Connor Oliver:

This Mac has no form of notification system built in, it never
begs for your attention and its applications never try to distract
you from what you are doing, begging you to look at them instead.
If I get distracted while using this Mac the fault lies squarely
on me, not the computer and not the programs running on it.

This Mac is unchanging in a world where things change by the
minute. It will never receive another software update and is
thoroughly obsolete, but it’s comforting to have something that
you know will stay the same forever, remaining in a known state
every time you return to it.

 ★ 

Connor Oliver:

This Mac has no form of notification system built in, it never
begs for your attention and its applications never try to distract
you from what you are doing, begging you to look at them instead.
If I get distracted while using this Mac the fault lies squarely
on me, not the computer and not the programs running on it.

This Mac is unchanging in a world where things change by the
minute. It will never receive another software update and is
thoroughly obsolete, but it’s comforting to have something that
you know will stay the same forever, remaining in a known state
every time you return to it.

Read More 

Nice remembrance from Louie Mantia of his days working as an icon/UI designer at Apple circa 2010–2011.

 ★ 

Nice remembrance from Louie Mantia of his days working as an icon/UI designer at Apple circa 2010–2011.

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Glenn Fleishman at TidBITS:

You can think of Mastodon as a flotilla of boats of vastly
different sizes, whereas Twitter is like being on a cruise ship
the size of a continent. Some Mastodon boats might be cruise
liners with as many as 50,000 passengers; others are just dinghies
with a single occupant! The admin of each instance — the captain
of your particular boat — might make arbitrary decisions you
disagree with as heartily as with any commercial operator’s tacks
and turns. But you’re not stuck on your boat, with drowning as the
only alternative. Instead, you can hop from one boat to another
without losing your place in the flotilla community. Parts of a
flotilla can also splinter off and form their own disconnected
groups, but no boat, however large, is more important than any
other in the community.

If you’re a regular Twitter or Facebook user — or avoided both
those and similar services — and want to understand what Mastodon
is, where it seems to be headed, and how to join in, read on. You
don’t need a lot of technical details to understand why Mastodon
and the Fediverse exist in sharp contrast to commercial social
networks and why they hearken back to some of the more enjoyable
aspects of earlier stages of Internet interactions.

I don’t think Mastodon is confusing, per se, but its federated nature makes it inherently at least a bit more complex than a centralized commercial network like Twitter or Instagram. Fleishman’s piece here is a wonderful overview.

 ★ 

Glenn Fleishman at TidBITS:

You can think of Mastodon as a flotilla of boats of vastly
different sizes, whereas Twitter is like being on a cruise ship
the size of a continent. Some Mastodon boats might be cruise
liners with as many as 50,000 passengers; others are just dinghies
with a single occupant! The admin of each instance — the captain
of your particular boat — might make arbitrary decisions you
disagree with as heartily as with any commercial operator’s tacks
and turns. But you’re not stuck on your boat, with drowning as the
only alternative. Instead, you can hop from one boat to another
without losing your place in the flotilla community. Parts of a
flotilla can also splinter off and form their own disconnected
groups, but no boat, however large, is more important than any
other in the community.

If you’re a regular Twitter or Facebook user — or avoided both
those and similar services — and want to understand what Mastodon
is, where it seems to be headed, and how to join in, read on. You
don’t need a lot of technical details to understand why Mastodon
and the Fediverse exist in sharp contrast to commercial social
networks and why they hearken back to some of the more enjoyable
aspects of earlier stages of Internet interactions.

I don’t think Mastodon is confusing, per se, but its federated nature makes it inherently at least a bit more complex than a centralized commercial network like Twitter or Instagram. Fleishman’s piece here is a wonderful overview.

Read More 

Holy hell this is absolutely amazing.

Now do Star Wars directed by Stanley Kubrick. Wait, they did it a year ago — not quite as sublime as Lucas’s 2001 but the docking scene is great.

 ★ 

Holy hell this is absolutely amazing.

Now do Star Wars directed by Stanley Kubrick. Wait, they did it a year ago — not quite as sublime as Lucas’s 2001 but the docking scene is great.

Read More 

Tripp Mickle, Karen Weise, and Nico Grant, writing for The New York Times in a story that seemingly didn’t need three bylines:

Now chastened, many tech companies have begun the year by
championing a new and unfamiliar business strategy: austerity.

In recent months, several companies have said they are looking for
ways to cut costs and eliminate futuristic projects that have
become money pits. Amazon, Alphabet, Microsoft and Meta have each
announced plans to lay off more than 10,000 workers.

I’m not sure why Apple is included in this story — let alone the subject of the hero photo illustrating it. The other companies have laid off 10,000+ employees and cut benefits and perks. Apple has, at worst, cut a few hundred retail positions — so few that it’s gone under the radar — and hasn’t cut any benefits or perks. Apple’s Q1 revenue was down 5 percent year over year, yes, but the company claims they took an 8 percent hit from international currency conversion headwinds. The complete shutdown of the massive Foxconn plant responsible for assembling Apple’s flagship iPhone 14 Pro models was a serious setback, but utterly unlike any of the problems facing Amazon, Google, Microsoft, or Meta. But seemingly nothing can stop The Times from presenting “big tech” as a single monolithic narrative.

(Via Glenn Fleishman.)

 ★ 

Tripp Mickle, Karen Weise, and Nico Grant, writing for The New York Times in a story that seemingly didn’t need three bylines:

Now chastened, many tech companies have begun the year by
championing a new and unfamiliar business strategy: austerity.

In recent months, several companies have said they are looking for
ways to cut costs and eliminate futuristic projects that have
become money pits. Amazon, Alphabet, Microsoft and Meta have each
announced plans to lay off more than 10,000 workers.

I’m not sure why Apple is included in this story — let alone the subject of the hero photo illustrating it. The other companies have laid off 10,000+ employees and cut benefits and perks. Apple has, at worst, cut a few hundred retail positions — so few that it’s gone under the radar — and hasn’t cut any benefits or perks. Apple’s Q1 revenue was down 5 percent year over year, yes, but the company claims they took an 8 percent hit from international currency conversion headwinds. The complete shutdown of the massive Foxconn plant responsible for assembling Apple’s flagship iPhone 14 Pro models was a serious setback, but utterly unlike any of the problems facing Amazon, Google, Microsoft, or Meta. But seemingly nothing can stop The Times from presenting “big tech” as a single monolithic narrative.

(Via Glenn Fleishman.)

Read More 

Mark Gurman, over the weekend in his Power On column/newsletter at Bloomberg:

Apple’s first mixed-reality device, likely to be dubbed the
Reality Pro, will launch this year with an immense amount of new
technology, ranging from dual 4K displays to a flexible OLED
screen on the front that shows a user’s eyes.

I am once again reminded of the fact that, two weeks prior to its unveiling, Gurman reported that 2021’s Apple Watch Series 7 would be “all about a new design with a flatter display and edges”, when in fact the Series 7 was more rounded.

In addition to making me as curious as ever how he (along with fellow rumormeister Ming-Chi Kuo, who also fell for the flat-sided Series 7 bullshit) vets sources, just consider how dumb an idea a front-facing display on a set of VR goggles would be, putting aside how much dumber it would be to use such a screen to display fake eyeballs. Good displays are expensive. All displays consume large amounts of energy. Why add significant cost to an already expensive headset, and consume additional energy from a device so power-thirsty it’s going to ship with an external tethered battery (a fact Gurman does, I am told, have right), for a front-facing display that the user themself will never see?

 ★ 

Mark Gurman, over the weekend in his Power On column/newsletter at Bloomberg:

Apple’s first mixed-reality device, likely to be dubbed the
Reality Pro, will launch this year with an immense amount of new
technology, ranging from dual 4K displays to a flexible OLED
screen on the front that shows a user’s eyes.

I am once again reminded of the fact that, two weeks prior to its unveiling, Gurman reported that 2021’s Apple Watch Series 7 would be “all about a new design with a flatter display and edges”, when in fact the Series 7 was more rounded.

In addition to making me as curious as ever how he (along with fellow rumormeister Ming-Chi Kuo, who also fell for the flat-sided Series 7 bullshit) vets sources, just consider how dumb an idea a front-facing display on a set of VR goggles would be, putting aside how much dumber it would be to use such a screen to display fake eyeballs. Good displays are expensive. All displays consume large amounts of energy. Why add significant cost to an already expensive headset, and consume additional energy from a device so power-thirsty it’s going to ship with an external tethered battery (a fact Gurman does, I am told, have right), for a front-facing display that the user themself will never see?

Read More