Technology

    40 years of the Mac and why I can’t use anything else now

    By the time I was buying my first Apple Macintosh computer the launch of the Mac in 1984 was already a myth, a story shared from one nerd to another, like in an Aboriginal Australian cave painting.

    In grade five there was an Apple IIe at the back of the classroom no-one knew how to use but when I realised that the computer magazines at the library full of computer programs and games written in Basic contained not just ideas and lines of code - yes, actual real code just printed in paper magazines - but code I could type into an Apple computer, execute, and then enjoy, I was hooked.

    I kept on reading those computer magazines like APCMag, PC User, PCMag, Macuser, Mac Format, and countless others whose names escape me but the school library stocked so generously.

    At one stage I designed on paper my dream computer which would triple-boot Microsoft Windows, OS/2 Warp, and Mac OS System 8. I think a “Mac on a PCI card” product had been released, or the opposite for inserting in a Mac, so I designed my Frankenstein’s monster of a computer and presented it to class imagining that they would a) care, and b) be in awe of my product design and computer engineering. Alas neither Steve Jobs or Bill Gates wrote and congratulated me.

    I’m not sure how I wrangled it, but somehow our family acquired a Packard Bell IBM-compatible personal computer with a 486 SX 25/33 processor, 4MB of RAM, no sound card, but it did come with Windows 3.11.

    The Radio Rentals rented computer and I quickly became close friends but somehow with its 25MHz CPU and 4MB of RAM the computer ran slower than a slug chasing down an ice cream truck.

    Enter, my Uncle Grant.

    Uncle Grant was my super uncle from Townsville who sold and serviced Apple computers. We’d not been on friendly talking terms about computers since I used his Apple Macintosh and neglected to save a document he had open, but he was quick to diagnose the problem with my computer’s speed: I had an image as my desktop wallpaper. Also, he was quick to quip that “a Mac wouldn’t have that problem.”

    What he neglected to acknowledge is that a Withers didn’t have a spare buck either so we went without a Mac for about a decade more.

    As I’m sure is the story for most modern Mac users, having your own personal Macintosh Desktop Experience was a dream for too long.

    Years later Apple announced the Intel transition from Power PC chipsets and all of a sudden, thanks to an Intel Inside and Bootcamp, these new Macs can run Windows and Mac OS X which is the perfect justification for a nerd to make for a new Apple MacBook purchase.

    All white and plastic, it was beautiful, and that new Apple MacBook never needed to be tainted by Bootcamp and Windows. It turned out that Mac OS is actually quite capable on its own.

    Not quite as beautiful as that G3 iMac I acquired years after it was ever useful, but always be beautiful.

    And that’s why I can’t use any other OS today. I’ve tried Windows and Linux of late, I’m always open to a change so I know I’m using the best tools for the job, but my taste gravitates to the Mac. It is beautiful, useful, and just plain nice. I’ve even tried the iPad as a main computer, or the phone. But it’ll always be the Mac for me. Happy birthday, and hello, old friend.

    Designing the iTunes Music Store: "Refer to the main.psd"

    This is a really insightful read by Michael Darius behind designing the iTunes Music Store, wrapping up on the video at the end though, really amazing that an entire genre of store no-longer exists.

    Another chapter in the ever-growing story of how I interact with, and use, social media:

    I wrote a little while ago about choosing two social networks.

    I kind of have, Mastodon and Threads/Instagram/Facebook. By which I mean that the Meta platforms all blur together with crossposting and attention.

    That leaves my remaining accounts from the tier list, Facebook Page, LinkedIn, and Twitter/X.

    Rather than delete them, like I’d rather, I’ve trialled throwing them to ChatGPT.

    I’m still refining the prompt, but here’s what I’m asking ChatGPT 4 to do in a Zapier zap:

    It starts with an instruction, or a set up which looks like this …

    You are a content producer for Josh Withers the Australian wedding celebrant, a marriage celebrant famous worldwide for creating epic marriage ceremonies for adventurous people. You believe that the best kind of marriage ceremony and wedding is an intentional one, where everyone invited is invited for a reason and with a purpose, and that everything that happens at the wedding happens with intentionality and purpose. You are not necessarily against wedding traditions but you are against wedding traditions for the sake of wedding traditions. You write and speak in Australian English, and in a classic and timeless nature but with the wit and humour of Australian marriage celebrant Josh Withers. Be funny. When talking about weddings use inclusive language, use bride only if you’re talking about a female person getting married, not as the title of the wedding industry client, and explore a diverse range of topics, cultures, and kinds of people that could get married.

    Then I prompt it to write a post like this …

    Write another new controversial tweet as Josh Withers, do not enclose it in quotation marks, written in the style of Australian wedding celebrant Josh Withers based off his writing online and on social media, asking a question or posing an thought about Josh Withers’s wedding planning style. The tweet can be a controversial opinion about a modern, inclusive, intentional style of getting married; or an insight into modern wedding planning; or a reflection on wedding traditions of old and how they don’t matter any more. Designed to illicit engagement and a response from people who see it. Take into account all interviews and responses by Josh Withers Australian wedding celebrant, and everything Josh has written on his online. Keep the message to under 280 characters. Do not start with greetings, do not use Australian slang like “G’day”, do not use any hashtags. Be controversial and talk about all kinds of different wedding topics. Make each tweet different and unique.

    There’s a 66% chance of the zap running that every hour, and 50% of the time the content goes to Facebook.

    My engagement on these existing platforms has been very low for a long time, so let’s see if this moves the needle. If not, it’s a fun experiment into what a LLM can do for social media.

    Tess McClure in The Guardian reports on Pak ‘n’ Save’s mealbot:

    A New Zealand supermarket experimenting with using AI to generate meal plans has seen its app produce some unusual dishes – recommending customers recipes for deadly chlorine gas, “poison bread sandwiches” and mosquito-repellent roast potatoes.

    The app, created by supermarket chain Pak ‘n’ Save, was advertised as a way for customers to creatively use up leftovers during the cost of living crisis. It asks users to enter in various ingredients in their homes, and auto-generates a meal plan or recipe, along with cheery commentary. It initially drew attention on social media for some unappealing recipes, including an “oreo vegetable stir-fry”.

    We’re in the beautiful age of quality assurance in large language models. The giveaway is that the supermarket responds with:

    (we are) disappointed to see “a small minority have tried to use the tool inappropriately and not for its intended purpose

    Instead of owning the issue and revealing that the whole thing is built on a house of cards and we’re all just figuring this crap out.

    I, for one, welcome our new British open web overlords

    The BBC has embraced ActivityPub, nice work @[email protected]! I’ve always thought that the long term advantage from a commercial and brand point of view is to be able to say “follow us” and the words that follow are your own brand and your own network. The power of Mastodon, ActivityPub, the Fediverse, means that the BBC can be on Mastodon, and someone else can be on a completely different platform that supports ActivityPub (like Threads or Micro.

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    A MacBook with a turntable instead of a keyboard? Shut up and take my money, DJ.

    Reed Albergotti in Semafor Technology:

    Meta, Microsoft, Amazon, and the navigation company TomTom released a free mapping dataset in a bid to compete with Google Maps and Apple Maps. Developers can use the data, which includes 59 million places of interest, to create their own navigation products.

    If a powerfully simple mapping system like What3Words can’t gain traction in a decade, I don’t think TomTom can get a foot up by giving it away.

    I am curious where this leaves Bing Maps though.

    Imagine being the butt of this line in a news report “The launch of the eye-scanning cryptocurrency project Worldcoin” and you’re also the guy standing behind the main brand name related to a technology the world is shit scared of, and just thinking everything is fine.

    Why the rush to 5G?

    On a per user basis, a 5G network is cheaper to operate than a 4G one. The technology is easier to maintain and more reliable. It’s not sexy. That’s something that is hard to sell to consumers, but makes a huge difference to telcos. There’s much more to this. The additional capacity may not be a pressing matter in New Zealand right now, but in time there will be more connections and 5G gives carriers headroom to cope with future demand. There may be future apps that can use the speed.

    Did you notice the 5G mobile revolution? billbennett.co.nz

    Social media tier list - July 6, 2023, update

    🎂 This is the official tier list of social networks, all of them, from the beginning of time to July 6, 2023. This list is not to be questioned and is wholly correct, trust me. 👼🏻 God Tier IRC Vine iMessage LiveJournal Myspace MSN Messenger ICQ Usenet/Google Groups Email Blogrolls Jerry and David’s Guide to the World Wide Web (OG Yahoo!) phpBB Friendster micro.blog FourSquare Digg (version 1 and 2) Path 👑 Royalty Tier Threads Apple eWorld Hi5 Instagram Mastodon Flickr Tumblr ActivityPub Blogger WordPress SixDegrees 😶 Adam Sandler Tier (Could take it or leave it) Orkut Google Wave, Buzz, Shoelace, Friend Connect LinkedIn Pinterest BBS/Bulletin Board Systems Meerkat AOL Messenger Twitch BlueSky Snapchat YouTube Wavelength BeReal 🫤 Pleb Tier Facebook T2 iTunes Ping Orkut Google+ Weibo Yahoo!

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    Threads, a thread

    🧵 Decentralisocial networks are cool, but you know what’s also cool? Talking to your existing friends group, and having your content enjoyed by people. Unlike most of my late-2022 and 2023 content which hasn’t been seen by more than 10 to 15 eyes. Prediction: Threads will win; T2, Bluesky, the others will falter; ActivityPub and Mastodon will be a fun place for niche communities.

    My new Kobo is better than my old Kindle, but barely

    📚 I’ve owned and used a Kindle for over a decade, it had been my favourite gadget for so long. But over the years I started to realise that Amazon wasn’t interested in pushing the platform forward any further and the software wasn’t going to get any better. I even upgraded to the Amazon Kindle Scribe and it was an embarrassingly bad product. The final straw was when Jean-Louis Gassée’s new book, Grateful Geek just didn’t work on any physical Kindle devices, despite Amazon happily selling me a copy.

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    Rate my desk (June 2023 edition)

    For the past ten months, my and my family’s non-clothing and non-toiletries life has completely lived inside a Think Tank camera bag and it will do so for another 50 days. I took the opportunity this afternoon to do a quick audit, headcount, and make sure everything I was carrying was necessary, and inspired by the Hemispheric Views podcast segment ‘Rate my desk’ I thought I would submit my ‘desk away from home’ to the internets.

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    Apple Vision has been 'in development' for 28 years

    Tim Cook once said that “we are high on AR for the long run” and it’s true, for 28 years Apple - and the rest of the tech industry - has been noodling around on augmented reality and virtual reality. Out of a purely personal interest, I started flipping through rumours about Apple and its “glasses” to see where the leakers got it right and wrong, and the next minute I’m back in 1995, so I thought a curated list of all the leaks, rumours, and related dates might be a nice record to make in the year of our headset, AVP 0.

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    Does Apple Vision mean 360 content is finally going to have its moment?

    I’ve been playing around with 360 content for over seven years ago now and I have a few questions about where Apple is going to take the format. If you make 360 content today, you spend a lot of time looking at content like this: It’s not as appealing as the embeds below. I’ve recorded my work creating marriage ceremonies in 360 video, and with my various DJI drones, I’ve been trying to create 360 still content as well.

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    Apple Shortcut for recording photography metadata

    I’m passionate about making photos, but I have a sub-passion in recording good metadata around those photos as they enter my iCloud Photo Library so the photos become more useful as they age. Whether they are used in Photo Memories, like “Paris 2023” and “Early Mornings with Luna”, or whether I want to search on the Photo’s “Places” function to find that photo I made ten years ago, the metadata is important to me.

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    The genesis story of Apple computers

    I’ve been thinking about this story from Steve Jobs, recalled in 1996 and told in the new book Make Something Wonderful, about how and why he and Steve Wozniak started Apple: The reason we (Woz and I) built a computer was that we wanted one, and we couldn’t afford to buy one. They were thousands of dollars at that time. We were just two teenagers. We started trying to build them and scrounging parts around Silicon Valley where we could.

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    My first tweet was tweeted 18 months before I even started tweeting

    I’ve been reminiscing over Twitter this week, wondering what the last tweet will be amongst other things as Space Karen prepares to take away the verification tick on my profile that proves I am who I am, a tick gifted to me from my time in the media in Australia. I started my current Twitter account in October 2009 but I was sure that I had an account before then so I went searching and searching and searching and found it: March 2008, @1073brekky.

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    Will, a mate of mine has written and released a guide on working in film and television production, something he’s an expert in.

    I thought readers of my blog might appreciate the book if they or people they knew aspired to work in film production (it’s a great and personal read, even for me, an old man without film and TV aspirations), but also, they’d enjoy this excerpt about what technology you should own and be proficient in before you start as a production assistant.

    “Seriously, people will look at you like you have three heads as you drag that eighty-pound hunk of plastic with the extended numerical keyboard from your bag and plop it on the desk.”

    If you, or someone you know, wants a start in the film and TV production industry Will’s the book is a must-purchase and must-read - and it’s now on Kindle.

    My first look at the 400 megapixel mode on the Canon EOS R5

    I’m a sucker for megapixels, because as much as they really don’t matter to most people - and they really shouldn’t - for me they often mean I’ve got room to crop. More pixels collected means more pixels you can delete, a post-production version of digital zoom if you like. Other, smarter, and different, people will have different reasons for wanting more pixels, so I’m not here to pass judgement on the feature, just to share my first thoughts and two images I’ve made with the feature.

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    I’m feeling bullish on the new group-messaging app and platform, Wavelength, After reading John Gruber’s review, then using it and joining a group, I think it could replace group chats in other places, but also serve as a platform for new conversations.

    If you’re interested, I’ve started a few group chats:

    Jump onboard if you’re interested!

    Inherent problems in the internet of 2022

    Some inherent problems in the internet of 2022, in my humble opinion: Everyone is too exposed to everyone else, for example, it’s wild that anyone and everyone can read these words I’m typing. It’s beautiful and wild, but ultimately we aren’t born ready to be so exposed. There’s the smallest number of celebrities that have successfully been in the public spotlight for their whole lives and come out unharmed, and even those that keep a positive public identity have conspiracy theories made up about them (Hi, Tom Hanks).

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    Qantas T80 seat selection reminder shortcut for Apple Shortcuts

    Reading a recent Point Hacks email about the ol' ‘T-80’ Qantas rule reminded me of an Apple Shortcuts shortcut I’d been meaning to make for a while. I’m no programmer, or Shortcut-writer, but I whipped the shortcut up today and I think it works really well. Stealing this next image from Point Hacks, extra seats open up 80 hours out from the flight: If you’d like a reminder about that opportunity, download the shortcut on your Apple device now.

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    Introducing the next joshPhone. You can design yours on Neal’s website.

    TikTok's talking points are totally cool, nothing to see here, move along now, everything's cool ya see

    It almost seems like TikTok is the great globalist company we’ve all been waiting for, to save us from the boredom of our everyday lives, and to connect us - not with our friends - but with some kind of massive data store in China that I am totally sure is totally ok and nothing to stress about at all, ya know. TikTok’s public relations talking points via Gizmodo: downplay the parent company ByteDance downplay the China association downplay AI TikTok is a global company The TikTok app doesn’t even operate in China TikTok is highly localised in its experience and operations, which means … insert country here … has a lot of independence in the day-to-day operations of the platform insert everything is fine gif

    Instagram is embarrassing itself because it didn't steal, it copied

    Five days after Instagram launched in October 2010 I graced the new photo-sharing service with this gold nugget. [] (https://www.instagram.com/p/-iO/?igshid=YmMyMTA2M2Y=) 4,301 days later who knew that I could have summed up the entire social network in four words. “Make me feel better!” Instagram made me feel better for the longest time. The simple act of making and viewing photos was lubricated to the point of a simple addiction. I could make photos and share them so easily, and you could share your photos and I could experience them so easily.

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    Stand back, imma fix email

    Why people hate their email but also why they should love it. I think it’s a crime that not many people subscribe to The Sizzle. The idea of paying $5 a month for it still scares lots of people away. Which is crazy, because for $5 you get immense value from the desk of @decryption. I referred my mate Nick to The Sizzle and he said “The Sizzle is one of the best things I regularly read.

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    A little demo of Adobe Photoshop 2022’s Neural filter on one of my photos

    Steve Jobs’s resume:

    “I’m looking for a fixer-upper with a solid foundation. Am willing to tear down walls, build bridges, and light fires. I have great experience, lots of energy, a bit of that ‘vision thing’ and I’m not afraid to start from the beginning.”

    Apple Prediction in October 2021: the Apple Music Voice/Siri plan lasts no more than two years.

    Going down market never looks good on Apple. “Here’s a cheaper crappier version of our thing if money’s really important to you, whatever, we don’t care”.

    Apple Weather in iOS 15 is still wrong in Australia

    Since the moment Steve Jobs introduced us to the iPhone, Australian users have had bad weather data. The Australian Bureau of Meteorology is the only true source of weather data in Australia, but Apple sources it’s data from Weather.com, even though it owns Dark Sky now. That said, Dark Sky’s data doesn’t seem accurate in Australia either. But it doesn’t matter how you skin it, Apple Weather has had bad data for a long time, and it continues in iOS 15.

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    Four different weather reports in Lilydale, Australia. How is weather reporting still so hard?

    Seeing John Gruber’s recommendation of a new weather app, Hello Weather (it’s a beautiful app, just feels a little weird that two Basecamp devs are involved, that brand name is tainted after the last week). I noticed its primary weather data provider is Dark Sky, the now Apple-owned American-focused weather data source. So I checked my four installed weather apps to see how they reported the current weather in my location right now (Lilydale, Victoria, Australia) and not one current temp lined up.

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    Tap your phone at Gold Coast bus stops to access my website

    My February 2021 Apple Fitness challenge is to walk 227km in the month. So I was out late last night closing in on the target when I stopped and looked at the bus timetable sign at a local bus stop. That NFC tag piqued my curiosity. I wondered if it worked on iPhone? So I tapped my iPhone 12 Pro up against the NFC logo and a website hyperlink notification popped up like when you scan a QR code.

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    Dear DJI,

    I’d like a new Mavic model please. In late 2016, five years ago, you set my heart on fire. I’d been watching the Phantoms ghosting through the sky making aerial photography for three years. Your Inspire line had inspired me for over two. But the Mavic, the sweet little foldable package with a great camera, won me over, be still my beating heart. That first relationship with the Mavic Pro was like the first time I drank whisky neat.

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    Do yourself a retro favour and search for “SOL.EXE” in the iPhone App Store

    I’m two days deep Clubhouse and I’m feeling bullish about its potential.

    It’s a powerfully personal medium, with deep accountability (live voice). It’s like the child talkback radio and social networking.

    I’ve got one invite left if you’re interested.

    Feature request for iMessage, Facebook Messenger, Instagram DMs, and Facebook Page Messenger: FOR THE LOVE OF GOD LET ME SEE UNREAD MESSAGES SO I CAN “READ” THAT ONE UNREAD MESSAGE WHICH I CAN’T FIND ANYWHERE. Maybe a simple “filter by unread” or somethn?

    “Tech level determined using Qsin”

    The fact that Uber achieved the same growth in 10% of its $150 million as spend is one thing, the story of how they got there, that’s something else entirely!

    How to overcome Phone Addiction [Solutions + Research]

    “Phone addiction is one of the biggest non-drug addiction in human history. Studies show that excessive phone use is linked to procrastination, suicide (example), spoilt sleep, food and water neglect, headaches, lower productivity, unstable relationships, poor physical health (eye strain, body-aches, posture, hand strain), and poor mental health (depression, anxiety, stress). Some of these problems can be both causes and effects of phone addiction (procrastination, anxiety, unstable relationships, etc.).”

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    With many of us grounded, has anyone had a play of PC Globe to try and scratch that travel itch? You might need to upgrade to a 486 to run it well.

    My issue with Spotify and Amazon muscling in on podcasting and how Apple has failed as well

    Life on the internet, and in podcasting, is a game of middlemen (middlepeople?). The middlepeople actually really benefit from being in the middle, more than we imagine, and it’s an easy position to hold, one that most of the middlepeople hold in secret. Spotify is muscling it’s way into becoming the middle person between you, your favourite podcast, and the 246 companies that receive that data. Meanwhile big-spending Amazon is muscling it’s way into our listening habits, and even my podcast app of choice, Overcast, is a middleperson by design in that the Overcast servers know what podcasts I listen to, and those servers are continually polling the different podcast servers.

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    Algorithms are destroying our communities and what can we, or I, do about it?

    There needs to be a better way to Internet Maybe it’s because 2020 gave me many opportunities to think through the implications of which technology companies I’m quite beholden too, or maybe it’s because 2020 brought to light so many of the unhealthy business practices so many technology companies are embroiled in, but I’ve been trying to make big changes in my lifestyle in response to either, or both - because I believe that tech company algorithms are destroying marriages, friendships, families, and communities.

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    If you thought everything else that happened this year was scary, 2020 is going out with a bang with delightfully terrifying dancing robots from Boston Dynamics

    A new family and travel photo workflow

    For my personal travel and family photos, I’ve started a new photos workflow, and I thought other people who are beginning their family photo journey like I have in the past few years might be interested. The premise of the workflow is that photos begin on my iPhone, Britt’s iPhone, or my Sony A6400. They are processed, and then iCloud Photo Library is my one true family photo library. I’ve put loads (months) of work into clearing and culling that library down to about 21,000 photos now, and just recently finished geotagging every single last photo in the library using Metapho.

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    2014 article on ‘Silicon Valley data’ being the new ‘Wall Street debt’

    “Built by geniuses, both products end up being deceptively cheap, morally corrupting, and of questionable long-term economic utility.”

    Live Free or Try

    My personal answer to this thought is that I’m barely “on Facebook.” I publish any and all thoughts, opinions, photos, et cetera, to my personal blog which is managed and published here on Micro.Blog, a social network that is beautiful in nature and inherently keeps my data personal. It’s business model isn’t sharing my personal data, it’s business model is to be a social networ, and it costs $5 a month, because if something is free you’re not the customer, you’re the product being sold.

    The Damage Has Been Proven, So Why Are We Still on Facebook?

    “If a host of reports, studies, articles, commissions of inquiry, books and films were produced about the dangers inherent in the use of a certain product – let’s say a medication or an automobile – the likely result would be a public outcry demanding the elimination of said product. But that’s not the case with Facebook. Why?” — Haaretz

    Light and cameras explained in the most technical but easily understood way. If you want to actually understand how a camera works, read this through.

    If AirPods Max offend you, that is the correct response ... for you

    An aspect of Apple’s strategy - marketing and business growth/sustainability - that is often forgotten when they launch products is this: filtering. Not all of Apple’s products are for everyone. They’re for some people. If the AirPods Max as a device, or at that price, offend you - you’re being filtered out. Your response is the correct and desired response Apple wants you to have. If these were headphones for everyone they’d be $20 at a service station.

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    I’d neglected to mention weight/size in my reMarkable 2 review - so it’s been updated. The reMarkable is 18% smaller than the iPad Pro and weighs 15% less. When you’re talking about gadgets held in hands, that’s a difference.

    Can the reMarkable 2 replace my iPad Pro?

    When the first generation iPad Pro was released I saw two opportunities for my personal workflow. One was the easy, and simply beautiful, method for my couples to sign their Australian marriage paperwork electronically. The other was for me to leave my Mac at home with my heavy travel schedule and make the iPad the computer I took away from the house. The iPad served both of those roles quite adequately, even more so as I upgraded to the 11" iPad Pro and the second generation Apple Pencil.

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    The first rule of drone club is don’t take your drone swimming.

    Today we find out if my iPad Pro is for sale

    What if we banned the comments section of the internet?

    Would the world be a better place if public comment functions were outlawed on the internet? Imagine exactly the same internet, and social media, we know and love/hate today - the only difference being that you cannot comment on posts in a public manner. You can still engage in private conversation with people, maybe even in groups up to 5 or 10. But above a certain number even group chats are banned.

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    Zoom slaughters the Apple Silicon Macs' batteries. Every time I jump off a Zoom call I’m surprised at how much it’s dropped compared to regular usage. The circled part of this screenshot was a 25 minute Zoom call.

    Pixelmator made my 11 year whale photo look a little bit better, about 10mb better

    I dropped Pixelmator’s machine learning “zoom, enhance” feature called “ML Super Resolution” onto an 11 year old iPhone photo of two whales off the beach, along with all the machine learning colour grading options. It’s still a low-fi photo, but now it’s a high-res low-fi photo. Here’s the 35kb original. And here’s the 11mb machine learnt super res version.

    Not all iOS apps are terrible on macOS running Apple Silicon

    Much has been written and podcasted about how terrible the iOS apps running on Apple Silicon situation has been a pretty poor show. But my experience has been above average. I thought I’d showcase the apps I’d installed and used that were pretty good considering they weren’t developed for use with a keyboard and mouse/touchpad. Instagram Despite being disallowed by the developers, a little .ipa workaround saw Instagram’s iOS app easily install on the Mac.

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    Instagramception #AppleSilicon

    Stellar little Black Friday deal from Aussie Broadband: 250mbps down and 25 upstream for the price of 100/40 for a few months.

    24 hours with a MacBook Air sporting an M1 Apple Silicon chipset

    This is a black magic machine that is fast and beautiful and literally what I want in a computer. The reviews are all true and accurate. Even for the bottom tier of Apple’s computer lineup, this is the speediest, most responsive Mac I’ve ever owned or used. Early in the year I moved to a Macbook Pro 16" to get the speed and responsiveness I’m getting from this MacBook Air, and the 16" feels like a dinosaur.

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    If you really wanted to take issue with macOS Big Sur you should be protesting on the streets regarding the external drive eject icon #wethepeople

    This afternoon I sold my 16” MacBook Pro so I could buy a MacBook with an M1 CPU. I prayed to the ghost of Steve Jobs and said “please don’t let me buy the wrong computer” as I struggled whether to buy an Air or a Pro and now the Apple Store is down, so if that’s not a sign …

    As John Gruber said when he linked to this page of vintage Soviet control rooms, these would make for some cool Zoom backgrounds

    Privacy and free can’t co-exist online

    The USA military buys your data from all three free apps we love. Nothing is free. Pay for your apps. “The U.S. military is buying the granular movement data of people around the world, harvested from innocuous-seeming apps, Motherboard has learned. The most popular app among a group Motherboard analyzed connected to this sort of data sale is a Muslim prayer and Quran app that has more than 98 million downloads worldwide.

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    Apple Photos’ Memories feature is getting a bit desperate when it’s like, “remember that time you crossed the border into NSW?”

    Are there any nerd-like people that can point me in the direction of how to upload an image to micro.blog from a macOS automator action, and an iOS Shortcut. I’m nerd smart but not code smart, but figure I can learn. I’d love to be able to right click and upload an image/images.

    The Macstories macOS Big Sur long read review

    “There will always be and should be differences between the Mac and an iPhone or iPad because the hardware and input methods are different. Still, for the Mac to remain a healthy, important part of Apple’s lineup, it needs to adapt to the computing landscape of 2020 and change while remaining true to what makes the Mac uniquely suited to specific tasks. That, in a nutshell, is Big Sur’s objective.

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    I can confidently tell you that the Apple Leather MagSafe Wallet fits three cards easily, no more, not even three cards and a $20 note folded up.

    Apple’s underdogs series is marketing at its best.

    April 2019: Apple releases “Apple at Work — The Underdogs

    July 2020: Apple release “The whole working-from-home thing — Apple

    Working on story telling at this height would honestly be so cool!

    If you were wondering, I’m a massive advocate for colours and emojis in calendars.

    Nothing reminds you how much of a gross and disgusting person you are more than your AirPods case.

    US news today via #thesizzle & I thought it was interesting to read that the use of a risk algorithim to determine bail was rejected. This issue was covered in Malcolm Gladwell’s book, Talking To Strangers, and overwhelmingly the algorithim made better decisions than people.

    The next Apple Event webpage has an AR Easter egg, tap on the Apple logo in the hero image

    Nerding out on putting a MagSafe case on an iPhone 12. It’s a peach case and obviously that’s communicated to the phone so it does this cool animation.

    Going through old files and I found a 2009 iPhone 3GS rumour mock-up and I thought it would be interesting to see it next to an iPhone 12 rumour infographic

    I wanted to see how much the iPhone camera had changed between the iPhone 6 and iPhone 12, so I took the same nine photos with four different iPhones, and blogged the results

    Comparing the cameras on iPhones 6, SE, XS, 11, and 12 Pro

    I upgraded my daily carry computer, or what us old people call a phone, to an iPhone 12 Pro this week. Upon clicking the shutter a few times I could see there was a big difference in the new camera, but I wanted to compare photos to former iPhone cameras. So I pulled out all the old iPhones in the house and took the same photo on each one. It worked out pretty good as the four cameras were each mostly two years apart in release dates.

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    The official Josh Withers iPhone 12 Pro review after using one for eight hours.

    The iPhone 12 Pro in-hand feel is remarkably different to the past six generations of iPhone with the rounded edges. The 90 degree edge of the iPhone 12 makes it feel better in-hand and I could imagine using it case-less. 12 Pro camera quality increase is so noticeable from an iPhone XS, the HDR is borderline “too much” as far as regular photos go, but it’s also representative of what we actually see with our eyes.

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    Nothing says “you’re a weak little nancy boy" like an Instagram ad for some flippin cool gadget that is algorithmically designed to get me to purchase it. Tonight I might have won the battle, but cool-ass gadgets showed to me through social media ads, you may yet win the war.

    Why have I listened to 400 episodes of ATP?

    One of my earliest memories is listening to Play School on the ABC because I’d been given a TV that didn’t show a picture. The medium of audio storytelling has been a passion of mine for so long, I found a career in it first in community radio, then in commercial radio as a techie and then as a breakfast announcer. As podcasting became a thing, thanks Cameron, I have held a steady interest the entire time.

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