Ruben Schade notes that macOS Tahoe will be the last release of macOS to support Intel Macs, but pauses to wax ecstatic about OS X:
Mac OS X had its golden era on the Intel platform. The best versions of the OS were released during this time, which perhaps says more about modern macOS than anything else. The last great, serviceable desktop Mac—the original Mac Pro—also sported Intel CPUs.
Panther and Snow Leopard are good memories for me.
And here’s a link to my Intel MacBook Pro I had at work.
I often have the urge to document some of my dishes, including ribs and smash burgers. They’re dishes we don’t have often but require a number of steps. Today, making baby backs, I tried to be mindful of the stages and taken pictures accordingly. Behold.
Ribs have a membrane of the interior (bone) side that you can peel off. I have a pairing knife I use; I slide the knife up between the membrane and the bone on a few ribs and then use a paper towel to get a good purchase on it before slowly peeling it off. You know you’re getting good at it when it only takes a pass or two to remove the whole membrane.
I do “wet” style ribs with jacked bottled barbecue sauce, so I’m not sure that this step is necessary, but I do it anyway. I’ve been getting a good store-brand rub for pork that isn’t too salty, and we all enjoy pork prepared with it.
I follow two methods of smoking, straight from the Virtual Weber Bullet: the Standard and Minion methods (increasingly the latter). Today, I filled the charcoal chamber with Kingsford briquettes and some smoke wood, added a little bit of lump to round out the kitty, and then lit a small amount of lump in a chimney starter using these starters.
Once the lump was ablaze, I dumped them on top of the unlit coals in the smoker, assembled the rig, and added the meat.
Time to wait.
The ribs went on around 11:30 am. The smoker slowly came up to about 212 degrees Fahrenheit while we ran errands.
At 14:30, I pulled the lid off of the smoker and flipped the ribs. Looking good! The temp came up to 235 or so after all that oxygen rushed in.
I brushed some KC Masterpiece straight from the bottle as the ribs finished. I use the “tear test” to see when they’re finishing up. If the meat separates easily from the bone, you know you’re good to go. These were good to go.
You don’t have to let the ribs sit before eating them, but it doesn’t hurt. I had a glass of Pinto Grigio to drink with mine.
Now we’re talking Jersey summer weather: hot, humid, oppressive. Today’s a bit less hot than forecasted, happily. The paradoxical sameness of winter, where despite the thermostat moving in the opposite direction, the upshot–staying inside–becomes preference. Friday started out sweltering, but turned into a memorable evening. Once the pool is open, we’ll be inclined to spend the day in our tiny oasis in the blaze. For me, today, though, I’m smoking some baby backs. See you on the other side of an Aperol spritz.
I am as much a creature of habit as I am an explorer. Routine has its delights, yet novelty beckons. To obey the latter, we found ourselves at the delightful Auburn Road Vineyards recently. We tried the barrel reserve Chardonnay and the dry rosé, along with the burrata salad and a pizza. The Chardonnay was surprisingly bright and crisp, not as much to Rhonda’s taste (she digs “buttery” wines), but I enjoyed it. The rosé is an exemplar of the local style. The vineyard is quietly ensconced among the wandering fields of Salem County, said terroir a common sight for me in middle school when my parents would drive to and from the Eastern Shore each weekend to sail.
And we still roll through on our way to Delaware and other Eastern Shore locales.
The whole experience was a blissed-out delight.
Poor Aaron: our youngest son got a taste of freedom in getting his drivers license and a car to enjoy for the last three semesters of his high school career. An otherwise uneventful accident saw his car eventually totaled by the insurance company, after months of repair attempts, during which time he was reliant upon the largess of friends with wheels.
Nevertheless, insurance money in hand, we hit a local Mini dealership Friday to check out a 2022 hardtop coupe. I didn’t realize it was an S until we got there.
Aaron drove the car and loved it and I did, too. It looked great and was a good for fit Aaron. We made the purchase and it’s been fun snapping pics of this cool little go cart in the driveway.
I got a chance to drive it briefly after the ride home and it’s a very nice car indeed.
After many hours of car shopping, Aaron and I hit Ruchi Indian Cuisine for a late lunch. We both had the lunch special. I love an utterly mysterious dish that you may not identify before, during, or even after service. Just try everything.
Rhonda and I attended the 25th Anniversary Celebration of Bellview Winery this past Friday night. I was really looking forward to this all week. We sipped some wine we don’t often (or ever) try, including the excellent Traminette, which we agreed was both of our favorites.
It was an eclectic crowd for sure; we had a nice time catching up with familiar faces. There was cheese and other nummies in the winery house, and canapés from Top Shelf Mobile Cuisine.
I was padding back to our table and stopped to snap a couple of pics of the vineyard during the golden hour. And it struck me that I love spending time at a place that looks like my backyard.
It’s nice out here.
We had a Scottish Terrier, Haddie, who would have been 25 years old today. She almost made it to 20!
I’ve used Tripsy to plan a few trips since I heard about it on a podcast. It’s an iOS app that runs on your Mac, so Tripsy is everywhere.
In Tripsy, you create a trip specifying dates (or leaving it open) and add all manner of trip-related data to it: notes, emails, expenses, map locations, and more.
One of my favorite features in Tripsy allow you to forward any emails you get regarding reservations or other bookings to Tripsy, so it’s all collected in the app. I’ve done similar things using links or pdfs, but this is far superior. You can save map locations, emails, files, and take basic notes, all organized into your trip.
But what’s more, it parses the data for, say, your hotel reservation, and adds that to Tripsy as a booking. It’s not just a copy of the email. Which it then sends off to its own calendar, should you agree to it.
I find Tripsy pricey for my usage, but I have to admit I like using the app. Instead of notes in Notes and PDFs in Finder, and emails wherever, Trips gathers it all up for you.
Aaron designed his own graduation cap. What a cool kid.
Happy Father’s Day! I usually barbecue for this holiday, preferring the satisfaction of DIY to something prepackaged. Not always my wont, but for this day, it is. Here are some things to check out.
After resolving not to install iPad betas anymore, I found myself installing the iPadOS 26 Developer Beta on an older M1 iPad. It’s terrific and I’m looking forward to the full release in the fall.
I will admit that the windowing doesn’t make a ton of sense to me on an 11” screen, but it absolutely shines when plugged into a display (which I did). I found myself forgetting for a moment that I wasn’t using a Mac until a few keyboard shortcuts that don’t exist on the iPad didn’t work. It’s gonna be interesting.
Files is a revelation, and the new menu bar is revealing and helpful, but stays out of the way when you don’t need it. It doesn’t require a keyboard, either.
I’ve been taking the boys to this version of Bob D’Amico’s toy shows since 2022. It’s outside, and fairly close to home, both of which are plusses. We blast up to the show early and get home stat.
I’ve been taking Joey and Aaron to toy shows since 2011, and they’ve been a mix of magic, wonder, and meh at the same time. This year’s show was an eclectic mix, as ever, with a lot of vinyl thrown in, much to Aaron’s delight. I’m glad we went.
Rhonda and I wandered into Bellview yesterday afternoon to fill our growler, and the dry white we’ve been enjoying (Hyancinth) was replaced with Astraea. We tried a sip and agreed to a growler full. It’s a light, citrusy wine perfect for the dog days of summer ahead.
A few months ago, my oldest son, who is in college, reported that his electric scooter wasn’t working. He uses it to get around campus, which I thought was a great idea when he first ordered it, as it was a quick way for a commuter to get around on campus. (Another part of me isn’t sure why he needs a scooter, because there’s nothing wrong with walking, but hey.)
Anyway, I did a quick search via ChatGPT to see what might be the problem (the display/control board was flashing an “E1” error), and while some of the solutions might have been achievable by us by jiggling a wire or resealing a connector, I suspected it might have something to do with the electronics, which I wouldn’t be able to diagnose without more know how (electric scooters don’t have ODDB ports, at least not this one).
In any event, I figured, let’s give it a shot and dig around. We took off some of the fairing, inspected the wires, and even pulled out the battery pack hidden behind a long metal plate, to check and see if there was any evidence of where or damage to the battery.
I had some things I wanted to do that night for work, and then maybe do some reading and writing for myself, so at first I wasn’t all that excited about getting into this project. But moms being moms, I could sense Rhonda’s worry about him not having it in the cold, so I thought it would be worth diving into the project for a little bit, seeing if we can solve it.
We all row in the same direction, as a mentor once said to me.
What ensued was a fairly classic dad thing: showing Joey the difference between some of the screwdriver heads, such as Allen or hex keys versus Philips, the different sizes of each, and how different kinds of wrenches can get you more or less torque, depending upon your need. We even got to use my Makita drill driver to pull 16 screws from the bottom of the scooter to expose the battery, which tool comports with one of my pieces of fatherly advice: don’t buy a cheap drill.
I did everything I could to show Joey what I thought we should do, but let him go ahead and try it himself. And I got to thinking how much that’s what dads do. Dads aren’t always good at everything that moms are . But we can be great at showing you how to do things, to show you how things work, and when you can’t fix or control or directly manipulate, show you some other problem-solving tricks.
Sure, no dad is going to be good at all of those things, and plenty of moms are resourceful in this capacity. I think trying to inspire a sense of adventure and a willingness to try and explore are more important than necessarily demonstrating victory or success every time. That’s a dad’s job. And I’m glad I get to do that.
And I’m glad I got to learn that from someone else growing up. Thanks Dad!
Related: 8 pieces of life advice from dads and Journal article on Theory of Change
I’ve read some unflattering things about the “sea leg” or “crab stick,” the hot dog of the seafood world. I generally avoid dishes that feature the ingredient, but our local sushi haunt gives us these gratis when we visit, and it’s just delicious.
Jason Snell at Six Colors:
Apple decided to just throw out that entire system and build a new one that’s unabashedly inspired by the Mac. In iPadOS 26, you can resize windows arbitrarily, put them anywhere, and manage them using the familiar stoplight buttons in the top left corner.
Nobody, not even power users like me, wants to see the simplicity of the basic iPad experience degraded in any way. I think they’ve done a pretty good job of adding pro features without breaking it for everyone else. We’ll see how it goes over the summer and into the fall.
No clipboard manager, but a big Files (dare I say Finder) update, too. I installed the developer beta on an older M1 iPad Pro. I’m dying to plug it into the thunderbolt hub.
I was using Safari to find an article I’d written here on Uncorrected and copied the title text. Invoking Launchbar and hitting the spacebar, I recently discovered, allows you to send text input to OmniFocus’s inbox. It’s not really faster than using OmniFocus’s input panel, but I use Launchbar so much that I often find myself ctrl-spacing and typing o-f before I can stop myself. So why not?
True to form, I invoked OmniFocus and paused long enough to remember to hit the space bar. I pasted in the name of the article and added it to the inbox. A delightful side effect of adding a next action to OmniFocus this way is that it copies the URL of the webpage to clipboard as well, and drops that into the notes field of the action. Had I used OmniFocus’s quick input panel, I would have had to have separately copied the URL from Safari in a second step.
Other apps that can take text input this way include Drafts, Spotlight, Fantastical (which feature I apparently used back in April of 2024 and subsequently forgot). If the app doesn’t take text input, it shows a list of most recently opened documents.
Launchbar never ceases to amaze.
Update 6/11/2025: Copying a URL and following the same procedure yields the same result, but the feature is smart enough to grab the page title and make it a link, which is inserted into the notes field, with the next action name left blank. Smart.
It turns out that Launchbar is grabbing the OmniFocus System Service. I assigned that service a shortcut in the Keyboard menu of System Settings, so I can invoke it that way, too; it is, of course, exposed in the UI under the Services submenu of the currently active application menu.
I’ll probably still just use Launchbar.
We haven’t had grilled shrimp at home for years–decades, maybe. I’d often suggest it, because it’s easy to make. I also like cleaning shrimp, because I had a job in high school where deveining and the peeling shrimp was a frequent assignment, and was, in its way, preferable to peeling onions, for example. I remember the owner’s brother, who would help out sometimes on busy nights, declaring that cleaning shrimp was a “good job.” I didn’t think so at the time, but some 30+ years later, I don’t have bad memories of it at all.
That’s a digression: my tendency it to suggest something for dinner (or a wine, or a place to eat) for a long time before we actually get around to doing it. Rhonda, perhaps kindly considering my low-carb preferences during the week, found this recipe from Kenjii Alt-Lopez and prepared it (I did the grilling). It was great and I think I can look forward to having grilled shrimp again soon.
Finally.
Back in May, I wrote about some iPadOS rumors and my hopes for the os update. Today, Apple unveiled a lot of good stuff across their OSes. My short list for ipadOS was:
Background tasks can run now, and show as a Live Activity on screen. These get on my nerves sometimes, but I’m curious to see how it works for me.
That’s all I got from my list, but if the improved Spotlight makes it over to the iPad, it might not matter as much. I did not, sadly, get a clipboard manager, but maybe the updated background processes will enable a developer to make one. No Chatbot Siri, either. I’m gonna have to stick with copilot for now.
In addition to new features coming over from iPhone and the Mac, iPad gains:
Other notable developments:
– Split View and Slide Over are gone. I will certainly issue the latter, especially using Notes with Safari
– The Phone app on the iPad: what could this mean for the iPad Mini with cellular?
– Audio input: I wonder if this will work cleanly with my Thunderbolt dock and Scarlet Solo?
I’m excited to see Liquid Glass running on everything. I think I’ll skip the monochromatic themes, but I look forward to seeing others’ screenshots. (Clear, maybe.) I do hope Apple stops referring to it as if it were a substance, though.
Tabs in photos look good; I take a lot of pictures with my iPhone, but I love to view and edit them on the iPad.