Birchtree

One of the things that bothers me about how many people use their computers in the modern era is in how they feel like they need to baby them.I think a lot of people feel like they need to baby their phone more than they do. Apple introduced optimized

Ryan Christoffel writing for: Apple’s Hitting Its AI Stride Right as Competition Is SlowingIt happens all the time. Tech giants ship exciting new technology while Apple’s projects stay veiled in R&D, leading to the constant narrative that the company is ‘behind’

Michael Levin and Josh Lowitz: Thank Goodness for iPadiPad Pro remains the most popular model, with almost half of all iPad sales in the most recent quarter (Chart 1). This is about the same share of sales compared to the year-ago quarter.Combine this with the fact that the

The world isn’t static, and you never know when your needs are going to change. When they do, the software you use to live your life should adapt to you, not the other way around.

Dan Moren: M4 Mac Mini Review: Phenomenal Cosmic Power, Itty-Bitty Form FactorWhen it comes to desktop Macs, it’s quite possibly the best one Apple offers.This is an amazing metric and does seem to check out. The Mac Studio and Mac Pro specced out with M2 Ultra

Have you heard about the iPhone 16 camera fault that's a massive issue and makes upwards of half of iPhone 16s technically defective? If you said yes, you're probably watching Shayne Mostyn's YouTube channel, which has been dedicated almost entirely to this "controversy&

When I launched the More Birchtree subscription back in January of this year, I made the commitment that it would mean access to more posts, not just an excuse to put existing stuff behind a paywall. With 86% of the year behind us, I wanted to check in on how

John Gruber: How It WentBut he’s an optimist at heart. You’d like him. I, of course, don’t know who you are, dear reader, but I know you’d like my dad, Bob Gruber, because everyone likes Bob Gruber.It’s exceptionally

A hard look at the numbers and why it seems like such a challenge to change the narrative about gaming on Macs.

The word “pro” gets appended to a lot of products, and that tends to simply mean some combination of more features and better build quality. But I think there are (at least) 3 aspects to products, both hardware and software, that make them good professional tools.ReliabilityPredictability

John Gruber: The Brutal Clarity of This ResultI realized this year — or perhaps over the last four years — that for me, belief in the merits of democracy is quasi-religious. It’s more than a philosophy. It’s a fundamental belief. I have faith in democracy,

Jeremy Markovich: Tony Hawk Wanted to Track Down a Mysterious Skateboarder From 1979. We Found Her.Folks, we love two things around here: Tony Hawk and decades-old mysteries.On a shitty day, it’s nice to have something pleasant to link to.

I despise Donald Trump. I think he’s a lying, racist, fear mongering, transphobic, sexual abusing, convicted felon, incompetent, and dangerous person who is driven by hate and resentment.Yes, I think Trump is a bad person, but he’s not what I’m most riled up

Sarah Perez for TechCrunch: Substack Is Giving Out Free Subscriptions to Boost App InstallsPublishing platform Substack is now pushing users to install its mobile app by offering gifted subscriptions. While Substack itself is available across platforms, including the web, those who want to take advantage of the free subscription

Tomorrow is the US Presidential election, and no one knows what's going to happen. Maybe Kamala Harris will win, maybe Donald Trump will. It's a toss up, just like it is every election cycle. Sometimes I think that we could have Jesus Christ himself running against

I used to share some YouTube videos every week in my newsletter, but that turned into feeling like work, so I stopped. Buuuut, it is fun to share some joy with others, so here's a few videos I've watched in the last week or so that

What does Call of Duty's massive success (and horrendous user interface) mean about the importance of design?

Pixelmator Team: A new home for PixelmatorToday we have some important news to share: the Pixelmator Team plans to join Apple.This is huge for this company, and it’s well-deserved. Pixelmator has long-been a prime example of what a great Apple developer looks like, and I’

John O'Nolan: Democratising PublishingHaving seen how things worked on the inside for several years, the conclusion I personally came to was that WordPress and Automattic were not truly about democratising publishing, after all.At the same time, I felt the product was becoming slow and bloated. WordPress

Maddie Bender for The New York Times: Can John Green Make You Care About Tuberculosis?Mr. Green has emerged as an unlikely spokesman in the global effort to fight the disease. His latest project, a book called “Everything Is Tuberculosis,” interweaves the social and scientific histories of tuberculosis

Jennifer Maas writing for Variety: 'Dinner Plan' Short Film at Nebula Casts Griffin Newman, Zach CherryNebula has set the cast for its upcoming short film from “Night of the Coconut” director and popular video essayist Patrick Willems, “The Dinner Plan.” A dark comedy

Anil Dash: It feels like 2004 again.A generation ago, those of us in tech might talk to our friends or family and hear them say, "I think the ads in my Hotmail account are terrible, and I can’t send any attachments. And Yahoo search is getting

Michael Burkhardt writing for 9to5Mac: Meta Quest 3S review: Apple would never make thisThe reason why I say Apple would never make it is for one reason, and one reason only: it’s too low quality.Michael goes on to note the lower quality build of the Quest

Apparently there are surgeons who are getting tons of value from the Vision Pro. That’s great, but is it evidence that the Vision Pro is a great success, or is it just that surgeons use literally every headset that comes out regardless of if those headsets are successes or failures?

The iPad mini jelly scroll situation taps perfectly into my favorite category of controversy: things that have objective facts mixed with subjective experience. Beware the idea that we all see, hear, and smell the world the same.

Apple will be announcing new Macs next week, and that could mean it’s finally time for them to update their Magic accessories (Mouse, Keyboard, and Trackpad) in some manner. Odds are, they’ll just get revved with USB-C instead of Lightning, but it’s always possible

The Verge is reporting on Joker: Folie à Deux, one of the most derided movies of 2024, coming to digital storefronts less than a month in theaters. The film released in theaters on October 4 this year, and it will be available to buy online October 28, so 24 days

What it was like being a part of my first Apple hardware embargo.

Chris Welch for The Verge: Apple’s AirPods Pro hearing health features are as good as they soundBeing able to use Apple’s $250 earbuds as a hearing aid is a huge deal for those who can benefit from this capability. That’s substantially less expensive

Blooper Team’s Jacek Zieba, who just released the Silent Hill 2 remake, in an interview with GameSpot: Bloober Team Says It's Done Making "Shitty" Games And Silent Hill 2 Remake Wasn't A Fluke[P]eople in the studio were like, 'Okay,

Riley Hill: I Bought A Vision Pro After Everyone Said It Was DeadAfter about two weeks of using the Vision Pro,Riley has some interesting thoughts about using the Vision Pro for the first time many months after the hype cycle has cooled off considerably. He’s pretty

Yesterday I posted this video about a Mac app called Supercharge which adds a number of quality of life features to your Mac, one of which is the ability to cut and paste files in the Finder. I commented how nice this was, as it was something I use all

David Pierce: How Digg helped invent the social internetIn its early days, Digg was something like the homepage of the internet. Any user could submit a link, and then any other user could either promote it with a “dig” or demote it with a “bury.”

Lori Glavin: FIDO Alliance Publishes New Specifications to Promote User Choice and Enhanced UX for PasskeysThe FIDO Alliance has published a working draft of a new set of specifications for secure credential exchange that, when standardized and implemented by credential providers, will enable users to securely move passkeys and

Last night I pushed an update to Quick Reviews to make 2 changes:The reset buttons on the color, text size, and score names settings are now green and actual HTML buttons with aria labels, making them more accessible.I've disabled the "API" that allowed people

Back in May when the latest iPad Pros were announced, there was some consternation about how the Apple Pencil story was still confusing, and I wrote:I think it’s a sure thing that the 11th generation iPad will one day be a thing, and while I’m

Casey Newton many weeks ago: Three apps that made me more productive this yearA year ago this week, I wrote here about why note-taking apps don’t make us smarter. In short, it took me too long to learn, software can’t automate your thinking. But I

Kyle Orland for ArsTechnica: Apple study exposes deep cracks in LLMs’ “reasoning” capabilitiesThe results of this new GSM-Symbolic paper aren't completely new in the world of AI research. Other recent papers have similarly suggested that LLMs don't actually perform formal reasoning and

Steven Aquino writing for Forbes: Home Depot’s Rollout Of Apple Pay Reminds Apple Pay, Accessibility Are OneMy friend Chance Miller reported this week for 9to5 Mac that Home Depot is ending its laggardness by finally beginning to roll out support for Apple Pay in its stores.This

Mastodon recently added the ability to natively add author labels to links on Mastodon. Basically, when a link is posted, you can have your Mastodon account automatically tagged so people can more easily find you.I would have written up an explainer on how to do it, but Robb Knight

Last year, I thought Mujjo’s iPhone cases were excellent. I thought they were so good that when I realized I actually wanted the iPhone 15 Pro Max, I bought a second case from them without hesitation. So when they reached out to me this year to see if

Above is a photo I took of the Statue of Liberty last night from a boat. It looks pretty good, right? The colors are nice and there's a decent amount of detail for a pic taken in total darkness. But 2 megapixels?! To give you some context, this

Mastodon About & Contact RSS Published with

"Good UX" means balancing a lot of (sometimes conflicting) priorities. What's good UX when you can't make everyone happy?

I was getting the feeling lately that I’ve been writing a lot here lately, and I already had an export of all of my blog posts, so I decided to check my word count each year over the last 8 years. As of yesterday, I’d written

Apparently the last week of online discourse around Meta’s new Orion prototype struck a nerve with me because I posted an all-timer in terms of snark recently. This comes after years of two general frustrations with how some people cover and talk about technology online (especially on social

Good lord am I seeing a lot people talking about Meta’s new prototype hardware, Orion. Are people losing their minds? Why is this anything of note? Why even comment on this thing at all? It certainly hasn’t caught my attention. No sir, I’m a

NotebookLM is an interesting project from Google that lets you upload a ton of documents about whatever you want, and then "chat" with them. Another thing they just released is the ability to generate a "podcast episode" about the things you've uploaded. The audio

I got Lasik 2 years ago and here’s who it’s going.

Lee Peterson: Sometimes It Takes Just One Random Post to Grow Your BlogThis was completely random and it shows that sometimes you don’t need some sort of plan, just write what comes to mind and that you want to share. You’ll get found and readers

Elizabeth Lopatto writing for The Verge: X blocks links to hacked JD Vance dossierX is preventing users from posting links to a newsletter containing a hacked document that’s alleged to be the Trump campaign’s research into vice presidential candidate JD Vance. The journalist who wrote

This might be the longest quote ever on Birchtree, but stick with me here. This is Matt Mullenwerg, CEO of Automattic, writing on the official WordPress blog (emphasis his):WordPress is a content management system, and the content is sacred. Every change you make to every page, every post, is

Earlier today I saw a post from someone who has had their iPhone stop charging at 80% for the past year and they didn’t see much, if any difference in battery health than their coworkers who didn’t do anything, and let the iPhone do its “

I saw a post on Threads recently that is of a general genre of conversation I see on a regular basis. The first post was:Just going on purely laptop tech reviews you would think 90% of the US population were employed as video editors.Which got the reply:You

The above screenshot is from my computer. There are 16 apps that have screen recording permissions, and each one of them not only needs that permission, I intentionally gave them that permission when I installed them. I've been carrying along with my life, happy with how these apps

I recently posted this on Threads:My regular reminder that anytime someone says “99% of users” is completely making things up and has done precisely zero investigation outside of their own experience.Once you notice this, you start to see it everywhere. People have a very bad habit

Last year I cancelled a bunch of subscriptions to see what was actually worth my money. That went great, so this year I'm doing it again!

There are several things I would like to see improve with the Vision Pro (and VR hardware in general), but it’s recently hit me that the main issue I have with using it is that despite all of the video passthrough and digital eyes on the outside of

There are a billion things in iOS 18 this year, and I highly suggest checking out Federico Viticci’s review over on MacStories tomorrow, but here are a few things that have actually been impactful for me since installing the beta back in June. This is addressing things in

Nicole Sperling for the New York Times: Apple Rethinks Its Movie Strategy After a String of MissesApple executives in Cupertino were already questioning the entertainment units over the amount of money being spent on movies, and the people said there was a thought within the company to not risk

Long time Birchtree readers know I love data, and love data even more when I can throw it into a graph. I’m also a fan of testing things that everyone generally agrees are true, but no one seems to have any data to back up.That brings us

I was researching for my last article when I stumbled upon this post from John Gruber in 2011 where he responds to a bad article on Time.com about Windows 8. What was interesting to me was this bit about how Excel on an iPad with the ability to open

Apple on their developer site today: Set Up Win-Back OffersIf your app offers auto-renewable subscriptions, you have the option to set up win-back offers to encourage lapsed subscribers to re-subscribe on the App Store. You can configure offers in App Store Connect to be displayed to eligible customers on

There’s a trope online where someone will post pictures of the iOS screen when alarms and timers are going off and they’ll lament, “why are the actions reversed, it’s confusing!” This post will get lots of engagement with people agreeing, but there

I have an evolving theory that buttons are amazing and people love them.There were rumors Apple was going to remove all physical buttons from the iPhone. As recently as April of this year, there was reporting that the iPhone 16 lineup would have no physical buttons! But in 2

Immediately following the presidential debate last night, Taylor Swift announced her endorsement of Kamala Harris on Instagram:Recently I was made aware that Al of 'me' falsely endorsing Donald Trump's presidential run was posted to his site. It really conjured up my fears around Al, and

It’s been said Apple cares about themselves first, then their users, then their developers in that order. In this post, I explore whether I think corporate or individual freedoms should be prioritized.

I’ve been off the internet all day and wanted to share some gut reactions to the updates Apple just announced before being influenced by others. So, in the general order they talked about things, let’s go!Apple Watch Series 10This looks like a nice update

We're 24 hours away from Apple announcing new iPhones and Watches, and I'd love it if I can resist the unending urge to always keep up with the latest and greatest.

Zack Zwiezen: It's Really Nice That Astro Bot Just Has One Release DateAstro Bot is a really good video game and a great reason to own a PS5. Its colorful visuals, myriad gaming references, and excellent platforming have already made it one of 2024's best

Press release from the US Justice Department: Two RT Employees Indicted for Covertly Funding and Directing U.S. Company That Published Thousands of Videos in Furtherance of Russian Interests“As alleged in today’s indictment, Russian state broadcaster RT and its employees, including the charged defendants, co-opted online

David Wallace-Wells in an op-ed for the New York Times: What Will We Do With Our Free Power?In 2023, the world installed 444 gigawatts of new solar photovoltaic capacity, according to Bloomberg. While that figure can be hard for normie brains to process, it represents a staggering step forward:

PayPal Newsroom: Introducing PayPal Everywherecustomers can now add their PayPal Debit Card to Apple Wallet in just a few steps and use it with Apple Pay, enabling even more ways to pay.PayPal is a pioneer in digital wallets, they’re one of the biggest wallets in the

Reeder is out today and Devon Dundee has a great overview over on MacStories. I wanted to call out a few things because as a Reeder 5 (now Reeder Classic) fanatic, I have thoughts.With a product as successful and engrained as Reeder, it would be easy for the app&

I bought one of Apple’s FineWoven cases when they came out last year because I thought they had to be pretty good. Apple had a great track record with making what I thought were the best phone cases on the market and I was convinced that they wouldn&

Something people always say is that phone reviewers couldn’t possibly review a new device after just a few days. I’d contend that a good reviewer can do this because they’ve built up experience to know what to look for in established product categories like

In which I explore the difference between "thought leaders" on social media telling users why they're wrong, and UX designers who would get fired if they treated their users this way. Talking about the work vs doing the work...

Andy Bell: Just Use Fucking Paper, ManI’ve given up this week and gone back to paper and a pencil and I feel unbelievably organised and flexible, day-to-day. It’s because it’s simple. There’s nothing fancy. No fancy pen or anything like that

David Imel explaining the fediverse on the latest Waveform video:Just like the United States is a federation, right? Like this group of states with independent laws, but also this higher order of laws under the Constitution that could freely move and trade with each other. A federated social network

Oliver Darcy on his new, excellent Status newsletter: Zucker-Bucks Under PressureNotably, Zuckerberg's GOP-friendly behavior comes after Trump publicly threatened to target him, should he find his way back into the Oval Office. In early July, Trump warned on Truth Social that if he is elected, he will

There’s a common refrain in online discussions about software that “most people don’t use or need that, it’s just a niche that doesn’t matter.” As someone who works in user experience every day, I’m constantly surprised by the

Allison Johnson writing for The Verge: European iPhones are more fun nowWhining about stuff is a treasured American pastime, so allow me to indulge: the iPhone is more fun in Europe now, and it’s not fair.And Federico Viticci linking to the above piece: The DMA Version

Allison Johnson for The Verge: Google’s AI tool helped us add disasters and corpses to our photosIn our week of testing, we added car wrecks, smoking bombs in public places, sheets that appear to cover bloody corpses, and drug paraphernalia to images. That seems bad. As a

Yesterday, Netflix announced that Monument Valley 3, the next game in a what has been an iconic game series on iOS. The game is coming December 10 and will be exclusive to Netflix subscribers and available on iOS and Android. Monument Valley 1 and 2 will also be coming to

I’m watching more cartoons this year than maybe ever before. Today we explore some of the reasons I think that might be.

Steven Knight from SellCell: iPhone 16 Pre-Launch Survey: 62% of iPhone Users to Upgrade to iPhone 16The second rumored feature the 2000 iPhone users want to see with the 16-series is the thermal control to avoid overheating, with 26.8% of those surveyed stating that this will positively affect

Myke Hurley talking about Apple opening the NFC chip to other payment apps on the iPhone during today’s episode of Upgrade:I will be intrigued to see what actually this looks like when it launches. And I desperately hope it does not mean we're going to

Today I'm attempting the impossible: 71 movie tiers handed out in half an hour. Can it be done?! Well, I did it already, so yes, but it was a lot of fun along the way.

Marc Palmer: Launch Day! Shareshot 1.0 Is Live in the App Store 🎉Today we launched Shareshot! We’ve been working on this app for almost exactly a year, and we’re so pleased to be able to finally ship it. Here’s a little backstory

Casey Newton on Platformer: X Is Just a Political Project NowThe Trump years were characterized by constant (and almost totally baseless) criticism on the part of Republicans that platforms had abandoned their political neutrality to promote Democrats. During those years, had Mark Zuckerberg hosted a friendly interview with Joe

My “quirk” on this blog years ago was the fact that I, an Apple fan, would try using Android and Windows devices for extended periods and share my thoughts on those products. Whenever I tried to go all-in on one of these other companies’ products, I’

Apple today: Developers can soon offer in‑app NFC transactions using the Secure ElementStarting with iOS 18.1, developers will be able to offer NFC contactless transactions using the Secure Element from within their own apps on iPhone, separate from Apple Pay and Apple Wallet.So just

A few high-profile app updates have recently gone down like a lead balloon. I have a lot of sympathy for the developers involved, and today I wanted to explain what I think happened with Overcast specifically.

John Gruber: Nick Heer on Patreon Creators Paying the Full 30 Percent App Store Rate for New SubscriptionsThe whole notion of a platform like Patreon just doesn’t fit with the App Store’s model of taking a fee out of every single transaction for digital goods

Not going to make a big deal of it, but today I decided to officially close my Twitter (sorry, X) account. I know, I know, someone could take my username if they want and yes I know this means I’ll have to start a new account if somehow

John Gruber: The Mac Is a Power ToolSafety by default, but don’t get in the way of power users doing their jobs. And when the user needs an override for the safety features, there is an override, and the situation will make clear to the user that

From the Patron blog today:As we first announced last year, Apple is requiring that Patreon use their in-app purchasing system and remove all other billing systems from the Patreon iOS app by November 2024.This has two major consequences for creators:1. Apple will be applying their 30% App

M.G. Siegler: A Time to Kill... XitterThis has all been instituted under the guise of free speech, but that is, of course, bullshit. If Xitter wants to be the haven of truly free speech, it should be a completely open source and un-monetized network that no single company

Ezra Klein back in February 2024: Democrats Have a Better Option Than BidenEverybody I have talked about this, literally everybody, has brought up the same fear. Call it the Kamala Harris problem. In theory, she should be the favorite. But she polls slightly worse than Biden. Democrats don’

M.G. Siegler on his relatively new Spyglass blog (running on Ghost, which always makes me happy): Apple Introduces Revolutionary New Fees for EU DevelopersBasically it feels like Apple is making the changes that the EU clearly is angling for, but doing so in the most pedantic way possible,

Apple: Updates to the StoreKit External Purchase Link EntitlementDevelopers can communicate and promote offers for purchases available at a destination of their choice. The destination can be an alternative app marketplace, another app, or a website, and it can be accessed outside the app or via a web view

Jason Snell on Six Colors: Apple’s permissions features are out of balanceBut what Apple’s testing in the latest macOS Sequoia betas is brutal because there’s no end to it. It’s a subscription you didn’t buy and can’t

Benj Edwards: Major Shifts at OpenAI Spark Skepticism About Impending AGI TimelinesThe moves have led some to wonder just how close OpenAI is to a long-rumored breakthrough of some kind of reasoning artificial intelligence if high-profile employees are jumping ship (or taking long breaks, in the case of Brockman)

Samantha Cole on the always lovely 404 Media: Leaked Documents Show Nvidia Scraping ‘A Human Lifetime’ of Videos Per Day to Train AIWhen asked about legal and ethical aspects of using copyrighted content to train an AI model, Nvidia defended its practice as being “in full

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before…a Mac user wants to use an iPad but they can’t because of some list of requirements that iPadOS simply doesn’t achieve. They love the iPad hardware and think it’s more than powerful

What makes a product last forever? What tech products do you own that you'll never have to replace?

David McCabe writing for the New York Times: Google Violated Antitrust Laws in Online Search, Judge RulesThe government argued that by paying billions of dollars to be the automatic search engine on consumer devices, Google had denied its competitors the opportunity to build the scale required to compete with

Kev Quirk: Three Years With My M1 MacBook AirQuestion is, will I upgrade? Well, no. Not any time soon anyway. The M1 Air still does everything I need it to extremely well. So why upgrade? Why drop another £1,000 or so on the latest version of the

This is a simple appreciation post for the AeroPress coffee maker. If I want to make a single cup of coffee and I want it to be as good as possible, I’ll reach for the AeroPress every time.For some people, that’s enough to win the

I’ve started rewatching The Rings of Power in preparation for the second season, and just 2 episodes in I’m reminded how wonderful it is. I also can’t forget how deranged the discourse over this show was when it came out, Here’s famously

Epic Games in a press release today: Epic's New Game Strategy for Mobile StoresIn exciting news, we are announcing that our mobile games will come to AltStore on iOS in the EU, and we expect to announce support for at least two other third-party stores soon.That&

James Mangold, director of films like Logan, Ford v Ferrari, and Walk the Line, on the MCU-ification of most of big cinema in an interview with Rolling Stone:It’s weird that I’ve even worked in the world of IP entertainment because I don’t like

Brendon Bigley on his Wavelengths blog: EarPods RuleI’m not about to wax poetic about all of the ways using wired headphones in 2024 “changes everything” like a clickbaity YouTube video, but I will say that the proliferation of USB-C on pretty much every device is

Lucas Shaw for Bloomberg: Apple Tries to Rein In Hollywood Spending After Years of LossesAll told, the cost of[Severance] ballooned to more than $20 million an episode, making it one of the most expensive projects on TV.Severance costing way more per episode than the famously expensive final

This one is members-only largely because I don't want it to get too much reach, but it's a true story of how I did great work as a seasoned pro and some folks assumed I had to have used AI features to shortcut my way to the finish line. I'm happy to say it was all me.

Steve Peoples for the Associated Press: Kamala Harris smashes fundraising record with stunning $81 million haul over 24 hoursKamala Harris is smashing fundraising records as the Democratic Party’s donors — big and small — open their wallets for the vice president in the immediate aftermath of President

Madison in the Puzzmo newsletter: 🃏 We're on the Path to a Trillion Dollars!In this week’s newsletter, I will cover another step in the Puzzmo Cross|word publishing process: incorporation of feedback from test solvers and fact checkers.This was a fascinating read

The New York Times Editorial Board: Biden Made a Courageous Choice. Democrats Must Seize the Opportunity.President Biden’s decision to exit the 2024 presidential election is a fitting coda for a man whose life has been devoted to public service. Mr. Biden has served the nation well as

John Gruber on Daring Fireball: The AT&T Data Breach Shows Why RCS Can’t Be Trusted and the Downside of Apple Adding Support for It in iOS 18Ihnatko is right, but only if you believe that carrier-based message should remain the baseline. I do not. And

A few weeks ago I blew up my read-later workflow to see if I was actually using the right tool for the job. This week I’m back with a status report on where I’ve landed.

Zack Zwiezen reporting on EA College Football 25 hitting over 700,000 concurrent players in its first 24 hours after release:To put that number in perspective, it handily beats out Helldivers 2, which hit a player count of around 485,000 shortly after launch. It’s also more

Willa Rowe on Kotaku: These Are Kevin Conroy's Final Words as Batman and They're PerfectIt’s an undeniably badass line, and it’s made even more poignant by the fact that this is Conroy’s last performance in the role.Click through

Why I think years and years of social networks downranking posts with links in them has done real damage to the open web.

Jeremy Burge: Why eSIM Is My New Best FriendAlternative title: How and why to install an eSIM to save money on data roaming fees when overseas. Especially useful if you have an iPhone 14 with no SIM Tray.I was skeptical about eSIM when it was debuted, but

Warner Bros. Discovery is changing a few more upcoming shows from “Max Originals” to “HBO Originals”:It is part of a strategy to rebrand its highest profile titles into HBO Originals, giving them a linear airing on the premium cable network as well as a streaming

One of the hard parts about sharing one's opinions online like I do is that it's very easy to fall into the trap of mostly complaining about things. Do you like tech? Careful, lest you post mostly about what tech you hate. Do you like movies

Niléane on MacStories: LGBT and Marginalized Voices Are Not Welcome on ThreadsI do have some sincere expectations for you all who are reading this. I expect tech journalists to more systematically report on everything that fits into this pattern. I expect tech podcasters to acknowledge that Threads

There's a practice very common in software companies of collecting your "net promoter score." This practice is pretty simple, you ask your users how likely they would be to recommend your product to someone else. They give you a score from zero to ten where zero

I've been sitting on writing something about this video from Louis Rossmann where he lays into Marques Brownlee for his admittedly pretty softball interview with Apple about repairability. I found Louis's video pretty absurd, and was really annoyed by it. He spends upwards of 10 minutes

Benedict Evans: The VR Winter Continuesit’s obvious that the devices will get better, lighter and cheaper, but much less obvious whether that’s enough. How many people will care? We should be careful of saying ‘no-one will do that’ - we all do things

Taking a page from the ATP crew, I did a tier list for fun! We'll see how this one goes, but I think it's a lot of fun and will make people go "yes!" and "this guy is nuts!" in equal measure.

Julian Chokkattu writing for Wired: Nothing’s CMF Devices Prove Yet Again Cheap Doesn't Have to Mean BoringWhat's most remarkable about these devices is the price. I have tested cheap and flagship smartphones for nearly a decade, and after setting up the CMF Phone

Mike Haynes has moved his crashthearcade blog to Ghost: Ghosting WordPressThe Ghost editor is really an example for WordPress' Gutenberg editor to follow. It functions largely in the same way but doesn't have any of the jank that makes Gutenberg so frustrating to use.It’

Louie Mantia: Qualifying ArtWe are all too different from each other and it is not sustainable for every piece of artwork or every product to reach 100% market saturation . Appealing to a global palate is a surefire way to make the blandest art.Yes, yes, yes! Add this to

Alyssa Mercante for Kotaku: Star Wars: The Acolyte Is Doing a Different Kind of Fan-Service, and It RocksThe Disney+ series ticks many boxes that the more traditional, masculine fans of the franchise have been begging for for years (High Republic lore, rare aliens, wild lightsaber fights) while also aggressively

The Editorial Board of The Philadelphia Inquirer: To serve his country, Donald Trump should leave the raceThe debate served as a reminder of what another four years of Trump would look like. More lies, grievance, narcissism, and hate. Supporters say they like Trump because he says whatever he thinks.

I came across this video today where a developer reviews a John Carmack tweet and ultimately comes to the conclusion that it’s obviously better to perform click actions on website with the “mouse down” event rather than the “mouse up” event, like most things

Casey Newton interviewed Adam Mosseri on the First Year of Threads. He talks about a lot in here, but Adam brings up the fediverse in an answer, and that is of course the thing people like me are most interested in. Here's what he said:The fediverse is

Cloudflare: Declare Your AIndependence: Block AI Bots, Scrapers and Crawlers With a Single ClickWe hear clearly that customers don’t want AI bots visiting their websites, and especially those that do so dishonestly. To help, we’ve added a brand new one-click to block all AI bots.

Eugen Rochko on the official Mastodon blog: Highlighting journalism on MastodonYou will notice that underneath some links shared on Mastodon, the author byline can be clicked to open the author’s associated fediverse account, right in the app. This highlights writers and journalists that are active on the

I'm experimenting with a brand-new app for saving things to read later. I don't know if it's going to stick, but today we're going to see if the grass is actually greener on the other side.

There is a 1895 French short film called L'arrivée d'un train en gare de La Ciotat (The Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat Station in English) where a stationary camera was set up on a tripod and filmed a train, well, coming into

Jonathan Maze writing for Restaurant Business: McDonald's Is Ending Its Drive-Thru AI TestMcDonald’s is ending its two-year-old test of drive-thru, automated order taking (AOT) that it has conducted with IBM and plans to remove the technology from the more than 100 restaurants that have been

Sean Endicott: Ever Put Content on the Web? Microsoft Says That It's Okay for Them to Steal It Because It's 'Freeware.'"With respect to content that is already on the open web, the social contract of that content since the 90s has been

There's been some chatter for a while that the chatbot interfaces we have for LLMs today are not that useful for most people and that the real solution everyone wants is for these tools to be integrated into more traditional user interfaces. While I do agree that many

Elizabeth Lopatto writing for The Verge: Perplexity’s Grand Theft AI (emphasis mine):“Someone else did it” is a fine argument for a five-year-old. And consider the response further. If Srinivas wanted to be ethical, he had some options here. Option one is to terminate the contract

Malcolm Owen for AppleInsider: Why AAA Games Promoted by Apple Flop in the App StoreAssassin's Creed Mirage was downloaded approximately 123,000 times since June 6, Appfigures says. However, it has only managed gross revenue of $138,000.The report believes that the revenue level indicates that

This blog exists on the public web, and that means you as a user have a lot of control over both how you consume my work and what you can do with it. I publish to the web, so I suppose the canonical way of reading my work is to

Filipe Espósito writing for 9to5Mac: US carriers enabling RCS for iPhone users running iOS 18 beta 2Now it seems that these carriers have flipped the switch and are now enabling RCS for users running the latest iOS 18 beta.Amazing! I can’t wait to text

Jason Snell on Six Colors: Preparing for the Era of Orchestrated AppsWhen everything is orchestrated properly, all the capabilities of all your apps are put into a big soup, and the AI system at the heart of your device can choose the right capabilities to do what you need

Jason Kottke: Walmart Is Switching to Electronic Price TagsWalmart is switching to electronic price tags that “allow employees to change prices as often as every ten seconds”. No one wants this!! No one wants surge pricing on ice cream and price increases on items already in your

I’m closing in on 5 months with the Vision Pro and I thought it was a good time to post an update on how I’m feeling about the product. I know I’ve talked about it on and off since launch, but this is where

John Gruber: WWDC 2024: Apple Intelligence[A]ccording to well-informed little birdies, Vision Pro is already making significant use of the M2’s Neural Engine to supplement the R1 chip for real-time processing purposes — occlusion and object detection, things like that. With M-series-equipped Macs and iPads,

Below is a lightly-edited transcript of a talk I gave recently at work where I walked through the story of how I built Quick BIN Lookup and how it rose and fell to irrelevancy over the last 8 years. Hello! Today, I wanted to tell the story of how I

It seems like such a simple question, and I thought I had an answer, but I wasn't even close. Today we dive down the rabbit hole and try to get to an answer.

I do user experience work at my day job, and if there’s one thing that doing this job has taught me, it’s that while I can do a decent job guessing what people want and need from software, I absolutely need to check with them to

I posted this on Mastodon, showing Perplexity, which is a search engine that says it will browse the web for you and give you the answer, just straight up plagiarizing the first result for the question I asked. And I’m not talking plagiarism like the adamantly anti-LLM crowd

Why does it feel like Pixar movies aren't as significant as they used to feel? Is Pixar just making bad movies, or is something else to blame?

Ari Saperstein writing for The Guardian: Accessible and ‘A Pleasure to Read’: How Apple’s Podcast Transcriptions Came to BeApple’s podcast app will transcribe every new uploaded episode. “We wanted to do it for all the shows, so it’s not just

Ivan Mehta for TechCrunch: The Apps That Apple Sherlocked at WWDC 2024In 2002, Apple released Sherlock 3 with features similar to Watson, making Karelia’s app redundant. Since then, people in tech circles have used the term “Sherlocking” whenever they want to refer to a new

Why the hell do I do this to myself every year?!

From Apple’s Machine Learning Research blog: Introducing Apple’s on-Device and Server Foundation ModelsWe train our foundation models on licensed data, including data selected to enhance specific features, as well as publicly available data collected by our web-crawler, AppleBot. Web publishers have the option to opt

I’ve had a little time to let the WWDC keynote sink in, and wanted to share my overall feelings on Apple’s big announcements in one post. And yes, I’ve installed the developer betas on every single primary device in my life (Mac, iPad, iPhone,

iOS 18 will add the ability for users to theme their home screen by setting all icons to a custom color tint. As someone who is familiar with the Android world as well, my natural reaction is to go, "ooh, how is this similar and different to how Android

Daryl Baxter writing for iMore: iPadOS 18 Looks Great, but It Still Doesn't Fix the iPad's Biggest ProblemI want to be clear — the features that Calculator brings to the iPad, as well as the Math Notes that you can use with Apple Pencil and

Chloe Veltman for NPR: Fake Beauty Queens Charm Judges at the Miss AI PageantModels created using generative artificial intelligence (AI) are competing in the inaugural “Miss AI” pageant this month.In trying to balance my openness to letting people like what they like as well as my

The cynic in me knows that WWDC is a corporate event meant to get people excited about what Apple is working on so that people like me buy more products from them. The keynote is a marketing event, I get it.But also, I don’t really care, and

YouTube might be my favorite website in the world, and apparently that’s at odds with the opinion of many people I see online. People complain about ads, about the UI, and about THE ALGORITHM, but I just don’t have these issues. Today I wanted to quickly

Carl Colglazier, Nathan TeBlunthuis, and Aaron Shaw in their study, The Effects of Group Sanctions on Participation and Toxicity:In this study, we investigated the effects of defederation events on the activity levels and toxic posting behavior of accounts in the Fediverse. The results indicate that such events produce asymmetric

There are a bunch of things that are different about macOS and iPadOS, but the thing that separates these platforms the most for me is how each one works when you run into a limitation. What can you do if a feature you need doesn’t exist? What can

I promise I won't do this for every episode, but how can I not post when it's the debut episode?! It would be irresponsible, right?In the first episode, I talk about why I've been using the Quest 3 more than the Vision Pro

Behind the scenes of how we got to the debut of Comfort Zone!

Tom Warren: Windows AI feature that screenshots everything labeled a security ‘disaster’Despite Microsoft’s promises of a secure and encrypted Recall experience, cybersecurity expert Kevin Beaumont has found that the AI-powered feature has some potential security flaws. Beaumont, who briefly worked at Microsoft see in 2020,

I'm excited to announce Comfort Zone, a new podcast featuring myself, Christopher Lawley, and Niléane!Comfort Zone is the newest member of the MacStories family, and we're extremely excited to be working with them to bring this show to life. It's fair

David Remnick: Donald Trump Is Guilty in His New York Hush-Money Trial | the New YorkerThe conviction on these felony charges is only the most recent stain on the legal history of the former President. Last year, in a civil trial, another New York jury found Trump liable for sexual

We all have a finite amount of resources to move around, and today I'm exploring how I can make decisions that subtly shift what type of businesses and hobbyists I want to support. Oh, and time is a cruel, unflinching monster.

Jeff Benjamin writing for 9to5Mac: Improving iPadOS != making it macOSFor years, the iPad Pro has sported hardware under the hood that’s more than capable for getting things done. For some users, it has been iPadOS’ shortcomings and idiosyncrasies that have make it challenging to get the

Carly Thomas for The Hollywood Reporter: Alfonso Cuarón Says He Directed ‘Harry Potter’ Movie Only After Guillermo Del Toro Called Him an “Arrogant A**hole”del Toro knew how massive the movie franchise was, especially after Chris Columbus’ first two films, so the

Paul Thurrott: Windows 11 Recall Is Not a Privacy ConcernBut we all knew this was coming, that privacy advocates would immediately stomp all over this functionality without taking the time to understand how it even works. To be fair, it doesn’t help that we’re still

404 Media: Google Is Paying Reddit $60 Million for Fucksmith to Tell Its Users to Eat Glueas the prophecy foretold, we are learning exactly what Google is paying Reddit $60 million annually for. And that is to confidently serve its customers ideas like, to make cheese stick on a

Andy Edser writing for PC Gamer: Alleged Harassment and Bullying at Linus Tech Tips 'Not Substantiated' and 'False' According to Third-Party Investigation Organised by Tech ChannelRoper Greyel—the Vancouver-based legal firm specialising in labor and employment law—found the claims of bullying and

Over the last few years I've developed a small case of pain when using a mouse and keyboard. It's not something I feel everyday, but I do have it crop up on a semi-regular basis and it's quite disruptive to my work when it

You already know this is about Macs with touch, so let’s just jump into a few compelling arguments I found from Googling around for a minute:I'm in the camp where I don't want touch support. It's a laptop, not a tablet.

Today I explore why I'm frustrated with the opinions of others, and why I need to remind myself that there's gray area basically everywhere in the world.

Tim Hardwick for MacRumors: Microsoft Says New Surface Pro Is Faster Than 15" M3 MacBook AirMicrosoft is already pitting the Surface Pro against Apple's M3 MacBook Air, and in marketing materials, claims that the Surface Pro has superior processing power and battery life. Compared to the

Benj Edwards for ArsTechnica: New Windows AI Feature Records Everything You’ve Done on Your PCAt a Build conference event on Monday, Microsoft revealed a new AI-powered feature called "Recall" for Copilot+ PCs that will allow Windows 11 users to search and retrieve their past activities

Turns out I'm not done with this topic…A couple days ago I saw this post pop up on Threads and it’s the “checkmate” move people like to bring up when dismissing the idea that macOS could ever work on a touch screen

Over the past 4 years I’ve really come around on PC being my favorite gaming platform. Part of that is the ability to play at higher visual fidelity than is possible on any console, part of it is more flexibility with playing older games, and a third critical

Today Ben Lovejoy posted Touchscreen Macs: The idea that will not die on 9to5Mac and as someone who has weighed in here more than a few times, I figured I’ll do it one more time and then let this topic rest for a while.First, we bust out

My wife bought a 12” MacBook in 2016. It was her first Mac. She loved how thin it was and that it looked great, but it ran terribly and only got slower with time.In early 2020 she upgraded to a Dell XPS 13 with a 10th gen Core

Lou Plummer: The Phones of Normal PeopleThey hate updates because they interrupt stuff they'd rather be doing. They don't care about the new features being announced at WWDC because they do not want to learn how to do new things with their already too complicated

Ryan Christoffel quoting Apple’s Greg Joswiak on 9to5Mac:The fact is that the majority of Mac customers have an iPad, and they use them bothWhich lead Ryan to argue:there’s one big reason this will likely never happen. If iPad owners get access to macOS

I’ve been critical of Apple’s ability to make the Mac a viable gaming platform, but credit where it’s due, getting the new Assassin’s Creed game releasing on the same day on PC, consoles, and Mac is a big win, and basically unheard

Scharon Harding wriring for ArsTechnica: Apple, SpaceX, Microsoft Return-to-Office Mandates Drove Senior Talent AwayA study analyzing Apple, Microsoft, and SpaceX suggests that return to office (RTO) mandates can lead to a higher rate of employees, especially senior-level ones, leaving the company, often to work at competitors.I think there

Apple two weeks ago: What’s New for Apps Distributed in the European UnionFirst, no CTF is required if a developer has no revenue whatsoever. This includes creating a free app without monetization that is not related to revenue of any kind (physical, digital, advertising, or otherwise). This

Casey Newton writing for Platformer: Google’s Broken Link to the WebAside from the opening act, the TikTok DJ Marc Rebillet, no creator, developer, or startup took the stage. Instead, a handful of celebrities appeared in brief videos, with Wyclef Jean enthusing over AI music tools and Donald

The more I think about it, the more I’m squarely in the camp of people who want iPad-like hardware that runs macOS, and I’m not sorry for saying it.

Apple VP of marketing to Ad Week (via 9to5Mac):Creativity is in our DNA at Apple, and it’s incredibly important to us to design products that empower creatives all over the world. Our goal is to always celebrate the myriad of ways users express themselves and bring their

Look, I’m not going to sit here and tell you that Apple selling 4 Apple Pencils is great. It’s more confusing than it ought to be, but this week’s iPad event clearly showed me how this is going to play out in the near(

Kenneth Shepard writing for Kotaku: Apple’s New iPad Ad Sparks Loud, Immediate BacklashThe intent is obvious. Apple wants to communicate that all these creative tools and works are available within the tiny tablet. But the visual of countless instruments, statues, and other pieces of art being destroyed

Marvel Studios: Marvel Studios and ILM Immersive Announce ‘What If…? – An Immersive Story,’ Coming Exclusively to Apple Vision ProMarvel Studios and ILM Immersive announce What If…? – An Immersive Story, the first-ever interactive Disney+ Original story coming exclusively to Apple Vision Pro.I think

I found myself watching the original iPhone announcement today, and I know it’s cliche to say, but damn is that a remarkable presentation. Steve Jobs so clearly presents the current state of the world, explains the problems with the current state, and then proceeds to explain how they&

Why do iPads bring out a very specific reaction while other products don’t?

Check out the event if you missed it, but let’s go from least updated to most updated, shall we?iPad miniTim Cook might as well have said, “the iPad mini remains a product in our lineup,” as the mini got a single, minor shout out

Maybe the first Apple rumor of 2024 was that the upcoming iPad Pros would be extraordinarily expensive. Quoting that piece:Apple's upcoming OLED iPad Pro will start at $1,500, rising to between $1,800 and $2,000 depending on size and configuration, representing a major increase in

I finally had my first spatial persona experience, and it was pretty rad. A friend and I spent about 30 minutes playing chess, checkers, and battleship, in the Game Room app. Over those 30 minutes, it did genuinely feel like I was sharing the same space as my friend. I

William writing at Firstyear's blog-a-log: Passkeys: A Shattered DreamPasskeys are now seen as a way to capture users and audiences into a platform. What better way to encourage long term entrapment of users then by locking all their credentials into your platform, and even better, credentials that

Justin Ling writing for Bug-eyed and Shameless: Leave Those Kids AloneI’ve had a rule for a long time. It’s a simple rule and it goes like this: What students do on-campus is none of my business. Campus politics is a weird and insular business, and

If I’m being totally honest, I don’t understand the Rabbit R1 at all. As a piece of hardware, it looks cool, so I understand if you want to spend $200 on a thing that will look cool on your shelf, but take away the cool physical

I reckon with why I'm generous with the Vision Pro falling short of my hopes while I'm happy to drag other products for doing the same thing. Also the best improvised version of Blur's Song 2 I've ever seen.

In software discussions, there’s a relatively healthy trope of saying something like, “sure this would be fine for power users, but what about normal people?” That’s a good question to ask, but what comes next always bugs me. The “normal person” will

Joshua Topolsky: Rabbit’s R1 AI Companion Is Not the Future You Were PromisedRight now, every time you want to do something like that with your phone, you’re jumping into and out of individual apps; the r1 supposes a future where all your apps connect into

Let’s have some fun and rattle through some relatively spicy takes I have about tech!Movie theaters are awesome and people still like them. Yes, home theaters and high quality headsets like the Vision Pro make the at-home experience better than ever, but there are still major elements

I think when it comes to most things in life, especially someone else’s art, we should all strive to be quick to praise the things we enjoy, but take our time before criticizing what we don’t.I was thinking about this over the past week as

Well, I recently got an iPad Air. It turns out I really did miss having an iPad, and having one back in my life is wonderful.I ended up getting the 64GB M1 model on a steep discount ($200 off)…clearly Best Buy was clearing out their inventory for

Stephen Hackett first reported this yesterday and it was so wild I almost didn't believe it at first.After some searching online, it seems that this folder was generated by Logi Options+, the software that came with my mouse, the Logitech MX Master 3S.Version 1.

David Pierce for The Verge: Rabbit R1 Hands-On: Early Tests With the $199 AI GadgetAlmost immediately, though, I started running into stuff the R1 just can’t do. It can’t send emails or make spreadsheets, though Lyu has been demoing both for months.And:Rabbit’

Ming-Chi Kuo used to just provide supply chain data and he was remarkably reliable at that. Then he moved into more general punditry, and honestly it feels like things are off the rails enough that I find it hard to take his data seriously without looking into it further.The

Justin Jackson: We Need More Calm CompaniesA calm company's purpose is to provide exceptional service to customers while simultaneously improving the lives of the people who work there.I love this, and it’s good to be reminded that there are many companies out there that

Today we dive into why LEGO has unexpectedly become my go-to hobby over the past couple years.

I see more people than I’d expect suggesting that enabling digital wallets for payments on the iPhone is massively dangerous and would lead to widespread fraud and I’ve even seen suggestions that these wallets would charge users a service fee to run all transactions.I’

I looked at how much electricity ChatGPT is supposed to use and compared it to some other items. From that perspective, it doesn't seem that crazy.

The first few emulators hit the App Store this week and while two of them were promptly removed (for different reasons, neither of which were because emulation is wrong), Delta seems to be quite good (I’m still using it for the first time so too early to say

I was recently doing some research on a post that never quite came together in a cohesive thought. However, I did come across this quote from Ben Thompson on how he would define the iPhone’s market:the high-end smartphone market — that is, the iPhone market — is

Ben Thompson on Stratechery: MKBHDs for EverythingSurely the responsibility for the Humane AI Pin lies with Humane; the people who benefited from Brownlee’s honesty were his viewers, the only people to whom Brownlee owes anything. To think of this review — or even just the title —

How the world of social media made it so you could reach more people than ever, but that 1,000 true fans concept hasn't really changed.

Joe Rossignol for MacRumors: Apple Further Explains Why Game Boy Emulator iGBA Was Removed From App StoreWhile it did not explicitly name GBA4iOS, Apple told us it removed iGBA from the App Store after learning that it was a knockoff app that copied another developer's work and

I have found myself writing about myths and what I find to be unfounded fears about allowing companies to compete with Apple’s apps a lot recently. One of the concerns a few people brought up with my last post about competition was that even if it might make

Francesco on his blog: Wishing for a Better Apple NotesIt’s fair to say that Notes has received substantial updates in the last few years. […]The app is almost perfect, I can scan and edit PDFs, write or draw with the Apple Pencil, organise notes with folder

Below is a cleaned up transcript of a talk I recently gave at work to an audience of mostly developers. I used Claude (Opus) to clean up the transcript and have edited out some sections due to discussions of our internal systems. Hello, everybody. Welcome to the very succinctly titled,

Alex Abad-Santos for Vox: What if an Animated X-Men Series Is the X-Men’s Best Future?The stuff in between the lightning bolts, telekinesis, and super strength is what matters.It’s hard for me to overstate how good X-Men ’97 really is. This week’s

Jason Koebler for 404 Media: Apple Announces Half Measure to Make iPhones More Repairable Immediately After Law Banned Its Repair PracticesWhat this means, practically, is that Apple will let you swap the screen of one iPhone with the screen of another iPhone, something that was impossible for a consumer

Jason Snell for MacWorld: Call Apple Vision Pro a flop at your own riskToday, we are so tech-savvy as a society that we’ve forgotten what it’s like to be on the ground floor of a barely feasible product category. And yet, that’s just

In this new series, I’m working out thoughts before I’ve figured out what I really think. Today is about the fundamental issue holding back the Humane Pin (despite the AI silliness).

Forgive the lengthy quotes in this post. These are from a podcast, and people are more verbose when speaking than when writing. I've chosen not to edit them down to make sure you get the full answer. I was listening to The Vergecast this week and a caller

What a day! We’ve got 3 links I’m pushing through as an omnibus post.Benj Edwards for ArsTechnica: Elon Musk: AI will be smarter than any human around the end of next yearOn Monday, Tesla CEO Elon Musk predicted the imminent rise in AI superintelligence

Today we're diving into how to design an effective modal interface, why button text really matters, and a few cool links with data that might surprise you.

It’s been almost exactly a year since my last wallpaper pack. I’m not really in the wallpaper game anymore, largely because I’m just not as talented a graphical artist as many others out there, and I just find myself using other people’s

Jason Koebler writing for 404Media: Friendship Ended With GOOGLE Now KAGI Is My Best FriendIn all of these cases except for a blissful few years where Opera was easily better than Chrome, using a Google alternative felt like I was making a personal sacrifice by using an inferior product

I was reading the most recent Club MacSrories and this paragraph got me thinking…The reasons why Apple is so hesitant to compete more directly with a broader segment of the videogame industry are as much a mystery today as ever. However, the rise of handheld gaming

Apple updated their App Store guidelines this week to allow game emulators for “retro games”. Great news! Right?Samuel Axon of ArsTechnica isn’t so sure:It's a little fuzzy how this will play out, but it may not allow the kind of emulators you

Samantha Nelson writing for Polygon: America Made Godzilla a Superhero. In Japan, He’s Still a Monster.Godzilla has evolved considerably from his 1954 Japanese debut to the latest franchise installment, Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire. And in his most recent incarnations, clear national lines have been drawn

I've said before that wearing a headset is fundamentally annoying, and headsets need to deliver experiences that are so compelling that they make that annoyance worth it. Playing Half Life Alyx was absolutely, unquestionably the most compelling experience I've ever had with a headset, and it

Home With The Armadillo: Substack Is Setting Writers Up For A Twitter-Style ImplosionEssentially, the “follow” feature allows Substack to hold writers (and readers) hostage on their platform, forcing them to operate in a closed-content ecosystem that predominantly benefits Substack. Readers must use the Substack app or the

What do I use chatbots to actually do day to day? People are always so vague about this stuff, so let's go into my real search history and find out what I find them useful for.

Warner Bros has announced they’re making a fifth Matrix film, not with either of the Wachowskis, but with Drew Goddard writing and directing. He’s best known for writing The Martian’s adaptation and writing/directing Cabin in the Woods.Here’s my top 4

Meta rolled out federation to users in the US, Canada, and Japan recently, and it's opt in, which I think is the right way to do it, even if it means it's going to take a while for most accounts to enable it. I have tried

No intro, let’s just get into it!More iconsIt’s not the most important thing in the world, but I’d love to see iOS 18 bring with it the ability to create a tighter grid of icons on my iPhone’s home screen.

You probably got to this post because you Googled some question about what exactly “the fediverse” is, what “ActivityPub” actually means, or what would happen if you turned on federation on your Threads account today. I’m not going to get into the technical weeds

They say you don't know what you have until it's gone, and I gotta be honest, that's how I'm feeling about the iPad right now. I sold my iPad Pro to help pay for my Vision Pro. Part of my rationale was

Jason Snell on Six Colors: Apple’s Immersive Video ProblemNow, having seen the video, I have a few more observations. The first is that I don’t think the new video is very good. Oh, sure, the individual shots can be impressive. […]The problem is that,

Benj Edwards writing for ArsTechnica: “The King Is Dead”—Claude 3 Surpasses GPT-4 on Chatbot Arena for the First TimeOn Tuesday, Anthropic's Claude 3 Opus large language model (LLM) surpassed OpenAI's GPT-4 (which powers ChatGPT) for the first time on Chatbot Arena

Jeanna Kadlec on ThreadsSubstack is completely gutting their business right now. Every writer I know is seeing our subscriptions plummet as our “follower” count rises. The whole value proposition of Substack is that it’s a newsletter and writer hub. This latest intervention is indicative of

Ina Fried: Axios Review: Using Apple’s Vision Pro in Real LifeThe Vision Pro quickly feels heavy on your face, as others have noted. But using it is also cognitively more complex than just watching TV while doing some work on a phone or laptop.I spent a

A short story of a broken furnace, a wealth of information, and the need for experts to save the day. Oh, and the most badass portfolio site I've ever seen.

404 Media: 404 Media Now Has a Full Text RSS FeedSince we launched 404 Media in August, the most common request we’ve gotten from our subscribers is for an RSS feed that contains the full text of all of our articles. We are proud and excited to

Joe Rosensteel: It’s Time for a New AirPortnetworking underpins everything that Apple does care about. Every Mac, iPad, Apple TV, HomePod, Vision Pro, and most importantly every iPhone. The iPhone is a cellular device, but when you’re at home, you’re on your Wi-Fi

Well, it seems like transaction info is something people are more interested in than I expected, so I wanted to tackle one more thing. So often in App Store discussions, we talk about Apple’s 30% cut of each in-app purchase on iPhones and how that’s so

Apple Pay is great, but I think there is some misunderstanding out there about the details of how it works.

I’m no lawyer, and I’m not going to pretend I’m one, so don’t expect me to make any confident legal clams here. That said, I did read the 88-page suit (PDF) against Apple and I have some thoughts.Oh, I also haven&

Some thoughts about my side projects and (if you'll forgive me) how much joy they currently spark.

This (shockingly low res) view went up yesterday and shows what the user experience will be like for Threads users when they want to opt into the fediverse.There are so many interesting details here, and honestly I think Meta is doing a fantastic job with how this is being

I think Claude is an underrated contender in the chatbot wars we're currently living through, but they don't have an iOS app. That's not the end of the world as you can save it as a web app to your home screen and get

Abner Li writing for 9to5Google: Apple Might Use Google Gemini to Power Some AI Features on the iPhoneAccording to Bloomberg, there are “active negotiations to let Apple license Gemini, Google’s set of generative AI models, to power some new features coming to the iPhone software this

I used to change the monospaced font I use everywhere on my Mac constantly. New ones seem to come out every few months, and I was a moth to a flame with them, but I haven't changed the monospaced font I use on my Mac in a couple

Yunqi Li writing for Wired: The Tech Behind Taylor Swift Concert WristbandsIt’s funny because oftentimes people think there’s GPS in each of the devices, or there’s a lot of advanced AI technology,” says Vincent Leclerc, co-founder and CEO of PixMob in an

Tatiana Siegel writing for Variety: Apple’s Blockbuster GambleOn March 10, the tech giant has 13 shots to take home an Oscar via two historical epics, “Killers of the Flower Moon” and “Napoleon,” which nabbed 10 and three nominations, respectively. That’s given

Maxwell Zeff for Gizmodo: Closing Your iPhone Apps Is a Mythical Waste of TimeApple users seem unanimously convinced that closing background apps is a good habit, but it’s more likely a waste of timeA few years ago, I would have retweeted, boosted, and linked to this

Sean Hollister for The Verge: How Nintendo’s Destruction of Yuzu Is Rocking the Emulator WorldNot only did hackers find an unprecedented vulnerability in the original Switch less than a year after release but also the emulator scene managed to develop software that plays Switch games better than

Sarah Perez: Apple Has Lost Its ConfidenceWhat’s worse is that Apple doesn’t seem to think that IAP can stand up to the competition: app developers’ websites.I don’t agree with everything in this piece but it does make me think about the

I’ve been using the Apple Vision Pro for a bit over a month at this point, and while I’ve gone deep on a few key use cases of using the product already, I thought it was high time I collect my thoughts on the product in

I really thought life would get back to normal last week, but it actually got worse. Covid is no joke and you should thank your lucky stars if it doesn't cause you much strife.

I love doing top 10 lists, and since movies are my favorite form of storytelling, I wanted to make a list of what I think best represents my 2023 in film. The order can change day by day, but if you had to ask me what I enjoyed this year,

John Voorhees writing about Arc’s latest escapades in MacStories Weekly: Issue 408It’s that intermediate layer that makes me suspicious of Arc’s motives. The company is starting to feel like a wolf in sheep’s clothing, a browser with an interesting, playful design

It’s Oscar weekend, so here are the very serious Birchtree awards for movies I watched in 2023 that didn’t come out in 2023.Biggest Emotional Gut Punch That Makes You Think Deeply About Your Life and Loved OnesMacrel the Shell with Shoes OnBiggest “

iA: AI Videos: ******* PsychoticComputer-generated imagery is not bad in its every fiber. There certainly are great ways to use AI in a creative process. The more you control your tool and the process, the more mindful the product, the less it qualifies as “AI”. This article is

Benjamin Mueller for the New York Times: After 217 Covid Vaccines, Man Had No Side Effects and Robust ImmunityBy the time the doctors first saw him, the 62-year-old man had received 215 doses of coronavirus vaccine, they said. Flouting their pleas to stop, he received another two shots in

Amanda Marcotte: Trump Is Degenerating Before Our Eyes — MAGA Voters Don't Notice or Don't CareAround lunchtime on Monday, all three cable news networks cut to Trump awkwardly accepting the Supreme Court nullifying the 14th Amendment on his behalf. After a few semi-coherent, if gross,

Listen, everyone lives different lives so I can’t speak to anyone else’s specific situation, but the biggest hurdle I currently have with using the Vision Pro is that I can’t use it while I’m around my wife. I can hang out with

It’s been a hell of a few weeks over here at Birchler HQ. It’s easy to forget that good health goes such a long way to making every other part of your life better.

A history lesson for each major computing platform Apple has released since the turn of the millennium:Apple released the first iPod in November 2001, and they released the second one 10 months later.They released the first iPhone in June 2007, and the iPhone 3G 12 months later.They

Dan Moren: To Embrace Gaming Apple Needs to Level Up Its Game Porting ToolkitIf Apple really wants to jumpstart gaming on the Mac, it should bake the underlying technologies of the game porting toolkit directly into the system. Make installing and running a PC game as easy as if

Before we get going, I'll mention to those who aren't following along that this is one in a long series of posts about using the Vision Pro. This post does not contain all of my thoughts on the product, and I've included some links

ThrillSeeker is a must follow if you’re into VR, and his most popular video of all time was on his experience using the Varjo XR-3. At the time, that was a $5,500 device plus a required $1,500/year subscription. Oh, and it needed to be connected

Listen, you don’t want 2,000 words on a travel case and I don’t particularly want to write that much about a case. Agreed? Excellent, let’s go quick!The visual design is awesomeI love the look of the case. It looks like it&

Does the Vision Pro look like it's going to replace the Mac or the iPad? How about our phones? Maybe…possibly…in many years, but it's more likely to be yet another computer in our lives. It *can* happen, it's just rare.

Zachary Small writing for The New York Times, citing this study:Less than 2 percent of console video games include L.G.B.T.Q. characters or story lines even though 17 percent of gamers are queerTo be clear, this isn’t 2% of console games having a

Sarah Nassauer for The Wall Street Journal: Walmart in Talks to Buy TV Maker VizioThe retail giant is in talks to buy smart television-manufacturer Vizio for more than $2 billion, according to people familiar with the situation. The move would give Walmart more places where it can sell ads

Sarah Perez for TechCrunch: Over Half of Vision Pro-Only Apps Are Paid Downloads, Far More Than Wider iOS App StoreAccording to a recently released report from app intelligence firm Appfigures, over half of Vision Pro-only apps (52%) are paid downloads — a surprising percentage given that across the wider

We're very much in the early days of visionOS. As I told Chris Lawley on Mastodon, "this is definitely the closest I've ever felt to using what feels like an internal version of an Apple product." Which means I don't isn'

2 short months ago Google announced Gemini (apparently Gemini 1.0). It came in 3 variants:Gemini Nano, which runs locally on devices as small as your phoneGemini Pro, which runs on a server and was the back end for BardGemini Ultra, which didn’t run anywhere

How does one afford a Vision Pro? Sacrifices had to be made.

Jen Glennon for Kotaku: Bummer: PS5 Entering 'The Latter Stage of Its Life Cycle,' Sony SaysSony execs also said that its current-gen hardware, the PlayStation 5, is nearing the end of its life cycle.I think the PS5 and Xbox Series console generation will go down as

I brought the Vision Pro to the office today to show a work friend since he's into tech, although he's definitely more cautious when it comes to jumping on new things. He's done a little VR before, as well.He was immediately struck by

Alex Heath for The Verge: Zuckerberg says Quest 3 is “the better product” vs. Apple’s Vision ProHe says the Quest has a better “immersive” content library than Apple, which is technically true for now, though he admits that the Vision Pro is a

If you handed me the iPhone 16 Pro today and told me that I needed to have a written review of it done by tomorrow that helped people understand if it was a phone worth upgrading to, I could do it no problem. I’d have to leave out

Emilia David for The Verge: I Love My GPT, but I Can’t Find a Use for Anybody Else’sThough I’ve come to depend on my GPT, it’s the only one I use.I’ve had the exact same experience. I fully

Once a year or so I seem to write something that gets a good chunk of pushback. In 2023 that article was my immediate reaction to the Vision Pro’s announcement at WWDC, which wasn’t as over-the-moon excited as many other people were. My favorite reaction was

The Vision Pro isn't a developer kit, but it's definitely got some UI oddities that will get sorted out before it's really ready for the mainstream.

My wife wasn’t super interested in the Vision Pro, but after having it in the house for a few days, she finally said, “fine, let’s see what this is all about.”So I get her into the headset and she had tow immediate things

Tim Urban: All My Thoughts After 40 Hours in the Vision ProIt’s not just me. VR blows everyone away when they try it, but it seems to have a hard time hooking people for the long run. After a major wave of hype in the mid-2010s, VR

Back when I was a kid, there was a “computer room” in our house. There was one PC and we all shared it. Want to look something up online? Go to the computer room. Want to play a game? Go to the computer room. Want to listen to

Jordan Pearson: How Tech Firms Made a Crypto-Boosting Book an NYT Best Seller by Gaming the SystemCafiero linked two examples of firms that publicly said they placed orders for Dixon’s book to give to employees. One was Syndicate, a company in the crypto industry that a16z has

I have real concerns about features like Arc Search blowing up the revenue model that has powered the open web for decades. Maybe there's hope in looking back 25 years at another software innovation that blew everything up, but spurred more new revenue models.

What a difference a week makes, huh? Last week I was feeling FOMO, but had come to terms with not being on the Vision Pro train with other people I knew. I dealt with that by buying a Meta Quest 3 and seeing what the best of the rest of

Casey Newton: Scenes From a Dying WebOpening the Arc Search app for the first time last week, though, I experienced a rare emotion: a kind of revulsion at the app’s mere existence, and at what it portends.If I’m known for loving and advocating for

Anil Dash: “Wherever You Get Your Podcasts” Is a Radical StatementBut here's the thing: being able to say, "wherever you get your podcasts" is a radical statement. Because what it represents is the triumph of exactly the kind of technology that's

Keenan: RSS Readers Make Me Want to Jump Into a Vat of Acid!Opening an RSS reader is about the quickest way I know how to trigger a panic attack in myself next to Googling "colon cancer symptoms reddit." Even when I do my best to only subscribe

George RR Martin on his blog: Dark DaysIt used to be fun talking about our favorite books and films, and having spirited debates with fans who saw things different… but somehow in this age of social media, it is no longer enough to say “I did not

I reviewed the PlayStation Portal late last year and my main criticism of it was that it had more input lag and general wireless reliability issues than I would have liked to see in a streaming-only device.I’ve used it a bit since that review, but it’

This article is making the rounds on Mastodon, where generative AI hate runs strong, and I get it, it’s everything you want to hear in a headline if you think ChatGPT is the most evil thing ever created on computers. It kicks off with the headline, “AI

Bluck Apps writing on the Castro blog, which went over 3 years without a new post, if you wanted an idea for how much communication from the company has broken down: A Fresh Start for CastroWe are excited to announce Castro has been purchased by Bluck Apps. Castro is

John Siracusa: Spatial ComputingThe fact that I’m able to write the phrase “grab it and drag it to a new location” and most people will understand what I mean is a testament to the decades-long success of this kind of interface. In the context of

I just read two “reviews” of the upcoming Apple Vision Pro, one from John Gruber and another from Nilay Patel. I put “reviews” in quotes because I think these two write ups are very different in how they approached their respective pieces. Nilay’s review

Project Tapestry is a new Kickstarter from The Iconfactory. Here’s how they describe it:What if you had one app that gave an overview of nearly everything that was happening across all the different services you follow? A single chronological timeline of your most important social media services,

A week ago I launched More Birchtree, a way to subscribe to this site to get more of it (shocker!). I've written two exclusive posts so far and they've gone over quite well it seems. I'm proud of the posts and think they'

Ian Bogost: We’ve Forgotten How to Use ComputersRemember (if you can) the classic drag-and-drop: You’d mouse over to a file or a folder, click to slide the icon to the trash, then release to drop it in. In the age of finger-scrolls and trackpads, that

Rebecca Sun argues the Barbie Oscar snubs aren’t as bad as some people think in BarbieGate: Why All Oscars Snubs Are Not Created Equala good question to ask is why a man playing a blond avatar of perfection felt like a braver feat than a woman doing

Yesterday Apple announced some pretty big changes that they’ll be making in iOS 17.4 coming in March. This page has more details, and they separately announced that game streaming services like Xbox Game Pass and NVIDIA GeForce Now can release Apps on the App Store.Phew, big

Bastian Allgeier: My Grandpa Was a NaziI wondered for many years, how all of this could have happened. How people like my grandpa turned into monsters and people around him watched or turned into monsters with him. The last years made this very clear.Sometimes you see a blog

Dan Moren: After 40 Years, the Mac Is ImmortalForty years. In the world of technology, where many devices seem to evaporate after only a matter of months, lasting for a decade is an accomplishment—but four of them? It’s nearly unheard of.The Mac really is

So you know how sometimes you can't figure something out so you ask a question on social media to see if anyone can help? And then do you know how you get the answer you need, but people keep replying to you with suggestions even after you got

This isn't going to be a full tutorial, but yesterday I started a paid tier for Birchtree (sign up here) and in the interest of transparency as well as setting expectations for people who are thinking about doing something similar, here's the broads strokes of what&

Andy Nicolaides: If VR Is the Future, I’m ScrewedUsing a Quest 3, for me, is liking shipping in a Face Hugger from Alien and treating it to a candlelit meal before inviting it home to latch onto your face for some intrusive chest impregnatation.This was too

This inaugural More Birchtree post delves into what we want to get out of video game representation, a shout out to my favorite current writer, one of my all-time favorite apps, and a few cool goodies like the Wii Shop music on Amazon.

More details below, but brass tacks, More Birchtree is a way to get more Birchtree writing, ad-free browsing, and the fuzzy feeling of supporting indie writing. Member posts will be more personal pieces, as well as more raw feelings about the tech news of the day before I’m

At the end of 2023 I wrote this about what I expected to see from Apple before they announced the Vision Pro's release date:I also hope we get some videos deep diving into some of the interactions and common tasks you’ll be able to do

Above is a deranged version of the innovation curve that is often brought out when thinking about products (often tech products specifically).Here’s a better one:A very few people are “innovators” who are there on day one for new stuff and are willing to look

Robin Rendle: Be Loud About the Things You LoveA writing tip for myself in the future, if I may (and I do): delete every use of “…for me…,” “in my opinion,” “some might disagree,” “I think,” etc. etc. These

You should read Chance Miller’s whole article on 9to5Mac, but I wanted to share my immediate thoughts after seeing this.Apple is updating its App Store guidelines to allow developers to link to alternative payment methods, provided that the app also offer purchases through Apple’s own

Kevin Systrom: Shutting Down ArtifactWe have built something that a core group of users love, but we have concluded that the market opportunity isn’t big enough to warrant continued investment in this way.It’s a shame this app didn’t make it. I liked

Casey Newton: Why Platformer Is Leaving SubstackAfter much consideration, we have decided to move Platformer off of Substack. Over the next few days, the publication will migrate to a new website powered by the nonprofit, open-source publishing platform Ghost. If you already subscribe to Platformer and wish to continue