I’m setting up a new machine and downloaded the usual clutch of my favorite RSS readers: NetNewsWire (my first love), Reeder Classic, Reader, and Unread. I wrote a while back about discovering Unread for the Mac, but having opened it afresh, I didn’t realize how different it is on the Mac. On iPhone and iPad, Unread is a great full-screen, gesture-intensive experience. On the Mac, it’s a much more traditional implementation, right down to the look and feel of the UI. Really cool.
Here’s this week’s list of things to check out:
1 And I mean that in the oldest sense of the term: it’s a reason to buy a Mac if you publish a lot.
I don’t know how many times we’ve been to the Knife and Fork in Atlantic City, but it’s a lot. It’s reliably good. I had a Manhattan, oysters, a veal chop, and dessert (berries, whipped cream, and phyllo.
After trying out the Caudabe Veil with the iPhone 16 Pro Max, which I liked but found that it impedes my access to the Camera Control, I swapped to a Beats Case in Riptide Blue. I like pretty much everything about the case, save for maybe–maybe–the plastic.
First, the color. While arguably not the most important factor in picking a case, it is, for me, a departure to have a bright case. The loudest I’d say I ever had was the Project:Red case for my iPhone 7. I figured the light blue would look nice with the Desert Titanium of the iPhone.
Second, the bottom of the case is open, as John Siracusa prefers. I never objected to the lip on the Caudabe Sheath on my previous iPhone, but now that I’ve been using the Beats case on the new phone, I definitely prefer the latter. It also gives you a nice view of the color of the phone.
Third, Camera Control: the Veil requires the user to squeeze their finger into a void, and that makes using the capacitive power of the Camera Control difficult and a poor user experience. The Beats case has a conductive layer, which allows for authentic and accessible use of the new button.
Lastly, the plastic: it is shiny and slick. It puts me in mind of iPhone 5C, which I liked a lot (but did not own). I would prefer something grippier; I was a fan of Apple’s leather cases, and the Sheath had a great texture despite being plastic. Overall, I enjoy the case and glance at the color from time to time with delight. But I do worry about the slick surface.
I have been an every-other-year adopter of the new iPhone since getting my first iPhone, the original 3G, with one exception:
I was not due for the 11, but decided to get one in green because I liked the color.
This season, I decided to go, once again, with the bigger phone. The only reasons this year to get the larger iPhone are the size and the benefits that come with it: a larger screen and superior battery life. Gone are the days when the larger phone meant getting a camera feature exclusive to it.
The iPhone 16 Pro Max is 6.9″ inches diagonally, where my previous phone, the 14 Pro, was 6.1”. (The non-Max 16 Pro is 6.3”.) This is nearly 75% of an inch more screen real estate. I will predictably vacillate between sizes in the future, as I always do. I like the pocket-ability of a smaller phone, and prefer smaller laptops, but I do enjoy using the larger screen on the Max devices. And the battery life? Always welcome.
The biggest limitation of the larger phone is one-handed use. I am a compulsive phone checker, and having the smaller phone makes it easy to peek at emails and other notifications with one hand. I’m signing up for another couple of years of stretching my fingers.
I chose the Desert Titanium partly out of curiosity, but also because it was the fastest I could get a new phone. I don’t get choked up over my phone’s color, as I always put a case on it. I was thinking about trying the clear plastic Apple case, but I tend not to like them much. I ordered a Caudabe Veil, as I liked the Sheath on my 14 Pro so much.
The Veil is OK, but as you will read below in my discussion of the Camera Control button, there’s more to consider when selecting a case than size/bulk and color. As such, the Veil is not long for this earth.
Spec-wise, the screens on the 14 Pro and 16 Pro Max are not terribly different (besides size); perhaps due to the age of the panel on the older model, the phone is incredibly bright and detailed (sushi picture) to my eye, and viewing pictures in the Photos app yields a more rich, visually satisfying experience. Both phones have the Super Retina XDR display, and both run 1000 nits (2000 max brightness).
This is my first phone with the Action Button. Rhonda’s Pro 15 has one, but she doesn’t use it. I set it to the Flashlight, which I like but it will take a lot of getting used to. For years, the flashlight button has been on the bottom of the Lock Screen (which it still can be, but like my adoption of military time, I’m trying to go all in and retrain my brain).
I did flirt with setting the Action Button to fire off a Shortcut to create a new task in Todoist. And I might go back to that, if the Flashlight doesn’t stick. For sure, prior to iOS 18, it would have been the Camera button.
The iPhone 16 Pro Max continues to offer a 48 mexapixel camera, like my iPhone 14 Pro. I had been thinking about getting a new camera to replace my perfectly serviceable Olympus. I was looking for something in the 20 megapixel range, and considered both the the Olympus OM-D and Panasonic Lumix G87. This phone was a less expensive option than a new camera (and a new phone would be in the near future, if not now), so there’s a rationale. It does have a 5x telephoto zoom (vs the 3x on the 14 Pro), which I will get plenty of use out of. This episode of the Accidental Tech Podcast features a good discussion of the changes.
Photos offered a precursor to Photographic Styles on the iPhone, but the new Styles feature offers a bevy more Instagrammish options to change the style of the photo you snap. You can apply styles after taking a photo, as you could in iOS 17. One cool feature of Photographic Styles is that you can also remove or change them after taking a photo in one of the styles.
I’m too clumsy to go careless with my phones, so I always have something ready to sheath the new device. While third-party cases are always interesting to explore, the nature of the Camera Control button requires more consideration.
Camera Control, unlike the sleep/wake, volume, and Action buttons, includes a capacitive surface, meaning that in addition to presses (and half-presses), it registers swipes across its surface.
Having purchased and appreciated the excellent Caudabe Sheath case for my outgoing iPhone 14 Pro, I decided to order a Caudabe Veil case for the Pro Max 16. The Veil is a much thinner minimalist case than the Sheath. Your preference in protective wear may skew towards more robust cases, but this is a nice choice if you prefer something thin and light (I don’t know how much protection you’d get with a serious drop, and hopefully I won’t find out).
| case | Caudabe Sheath | Caudabe Veil |
|---|---|---|
| weight | 43.2 grams | 9.2 grams |
| with phone | 248.3 grams | 236.6 |
Among the possible downsides of purchasing the Pro Max vs the Pro is the weight of the device (the 14 Pro weighs 205 grams, while the Pro Max 16 is 227.2 grams). But as you can see, getting a thin case not only mediates the total heft, but with the Veil, my pocket is lighter with the Pro Max in the Veil.
Despite this, the Veil handles buttons by leaving open holes in the case. I do not prefer this to, say, the Sheath’s solution, which is to create buttons on the case that depress the iPhone’s physical buttons. This approach, however, won’t work on the Camera Control, due to the touch-activated capacitive surface.
The button works on the Veil, but you are having to squish your finger into the groove to make it work. That alone isn’t a great user experience, but it is compounded irrespective of which button you’re keen to press by the size of the Pro Max–unless you have large and dexterous hands, using the Pro Max requires two hands or a more planful approach to depressing buttons.
Nine to 5 Mac has a good article on the case situation in the era of the Camera Control, and it’s how I learned of the Beats cases. I had ordered a clear plastic Apple case last night, but I cancelled it in favor of trying a Beats case.
The other reason I was keen to upgrade is Apple Intelligence. Sure, AI is overhyped, but I do find these early days flush with possibility. And I do very much appreciate the research and summarizing capabilities of the current crop of LLM-enabled solutions.
The idea that the Surface Pro and other Copilot+ PCs will be able to search and organize my digital existence is (in a bit creepy) enticing to me. In the same vein, what more personal device do we use each day than our phones? My phone is barely a phone; it’s a computer with email, to dos, research, files, and archived material. Why wouldn’t I be excited for the device to make some recommendations to me throughout the day, considering how much of my life I entrust it to manage?
Alas, it’s not here yet, but as Andy Ihnatko noted on the most recent episode of MacBreak Weekly, it’s quite possibly a deliberate strategy to separate the growing pains of AI in Apple devices from the release of the company’s most important hardware refresh, and the release of iOS 18 itself.
On the weekend of Rhonda’s 52nd birthday, which we did indeed celebrate, here’s this week’s list of things to check out:
1 There is another placed where I’m boringly repetitive in my dinner order: The Knife and Fork in Atlantic City. I always–always–order the lobster Thermidor. There are a few reasons, including the fact that it’s an uncommon dish, and we don’t go there often.
I almost included watermelon in my Serial Sunday Pro Max post last night. Watermelon is ubiquitous and cheap in southern New Jersey all summer long. I’ve always loved watermelon, but not more so than these last two summers. Last summer, my rowing schedule kept me plenty thirsty, and there is nothing more refreshing when you’re thirsty than watermelon. It’s also low calorie relative to the bulk you can serve yourself, even being careful with your calories: a decent bowl of watermelon won’t even net you 100 calories. I eat watermelon first thing in the morning when I get up, just before rowing and coffee, and eat it throughout the day. I can eat a quarter of a melon in a day when I’m really in the mood.
Sadly, like all great seasonal things, it seems like the supply is drying up locally. Rhonda and I tucked in to Shop Rite and came up empty, and subsequently rolled out to a local farm stand in the hopes of securing one there. Nothing.
I did, however, score a nice small cantaloupe, which I cut up this afternoon. It’s delicious.
It’s iPhone Preorder week! Here’s this week’s list of things to check out:
Simon J. Levien, writing for The New York Times:
Former President Donald J. Trump has gone to great lengths to distance himself from Project 2025, a set of conservative policy proposals for a future Republican administration that has outraged Democrats. He has claimed he knows nothing about it or the people involved in creating it.
“I’m not going to read it,” Mr. Trump said at his first presidential debate against Vice President Kamala Harris. “Everybody knows what I am going to do.”
I don’t think anyone thought he was literally going to read it.
I wrote about making this a while back, but we make this dish pretty often. Last night’s effort was a success. I kept the bath at 122 and then charred the steaks up over the charcoal.
Fall: I suppose this should be its own post, but I was outside walking the dogs, pondering a third topic for this weekly listicle I am fond of writing, and it was unmistakable: fall is upon us. It’s been cool all day, but as the sun bows in the west, the air is downright crisp. Fall is paradoxically inviting and foreboding. It signals the end of summer, culturally a time we consider fun and light. But it’s a slow ramp up to the holidays, when its cooler but not cold, and there’s lots of merriment. The colors, the dishes, the waning daylight: these are all things I like about fall. It is, of course, foreboding in that it signals the denouement of another year, another spin on the globe, and the slow roll of winter.1 The grim steeliness of winter lies just over the crest of the holiday season. Memento Mori, as the Stoics advise.
If you are given to reflecting, fall is hard to resist.
1We have, in some sense, licked the problem of winter; we live in hospitable indoor climes and temper the limits of the shorter days with interior delights, be they cooking, watching, reading, or something else. But the memory remains.
I am pedantic enough to insist on the use of “BBQ” or “barbecue” in one cooking situation, and grilling in another. Barbecue connotes low heat, judicious application of smoke, extended cooking times. Grilling, on the other hand, means higher heat and shorter cook times. Here, the smoke flavor comes from the charcoal only. But the lines do blur.
Sunday was baby back ribs, once again, on the Weber Bullet smoker. I used Kingsford briquettes, a bit of rub, and cherry and apple woods. They took about five hours and came out great. I always use the Minion Method for ribs; it’s yielded reliable and delicious results.
Monday found the smoker fired up again, this time sans the water pan. This method, which I’ve also used to great success in making beer can chicken, uses a lot of charcoal to fashion a kind of pit barrel grill. The drums I cooked today took about an hour, and that’s about the same for a whole bird. The smoker only gets up around 325 degrees on a good day, so it still takes some time. Again: very good.
Here’s this week’s list of things to check out:
Rhonda and I found ourselves temporarily in an empty nest last night, so after Brie and rosé at Bellview, we ducked into around-the-corner Greenview Inn. I hadn’t really ever looked at the “from the grill” section of the menu, but you can order a number of meat and fish selections, choose a sauce, and add an a la carte veg to go along with it. And I figured with sauces being hard to calorie track, why not try something chock full of protein? So I ordered the veal chop with some salt and pepper, and a wedge of lemon to add some zing. Twas good.
I just finished John Kaag’s Hiking with Nietzsche: On Becoming Who You Are. I was curious about Nietzsche back in college after reading one of Henry Rollins’ books. Kind of on a lark, I took a political philosophy course in my junior year at Ursinus, and Nietzsche was featured as one of the three thinkers we read. (I ended up taking two more of this professor’s classes; he was a great lecturer and I enjoyed the reading, writing, and discussion immensely.
While Kaag is indeed a professor of philosophy, the book itself isn’t written for a academics; it is unabashedly confessional, and at turns triumphant, as Kaag punctuates compulsive, starving hikes with passages from the German thinker, equivocating the writings with his own life and experience.
It’s a curious approach; not pop philosophy, by any stretch, but not dense, either. I hesitate to call it a good introduction to Nietzsche or anything so pat, but that’s not exactly wrong.
I liked Hiking with Nietzsche enough to move on to Kaag’s debut, American Philosophy: A Love Letter. This is far less familiar territory for me, although it features Willam James, who I remember someone describing as a psychologist who wrote like a philosopher, while his brother was a novelist who wrote like a psychologist. Something to that effect, anyway. I’m only a few pages in so far but so far, so good.
Here are some memorable quotes from Hiking:
“Nietzsche was drawn to Emerson’s Promethean individualism, his suggestion that loneliness was not something to be remedied at all costs but rather a moment of independence to be contemplated and even enjoyed”
“According to Nietzsche, there are two forms of health: the futile type that tries to keep death at bay as long as possible, and the affirming type that embraces life, even its deficiencies and excesses.”
“Human existence is cruel, harsh, and painfully short, but the tragic heroes of ancient Greece found a way to make the suffering and sudden endings of life beautiful, or aesthetically significant. This is what Nietzsche meant in The Birth of Tragedy when he claimed that the existence can be justified only as an aesthetic experience.”
“To feel deeply the wisdom-tinged sadness of growing older, to understand that one’s youth isn’t long gone, but rather somewhere forever hidden from view, to face self-destruction while longing for creation—this is to grapple with Ecce Homo”