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Benjamin Mayo commenting on laptops with touch screen:
All the time, I see people swipe up and down on their vertical laptop screens to navigate webpages and zoom into photos with a pinch gesture. The ergonomics of this are naturally poor. Stretching your arm out forwards to reach the laptop screen quickly becomes uncomfortable. And yet, people still do it frequently. The touch screen is used as an accessory to primary mouse input. They swipe around a bit, then they go back to the mouse. They read a screenful of content, then they swipe to the next page, and put their arm back down. Itās a surprisingly subconsciously natural thing to do. Source: Apple Working On Touchscreen Mac Laptops āĀ Benjamin Mayo
I wonder if Apple could get away with only supporting minimal gestures on their touchscreen Mac. I’m thinking about things like “pinch to zoom” or “swipe” but nothing elseā¦ I could imagine using my left hand for a vertical swipe and the right hand on the trackpad to click on a button or text field. This way, I see only a need for a minimal macOS user interface rework.
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In the “Competition in the Mobile Application Ecosystem” report published by the NTIA recently:
Pre-installed apps, default options, and anticompetitive self-preferencing should be limited, including in search results. Source: Biden Administration Report Recommends Sweeping Changes to Apple’s Ecosystem - MacRumors
Can you imagine unboxing your brand-new iPhone, powering it up, and after completing the initial setup process, you end up on a mostly empty home screen? What should the user do next? Could Apple provide a single icon pointing to their App Store to download “The Full iPhone Experience” package? Would Apple even be allowed to do just that? Reading the recommendation again, I think it would go against it. It there a more effective way at killing a product?
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A few people here probably already know that I’m a big fan and power user of Craft, the document creation app. Over the years, I created and shared many documents online for different purposes. Today, I’m sharing an index of all the published documents. My goal is to showcase many of Craft’s capabilities. If you are curious, you can ask me questions about these. I’ll be more than happy to respond.
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You might have noticed that Iām experimenting with YouTube shorts. They are easy to create using the YouTube app but the next ones will be created with Appleās Clips, if itās even possible. š§
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Rumours and articles like this one about Appleās upcoming headset, supposedly called āRealityProā is simply getting out of hand. I wish we could put an end to them. I mean, this is ridiculous.
Even if Apple actually comes out with something this year, Iāll consider this as a technological proof of concept, nothing compared to the actually useful and usable iPhone we got back in 2007.
Use cases for a headset are not what the tech pundits would like us to believe. Family reunions with everyone wearing these things on our heads will not happen. Office meetings with people wearing them donāt make sense either. We can barely stand meetings in hybrid modes where some employees are working from home and appearing on the big screen while others are āpresentā in the meeting room staring at their laptop or tablet screen and doing something else.
The Apple headset could be the next HomePod or the next iPod HiFi. Set your expectations accordingly and better pay attention to what will come out from Hu.ma.ne, instead. Something that looks to be much more natural and less rebarbative.
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I took back the iPad Air that my mom was using a few years ago. I would like to repurpose the iPad as a photo frame. It was updated to the latest iPadOS release the iPad can support, but unfortunately, slide options in Appleās Photos are pretty limited. I wish there were a āPhoto frameā mode in Photos. Synology Photos required iPadOS 13.
How would you reconfigure this iPad, so it becomes a photo frame?
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Tim Cook’s introductory comment on Apple’s latest quarter:
āAs we all continue to navigate a challenging environment, we are proud to have our best lineup of products and services ever, and as always, we remain focused on the long term and are leading with our values in everything we do,ā said Tim Cook, Appleās CEO. āDuring the December quarter, we achieved a major milestone and are excited to report that we now have more than 2 billion active devices as part of our growing installed base.ā
How many devices count as being active if a user has an iPhone and two Apple Watch, two HomePod and an Apple TV? Six. That’s a lot of devices but not as many users.
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DHH’s concluding words about testing an Android phone:
I’m no fan of Google in general. And I still prefer the fit and finish of iOS over Android, but there’s something deeply appealing about having a phone where at least it’s actually possible to install Forbidden Software, like Fortnite, without wild interventions like jailbreaking. The fidelity gap is real, but the freedom gap is bigger. Source: Another Android
His post is a reminder for me that I never tried or used an Android device for real. Never ever. Should I? Why would I? But then I read this article from Gruber commenting about his perception of the Android app landscape:
Android enthusiasts donāt want to hear it, but from a design perspective, the apps on Android suck. They may not suck from a feature perspective (but they often do), but theyāre aesthetically unpolished and poorly designed even from a ādesign is how it worksā perspective.
After all, I might never waste my time testing an Android phone. Life is too short.
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Highly TroublingāOps are Taking Over Apple My Friends
Don’t bother reading too much into the latest Apple financial numbers. They’re not too bad. What you should be paying attention to is this:
Apple is eliminating one of its most high-profile executive positions. According to a new report today, Apple is eliminating the role of āindustrial design chiefā as part of a broader shake-up. This role was once held by Jony Ive, and most recently held by Evans Hankey.
More specifically:
Under this new structure, the design team will report to Appleās chief operating officer Jeff Williams. Source: Apple is eliminating its iconic ‘industrial design chief’ position
This comment by one of the 9To5Mac staff members is not reassuring at all:
I think itās important to keep in mind, however, that Williams has been involved with the design team for several years at this point. Hankey has reported to Williams since 2019. The difference now is that the middle ground between Williams and the rest of the design team is being removed.
Maybe Hankey saw this coming and couldn’t adhere to this direction. Here’s my take: ops are taking over Apple, and design is no longer the top priority. It is utterly troubling to read rumours of Williams possibly replacing Cook which looks like being more of the same if you ask me. Maybe Williams has more design experience, but not as a first-party involvement. Troubling.
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If I had enough time on hand, I would build a one-pager website comparing all Mastodon clients. Then, I would update it as new app releases come out. I can see the feature-by-feature comparison table with an overall score at the bottom. I think it could be helpful for new Mastodon users and developers to better understand their app’s position in the client landscape.
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Some telling excerpt from a recent story in the Globe and Mail about a Canadian helping Ukraine:
āThereās a couple of shots I made that day that will be with me,ā he said. One was a Russian in a T-shirt who was carrying a box of ammunition more than 1,800 metres behind the front line ā a distance Teflon says was the longest shot heās ever made. āHe saw no threat, he thought he was safe. But itās my job to ensure that they know that theyāre not safe anywhere,ā Teflon said. āThe role of a sniper is to ultimately push into the minds of the enemy and make them question everything.ā
And
āThereās allegations that all these Russians must be drugged. Thereās no way. I think itās just lack of training. Because they still act like human beings. Iāve watched guys cry and Iāve watched guys scream and Iāve watched guys try to pull their friends back when they get killed. Theyāre humans but they donāt have an ounce of training when it comes to fighting a war.ā
And
āSadly, itās working. Thatās why theyāre doing it. Weāre defending until we canāt defend that spot any more because they just destroy it with tanks. And they just keep sending another wave. Itās just relentless,ā Teflon said. āSo, theyāve gained 500 metres of dirt, but they just took over a completely destroyed position and lost hundreds of guys to do so.ā
Finally
āThe world deserves to hear the truth and after losing Joe and Greg, they need to understand weāre not stopping this work,ā he said. āThereās no point me dying without telling my story.ā
This a poignant story about a Canadian snipper āworkingā on the front line in Ukraine.
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CarPlay in 2023 will see its most significant upgrade since its launch. I donāt know when weāll actually be able to get this in a real car, but I certainly look forward to it.
I recently spent some travel time in a high-end Mercedes. The Dashboard was very impressive. Still, the future CarPlay version seems a bit pale in comparison.
Why did Apple choose to make this early announcement?
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It is so slow to recharge an Apple Magic Mouse. Considering how we need to connect this thing for a recharge, Apple should have made it much quicker to recharge. š
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Wow, I spent 10 minutes searching for “how to save an email into a .EML file on the iPad”. It’s not in the action menu. The only way is to do a “drag & drop” of the mail into Files.app (or any app that understands this file format, for that matter). Who knew it could be that hard to discover such a simple thing. It should really be in the action menu too.
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Any Little Snitch users here? Thoughts? I’m using NextDNS to block tracking sites, but what would be the added value of using Little Snitch?
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A special message to all the people who expressed their support for the loss of my mother. It really means a lot, even though I don’t know you personally. Thanks.
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Iām back. Mostly. It was an enduring experience to see my mom go as she did. It was an unintentional instructional experience too. Life has many lessons in store for us. We just have to open our minds and our heart. Easier said than done.
Writing is part of the healing process, I guess.
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Well, expect a change of mood for the next couple of days. Itās seems that my mother, 89, is at the very end of her road. Not only that was expected but also Iām relieved somehow. š
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I donāt have many subscribers to my Ghost-hosted website. I always find it sad when someone unsubscribes the very same day I send out a new edition of my newsletter. If I had hundreds of thousands of subscribers, I wouldnāt notice.
What did I do wrong? Was the content not worth reading? These are the questions that come to my mind every time.
I shouldnāt pay attention to that. š
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Iām no longer spreading Twitter content. Today is a cleanup day in my bookmarks collection, acting as a repository for future editions of my monthly newsletter: Numeric Citizen Introspection. Each bookmark is stored in one of the six ābucketsā in Craft, as shown in this screenshot. What is noteworthy today is the fact that many of those bookmarks were links to tweets. They were all deleted. Quitting Twitter also means stopping spreading references to the platformās content.
