Another Father’s Day! Joe got me this cute little He-Man minifig at a nearby toy show.

We’re not really doing much since Aaron has to work and won’t be home until close to seven tonight. The pool and some spritzes beckon, though. I cooked a nice picanha roast last night for our dinner after he got home after a lengthy soak in the sous vide tank.

macOS 27 “Golden Gate” Developer Beta

iPad is usually where I’m OK installing a beta OS: I need my Mac to do work, and I need my phone because it’s my phone. iPads are ancillary (which doesn’t mean I don’t love using them for everything), but they are a third category and a third rung on the needs vs wants list.

But I have an older M1 MacBook Pro from work, and while it has taught me that a Mac can, in the era of Apple Silicon, last you a long time, it’s not my main machine, and is ripe for usage as a beta testing machine.

I have modest needs as a computer user, but the things that I was excited to see in Golden Gate are the visual tweaks to Liquid Glass. First up: the layered side panels. Here’s notes in Tahoe:

And then Notes in Golden Gate:

Golden Gate fixes the unnecessary side panel crowding in Notes (and other apps).

Things are still a bit crowded, even on the generous display on this MacBook Pro. Liquid Glass looks a lot less horsey on a 32” display, but this isn’t a setup for most MacBook owners; the OS should look tighter and smaller than it does now. Even in Golden Gate, I find application toolbars ugly. Going text only (where available) looks weird, contrary to macOS pre-Tahoe.

I’m still on the waiting list for the new Siri. Everything I’ve heard sounds great, and I’m looking forward to something more intelligent. If it can see OmniFocus, Notes, and Fantastical, as well as files on my Mac, I think Siri AI will be very interesting.

Theming OmniOutliner

I’ve been using OmniOutliner since it was bundled with my PowerBook G4 in the early 2000s. There’s a lot to love about OmniOutliner, if you love (or even just like) outliners. (I find it funny to this day that when teachers suggested that outlining was a good way to start a paper, and required the class to create outlines, I would absolutely bristle). These days, I almost think in outlines; I reach for Bike or OmniOutliner the moment something comes up and I need to take notes. And if I’m writing, as I often do, in Notes, I follow a loose outline style/format.

I’ve never found theming to be terribly accessible in OmniOutliner, though, and my earliest forays into crafting my own were fraught with difficulty, such that I never really made any. I was farting around with version six and was delighted that the small bit of experience I’ve gained with styles allows me to facilely create some nice-looking outline templates.

One of the Drafts styles I like is called “Six Colors,” referencing of course the original Apple logo, and Jason Snell’s post-MacWorld website and sundry digital goods. I thought that something like the Six Colors theme would make for a nice OmniOutliner template.

I started off with a blank white canvas and added text color stylings, but then I thought it might be fun to create a theme where the rows are colored, too.

After that, it was off to the races! I found a website, Figma , with 100 thoughtfully crafted four-color designs, and started cobbling together some more templates. Happily, OmniFocus stores themes in iCloud if you’re using it, so they sync across devices.

Mazda MX-5 Miata ND3

My mind is not to be trusted. I wrote about some test drives I’d done when thinking about trading in my 2013 Mustang GT last week. I had notionally settled on keeping the mustang and repairing the things that ailed it; meanwhile, I found myself continually researching cars, car prices, and engaging Copilot in a lengthy discussion about my “perfect” car. (The answer was the BMW 2 Series, more specifically the 230, which confusingly sits price wise and procedurally above the BMW 228. The 228, I learned, is actually a Mini Cooper, and sold as a 1 series in Europe. Copilot did not recommend the 228 for me, although it does have the JCW engine in it. It seems to be a car reviled by BMW purists, but for a person for whom the JCW seems like a great car, I was kinda into the idea. But: no manual.

You can now very easily draw a small circle around the new cars you’d buy if you just factor in two data points: cost and transmission. Do you want a car that costs around 40k and has a manual transmission? Your options get narrow fast. You can cast a wider net by ignoring price constraints, but if price is your cardinal factor, then it gets pretty easy. For me, it was WRX, BRZ/G86, Miata, or something used.

I had conceded to myself that I was going to have to consider non-manual options if I were in fact to purchase a BMW 230, but the prices are so high that I abandoned the idea.

I have loved the MX-5 Miata since it came out. My Dad, an inveterate namer of four-wheeled things whilst driving, always exclaimed “Miata!” back in the late 80s and early 90s when we’d see one on the road. I remember thinking that if he was enthusiastic about something, it was suggestion that he’d buy one. Once, we went to a Nissan dealership where his college roommate worked, and checked out a moon glow yellow Nissan 300 Z. I was sure we were there to buy one. We were not. But that car changed my opinion about yellow cars, and made me want a Z to this day.

Anyway, the decision to buy a new car vs repair the Mustang was complicated for me. There are a couple of truths about the Mustang: I never considered one in any previous car-buying situation; the platonic ideal that the mustang is chasing is not a part of my lexicon. When last I shopped for a car, in 2015, I had narrowed my search down to a Ford Focus RS, Subaru WRX, or a GTI. The AWD in the WRX was the final selling point.

That I got to drive a GT for the last 10 years was a gift, though, materially and spiritually. Just because you wouldn’t normally consider something doesn’t mean you wouldn’t end up enjoying it. And the experience of the GT was an eye-opener. Yes, it was big and heavy, but it was fast and stable at highway speeds. The aftermarket exhaust sounded like a dream, and the car was a heard turner on noise alone. I loved that car, and I can now say that I absolutely enjoy a big American muscle car, borne from a decade of experience.

But we all have preferences and notions. If I had to plant my flag, I’d want this car:

• 2-dour coupe or roadster
• Naturally aspirated six-cylinder engine
• Manual transmission
• Low body weight

That car doesn’t actually exist anymore outside of the Porsche 718 Cayman and Boxter, which Porsche isn’t taking orders for anymore.

The Miata is pretty close, though, looking at that list. It’s only strike is the four-cylinder engine. Yet, after the first test drive, I thought, “I can’t daily this car.”

But as I continued to research, Copilot did make one comment that resonated with me: You’ll think it’s too small for a week. And that was my experience with the Toyota MR2 Spyder that I bought back in 2003 and drove for about four years before having to trade it in on a more practical family car, as we had two small children. I was driving the Spyder home on the day of the purchase, barreling down route 55 with the top up, all the crap that I’d been carting around in my more capacious Ford Contour that I’d just traded in for pennies piled up on the seat beside me, the front end bouncing up and down like an exuberant kangaroo, and I thought: what did I just get myself into? It was so small, so light, and utterly unfamiliar to me.

But the next day, the car unburdened by the weight of my hoardings, zipping up to the dealership to drop off my old car’s title, top down, I realized that I was having a blast–an experience in a car I’d never had before.

The Spyder only had 138 horsepower. It was not a fast car, but any metric. But it was a true mid-engine runabout, with variable valve timing that kicked in pretty high up in the rev range. I remember one time Dad and I went out for a drive in his new 5-liter Pontiac GTO, and he let me take the wheel. After a long cruise in rural south Jersey and a couple of beers at a friend’s house, I got back into the Spyder and drove it back home. The contrast was striking–the Spyder felt like the tiny toy car that it was. That did nothing to dampen my enthusiasm for the car, but it did put its proper place in the pantheon of cars I’ve driven.

In time, I came to see the Spyder as a kind of automotive albatross, uniquely ill-suited to my current needs as a family man. I replaced it with a Subaru Legacy with a manual five-speed. It was fine. It was what I needed at the time.

But I always missed the Spyder, and serially lined up replacements in my mind, should the time ever come when I might want something like that again.

That time has come, and the Miata fits the bill. Like a glove.

A driving glove.