Let's meet! Here is a free idea for calendaring app makers (talking to you guys! @macguitar @flexibits)
Let’s play a game. One of your customer calls you and ask for a meeting (virtual or in person). Before answering this request, you have to look at your calendar to see your free/busy time. It’s a time consuming and error prone process. What if your favorite calendaring app could generate a map of your weekly schedule with all sensible information masked out, like in the following example (made with Fantastical). This could be sent as a PDF file to the customer, would save a lot of time. It’s surprising that, to my knowledge, no calendaring app offer this option. I would pay to get this.
-
Oh I love that one from @gruber (#apple #applesilicon #m1chip)
Gruber publishes a piece today about how hard it can be for some people to accept that Apple is yet again did the unthinkable.
This one is simply priceless: āIntel and AMD have learned and struggled for a few years here figuring out how to make decent PC chips. Apple hasnāt just magically figured this out. Theyāre not going to just walk in.ā
Itās a liberal transposition of a famous quote on how Apple, a PC guy, just canāt walk in and make a great phone. With the M1 chip, yes, Apple just walked in and did it. Again.
Many pundits were quick to jump the gun on software compatibility issues, the translation layer called Rosetta, the meager 8 GB of RAM, the lack of ports, etc. As proven by the numerous independent reviews, none of these āissuesā are affecting the value of what Apple just did.
It will take a few years before Intel and their friends finally realize what just happened in late 2020 and recover from it. Years.
-
Dear Microsoft... (#microsoft #privacy #privacyprotection #surveillance #office365)
Following this statement from Microsoft, here is one question for you, Microsoft: why haven’t they thought, at the very beginning, that this Office 365 feature wasn’t a good idea to begin with? Here is another question: Who do you think you are to devise a āMicrosoft Productivity Scoreā? āa tool that helps organizations measure and manage the adoption of Microsoft 365ā ā Microsoft
There is a difference in semantic here: measuring adoption vs measuring productivity score. What is “being productive” anyway? The road to hell is paved with good intentions, as they say.
-
What is holding back the hardware, again? (#apple #iphone #ios)
āā¦until there are some changes with either iOS, the iPhone or both, bigger isnāt really better. Itās just bigger.ā ā James Rogers writing for iPad Insight about the iPhone 12 Pro Max. Things like picture-in-picture is a step in the right direction on the iPhone. The situation is obviously better on the iPad, yet there are still many low hanging fruits.
-
I'm already afraid (#apple #m1macmini #applesilicon #intel #imac)
Just saw that tweet today. It’s too late. I’ll be installing my new M1 Mac mini along the side of my 2017 iMac. Thwy will be both in direct competition. I’m afraid that I’ll find my beloved iMac too slow. I’m not there yet. I’m still waiting for my new thing to get delivered. Iām getting myself mentally ready for the shock. I’ll have to keep my iMac for a while for my daytime job.
-
About those iOS Apps screenshot on the App Store (#apple #appstore #iosdev)
I hate those screenshots montage. They lack emphasis on the application itself, the product. They waste precious space. At the very least, why not put a video showing the application in action. People don’t like to read long application description page. Is it Apple’s fault. Probably. Not sure. Apple is not enforcing their own rules on these screenshots.
This post was triggered by another Matt Birchler post.
-
Donāt touch this screen (yet!) (#apple #mac #macos)
Steve Jobs once downplayed flash memory based MP3 players when the iPod was just beginning its ascension. We know what came after the iPod with a small drive. The iPod nano, an MP3 player using flash memory. If you see a stylus, they blew it. The iPad eventually came with support for a stylus… oops, a pencil. What came after that? Support for a mouse with iPadOS 13.4. See the trend? Are you getting it?
Now, about the Mac. Sure Apple could have used this historic moment to a add touch screen to the M1 MacBook. It didnāt happen. I, myself, was one of them, thinking it was about to happen as exposed in this blog post. My short experience with macOS Big Sur updated design screams out loud that we are far closer to a touch supported Mac than Apple is willing to admit.
I donāt know when, but it will come, in a perfectly chosen moment by Apple. Apple likes to move forward, one step at a time. The next window of opportunity is next year with a redesigned MacBook body. This yearās was about the internals while keeping familiarities: performance, battery life and transition. Next year is about redefining the way we look at the MacBook and enhance the way we always knew how to interact with it. The Big Sur update this year is just the first step toward a touch friendly operating system. In a typical Apple way, they will have thoroughly thought about all this and we will be amazed about why it wasnāt done this way before. Next year has the potential to be exciting.
This blog post by Matt Birchler triggered this one you just read. šš
-
The Mac mini renaissance? (#apple #applesilicon #m1chip #macmini)
I donāt know if this is because Iām eagerly waiting for mine, Iām in a distortion of reality, but the Mac mini seems on the verge of a major regain of popularity. Sales of the little box are booming in Japan and now AWS is offering an Intel version as an EC2 instance… while waiting for the real deal, a M1-based version. The latter brings renewed interest in a platform a lot of pundits were considering dead a few years ago, thanks to Appleās apparent lack of interest.
-
Appleās Reminders is so underrated (#apple #ios #ipados)
How many To Do apps are available on the App Store? A lot. They all have a different take on how we should create, manage and check our To Do. The best one maybe just in front of your eyes, on your iPhone and iPad: Appleās Reminders. Here is why for me it does the job quite well.
Iāve been using OmniFocus and Things in the past, but after Apple redesigned Reminders in iOS 13, I came back to using it. Besides supporting basic things like URL, images and notes, you can group To Do lists in folders, lists can be shared with others, Shortcuts are supported, it synchronizes seamlessly across my devices.
Appleās Reminders is one of the app at the center of my blogger workflow to help me process information and publish content online.
-
Why getting a Mac Pro can still make sense (#apple #macpro #applesilicon #mac)
In light of all the raving reviews about the M1-based Macs, you might wonder why someone would still need and buy an Intel-based Mac Pro? For many reasons. First, some high-demanding pro software might not be compatible on M1 Macs. Second, if you run software who takes advantage of multiple cores, the Mac Pro with its Xeon processor is hard to beat. Example of this is VMware Fusion. Other use cases demand the most powerful CPU you can get, and they come in the Mac Pro, for now. Third, the Mac Pro is still the most expandable Mac out there. I’m one of those contemplating the Mac Pro for my SDDCbox project, but I must say that my priorities shifted a bit. I’m a few days away from receiving a M1 Mac mini. It will keep me busy until the beginning of 2021.
-
Did Apple just killed the Mac resale value? Oh yes. (#apple #applesilicon #intel #mac)
The M1-based Macs ramifications are far reaching as we are still pondering about their impact on the future. Reading this tweet from Parker Ortilani, we have to wonder if Apple, with its M1 chip introduction, just killed the resale value of any Intel-based Macs. Credits: Tables from the author. Simple answer: YES.
-
AppleOne - Expired or Tired? (#apple #appleone #subscriptions)
My AppleOne signup went weird when it was announced by Apple. I was billed for some of the individual services as well as the bundle. I’ve been looking for credits since then, which are still yet to come. I think it will be a mess to fix unless Apple gets their act together before then. Now, it looks like my subscription has ended and I cannot renew it. Something bad is really happening. I’m not alone feeling the pain, according to MacRumors.
-
Building his ideas and pushing boundaries on the way (#apple #iosdev #developer #designer @jsngr)
A few weeks ago, I wrote about the TestFlight App Store and how cool it was. The guy behind it, Jordan Singer, is also on Substack. Iām already a big fan of his work.
As a former indie iOS developer (2009-2013), I find it interesting to see other peopleās ideas, work and initiatives. This guy is on a roll and tests some App Store review process boundaries, which is more than needed these days. I wish him success with Airport.
-
Apple is no longer doomed. Intel is. (#apple #intel #applesilicon)
Who is winning between Appleās M1 chip and Intelās Tiger Lake chip? Well, if benchmarks are to be believed, Apple is winning, by a wide margin. The results are pretty worrisome for Intel which seems incapable to go beyond a 10 nm process. Intel will become the emblematic image of inefficient processors for years to come. Dell, HP et al. should be worried too because they are in the exact same position Apple was just before their M1 announcement. The only thing now favouriting the Wintel world is the need for Windows for a vast majority of users.
-
Shortcuts to frustration (#apple #shortcuts #ios #ipados)
Letās put it straight: Appleās Shortcuts are the weirdest, most cumbersome and utterly frustrating thing to build, test and eventually use. I cannot count how many hours I spent trying to understand their intricacies and most useful use cases. As much as I want to get empowered by them, it often ends in frustration. Here is why.
You cannot disable old shortcuts that are no longer used but that you want to keep as a reference. There is no way to export them in a clean and readable PDF format. There is a lack of some form of runtime debugging tools. The editor doesnāt scale beyond a few dozens instructions. There is no way to write shortcuts in a text editor Ć la AppleScript. Share sheets bad design and organization make shortcuts invocation a trial and error experience. As your shortcuts collection grows, it hard to remember which shortcut does what in what context and what is required to launch it. And the list goes on and on. Documentation within the Shortcuts editor is lacking, very limited. A big part of the story is dependant on the willingness of developers to support them. Itās so frustrating to see an app lacking any form of exposure to the shortcut engine.
Make no mistake, I like the idea of automation on the iPad or iPhone. Iām happy to see Apple improving on them with each release of their operating systems. But, there is so much left to cover.
-
On using Lightroom on a Mac (#apple #adobe #applesilicon)
Let’s set the tone: Adobe software, Lightroom in particular, is not a very efficient piece of software to use on the Mac… even on a higher-end configuration. Recent updates in the last year or so tried to improve things a little bit, but there is still a long way to go. It’s not clear why Lightroom Classic is so bad. Is it because it is a multi-platform software? Probably. If so, we pay the price at every single use.
Does the M1 chip in a Mac can change the game? Well, yes and no. The following YouTube video compares Lightroom Classic running on an Intel-based MacBook Pro to an M1-based MacBook Pro. With Rosetta 2 translation layer running to support the non-optimized version of Lightroom Classic, we could think the experience would be awful. In fact, not only it isn’t, the M1-based Mac makes the experience a bit better. Who would have thought.
Now, Adobe is working on a native or universal version of Lightroom for the M1 chip. Note that I’m referring to Lightroom CC here, the cloud version of Lightroom, not the Classic version. Depending of who you are and what is your relation to photo processing, it may be a good or a bad news. Nonetheless, the prospect of a universal of Lightroom CC is certainly exciting. Will Adobe take advantage of the GPU cores or the ML cores of the M1 chip? I highly doubt it. If the iPad version of Lightroom CC is any indication, though, not all is lost. We’ll see.
-
Selling a piece of my Apply history (#apple #imac #2007 #elcapitan)
Today I sold my oldest Mac in the house: a 24 inches 2007 iMac running El Capitan. When I look at this computer, I see many similarities with the current iPad Pro design: round bezels, boxy frame. I hope Apple will return to this design, albeit in a refreshing way, for their upcoming M1-based iMac.
Now, waiting for my M1-based Mac mini. 24 days before adding another piece to my long story with Apple products.
-
A must have utility for Mac: HazeOver. (#apple #mac #utility #minireview)
Just bought a Mac utility: HazeOver! How come I didn’t know about this one?? What is it? It’s a small utility which helps bring better focus to the active application on your Mac. It does this by dimming the out-of-focus application windows. It works with multiple displays. If you prefer to work in Light mode over Apple’s Dark Mode, it will make things a lot easier on your eyes. Think of it as a visual compromise. Makes Big Sur even better. Highly recommended.
