It’s also not much of a prediction to say that Apple Intelligence will continue to be the same mishmash of useful and useless features as it has been up to now. I’m not sure if anyone in the tech industry really knows which AI features will be the ones that blossom into game changers and which ones will be duds. So for now, everyone just keeps throwing spaghetti against the wall. Apple’s got several pots full of spaghetti still on a boil.
It’s also not much of a prediction to say that Apple Intelligence will continue to be the same mishmash of useful and useless features as it has been up to now. I’m not sure if anyone in the tech industry really knows which AI features will be the ones that blossom into game changers and which ones will be duds. So for now, everyone just keeps throwing spaghetti against the wall. Apple’s got several pots full of spaghetti still on a boil.
I’ve been using ChatGPT, and before that, Microsoft Copilot, for my chatbot needs. I really really like ChatGPT, but I want the deeper OS integration that would come with a more fulsome Siri… or maybe something else. Whatever it is, I hope it’s a lot like the chat I had today on the ride home. I was asking ChatGPT, via the iOS app, some questions, and even learned about a CLI for the Mac App Store, mas-cli. One of my favorite things about using windows is using Winget instead of their store. I was asking about Honebrew and our “chat” led me to find out about mas-cli. That wouldn’t have happened outside of that chat. Impressive.
This limitation extends beyond the realm of pro apps such as Final Cut or Logic and applies to all kind of software that, due to the nature of iPadOS, is impossible to find on the platform. Because of a mix of technical limitations and policy decisions, it’s still impossible for an application that wants to perform something in the background to exist on iPadOS. From clipboard managers and video encoders to automation utilities and AI-based photo editors, if you want to run a time-consuming task in the background on iPad, you’re out of luck.
I thought the exact same thing today while typing on my iPad. On the Mac and Windows, you can stack a bunch of text and images up in your clipboard and insert them in any order in another document. The iPad? Not so much. All the window switching is bananas.
While I have used a handful of RSS readers over the years, NetNewsWire is one of the earliest I used and one I still come back to, even after a bumpy ride. There are probably more than a handful of blogs and sites that I’ve subscribed to that have made the jump from NetNewsWire to NewsFire to Reeder to whatever else in between and more than a handful of back-end sync services to keep track of it all. If I see something insightful that someone writes and some of their other posts are enjoyable, I’ll subscribe. Social media comes and goes, but the little geeky list of things that computer enthusiasts, designers, and other interesting folks are writing has been a part of my daily routine for the better part of the last twenty years.
My RSS feed is something I check every day. Using it would have took different than it does today to catch a toehold with social medians, though.
I wrote at the beginning of Christmas break that I was bringing the Chemex home to see how we felt about it vs the Melita pour over rig I usually use. (I use the Chemex at the office.) I still have to check in with Rhonda, but for myself, I feel like the Melita at home is just fine. Maybe what I like at the office is the difference, another way to have coffee. I love my pre-workout Moka pot. Is it better than the Melita? Nah. Different? Sure. I can say the same for the Chemex: do I prefer it? Nah. Is it different? For sure.
Here’s what I’d say, if I were forced to be reductionistic about it:
If I could only have one way to make coffee, of the three, it would be the Chemex.
If I could only have two, it would be Chemex and moka.
But none of those material restriction apply.
So the Chemex is packed up and waiting, like an impertinent child having a time out.
I made our usual spritz with this cava today. Rhonda and I tried the cava solo and it is a much tighter carbonation, and a bit dryer than the Proseccos we’ve been buying. It’s a statement to how sweet the Aperol is. We both liked it.
I’ve been dumping links into Safari’s Reading List since it was introduced in 2011 with Mac OS X Lion, but I have a spotty history of actually reading what I add there. In the interests of really using Safari’s features in a more deliberate way, and freeing myself from the never-ending “I’d-like-to-read-this-but-not-now-should-I-bookmark-pocket-instapaper-OmniFocus-it,” I thought I’d start pruning the reading list. Ultimately, I’m always near some device on which I can see the reading list, and since I very much enjoy reading on my iPhone or iPad in Safari’s Reading Mode, Safari makes great sense.
I am by no means reading every article that I added to the list since way back when, but I am clicking on things that catch my eye and deleting obviously expired and obviated links. As Oliver Burkeman counsels, we should treat this stuff like a river that passes us by, rather than a static pile to be defeated.
And noticing some things about Safari and the reading list… I really like the feature how it stays in reader mode and allows you to swipe from article to article; you don’t have to back out to the reading list to choose the next article. Plus, AI summaries now! These are really cool, and sometimes Apple Intelligence will generate a table of contents you can use to navigate the page.
Still, that’s why the “moment” seems more like momentum to me. Rye sales don’t even scratch the hide of 800-pound gorillas like bourbon and Scotch. But if you put rye sales on a bell curve, says Nick Crutchfield, master of whisky for Diageo — which has multiple Scotches in its portfolio, but also has Bulleit rye — the rise “would start around 2006, and then somewhere around 2011, it just shoots up. And I don’t think we’re going to see the other side of the bell for years.”
There are so many varieties of rye whisky available these days. I got into it back in the mid-2000s, I think, and all we could find was Jim Beam and Old Overholt.
Epistemology — the study of what we can know — turned out to be particularly useful, since people love to tell reporters what they believe as if it’s a fact. Well, to be fair, they often don’t know the difference between their beliefs and facts. They think the mere fact that they believe something is true — for example, that angels watch over us — makes it true. While it’s true that they’re not lying, exactly, sorting out meaningful information from the mis- and dis- versions used to be the job of ink-stained wretches. Nowadays most of us produce advertiser-driven content, of course, but still I find the discipline inherent in epistemology useful when dealing with car sellers, alternative health practitioners, and marketers of all sorts.
What makes these “outliers” different? Their parents, the investigators found, are significantly more likely than other low-income parents to take their children to the library during the summer and to check out books while there. The parents of these “exceptional summer learners” also read to their children for longer periods of time, and are more likely to check their children’s homework and have higher expectations for their children’s conduct grade during the school year — “types of parental involvement that could well carry over into the summer months,” the researchers note.
We always took the kids to the library, especially in the summer. First, everything was free. And we were grabbing hundreds of dollars worth of kids books by the bagful and taking them home for a couple of weeks. To read. For free. Whenever we wanted.
Remember Maker Spaces ?
I feel the same way about project-based learning these days.
Structured procrastination means shaping the structure of the tasks one has to do in a way that exploits this fact. The list of tasks one has in mind will be ordered by importance. Tasks that seem most urgent and important are on top. But there are also worthwhile tasks to perform lower down on the list. Doing these tasks becomes a way of not doing the things higher up on the list. With this sort of appropriate task structure, the procrastinator becomes a useful citizen. Indeed, the procrastinator can even acquire, as I have, a reputation for getting a lot done.
Batman’s reputation has always been that he used non-lethal means. It was a code. This article points out that that hasn’t always been the case.
Blue light Discovered! Put down the iPad and get a Kindle.
We got blue-blocker glasses for Joe a long time ago. I have tried to stay away from an iPad or iPhone screen in bed (preferring my Kobo) but lately I’ve been spading. I don’t notice anything.
Speaking of Mac OS X Lion, I have a very fond remembrance of it coming out. I had ordered my first MacBook Air, which I got just as we were leaving for vacation in Ocean City. So I had the Mac to set up and play with over a whole week of vacation. About it I wrote:
If I had to pick a favorite, it would probably be the MacBook Air. It was my first Mac with an SSD, and I absolutely loved it. I only stopped using it because my son needed something to play Minecraft on; I was not in the market for a replacement. The 13” Pro I replaced it with was superior, technically, but I didn’t really need the extra power and the Air was just the right size for everything I needed it for.
