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Apple TV+ Is Free This Weekend, January 4–5
Hartley Charlton, MacRumors:
Apple TV+ is set to be available to stream for free from Saturday,
January 4 to Sunday, January 5, providing its full catalog with no
subscription fee. Following a series of teasers, Apple today
confirmed the free weekend on social media, building anticipation
for new releases early in 2025 such as the second season of
Severance. Simply open the Apple TV app to watch for free.
Bizarrely, the only place Apple announced this seems to be on X and Instagram. Not a word on Apple Newsroom, for example.
Apple TV+ has an abundance of great shows (but a relative dearth of good original movies, with Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon being the standout exception). I wouldn’t hesitate to argue that the average quality of an Apple TV+ original show is higher than that for any other streaming platform. It really is the new HBO. But for one weekend of free viewing I can easily name my two favorites, both of which I think will stand the test of time and long be remembered: Severance and Slow Horses.
★
Hartley Charlton, MacRumors:
Apple TV+ is set to be available to stream for free from Saturday,
January 4 to Sunday, January 5, providing its full catalog with no
subscription fee. Following a series of teasers, Apple today
confirmed the free weekend on social media, building anticipation
for new releases early in 2025 such as the second season of
Severance. Simply open the Apple TV app to watch for free.
Bizarrely, the only place Apple announced this seems to be on X and Instagram. Not a word on Apple Newsroom, for example.
Apple TV+ has an abundance of great shows (but a relative dearth of good original movies, with Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon being the standout exception). I wouldn’t hesitate to argue that the average quality of an Apple TV+ original show is higher than that for any other streaming platform. It really is the new HBO. But for one weekend of free viewing I can easily name my two favorites, both of which I think will stand the test of time and long be remembered: Severance and Slow Horses.
DF Sponsorships
Speaking of sponsorships, the Q1 schedule is filling up, but I’ve still got this week and next open. If you’ve got a product or service you think would be of interest to DF’s audience of people obsessed with high quality and good design, get in touch.
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Speaking of sponsorships, the Q1 schedule is filling up, but I’ve still got this week and next open. If you’ve got a product or service you think would be of interest to DF’s audience of people obsessed with high quality and good design, get in touch.
James Fallows: ‘Jimmy Carter Was a Lucky Man’
James Fallows, in a 2023 piece for The Atlantic, written when Carter entered hospice care:
Jimmy Carter survived to see many of his ambitions realized,
including near eradication of the dreaded Guinea worm,
which, unglamorous as it sounds, represents an increase in human
well-being greater than most leaders have achieved. He survived
to see his character, vision, and sincerity recognized, and to
know that other ex-presidents will be judged by the standard he
has set.
He was an unlucky president, and a lucky man.
We are lucky to have had him. Blessed.
★
James Fallows, in a 2023 piece for The Atlantic, written when Carter entered hospice care:
Jimmy Carter survived to see many of his ambitions realized,
including near eradication of the dreaded Guinea worm,
which, unglamorous as it sounds, represents an increase in human
well-being greater than most leaders have achieved. He survived
to see his character, vision, and sincerity recognized, and to
know that other ex-presidents will be judged by the standard he
has set.
He was an unlucky president, and a lucky man.
We are lucky to have had him. Blessed.
Mark Gurman Says Voice Control for Next Magic Mouse ‘Makes Sense’
Juli Clover, MacRumors:
An upcoming version of the Magic Mouse with voice control for AI
would “make sense,” Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman said today, though
he claimed that he has heard no rumors about the feature so far.
Alongside the voice-input mouse, it’d make just as much sense to bring back some of that see-through 1998 iMac aesthetic by switching MacBooks to transparent aluminum.
★
Juli Clover, MacRumors:
An upcoming version of the Magic Mouse with voice control for AI
would “make sense,” Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman said today, though
he claimed that he has heard no rumors about the feature so far.
Alongside the voice-input mouse, it’d make just as much sense to bring back some of that see-through 1998 iMac aesthetic by switching MacBooks to transparent aluminum.
52 Things Kent Hendricks Learned in 2024
Fun and interesting list overall (via Kottke), but #7 caught my attention:
Walking speed on the streets of New York, Boston, and Philadelphia has increased 15% since 1979. (“Shifting Patterns of Social Interaction: Exploring the Social Life of Urban Spaces Through A.I.”)
Not sure what made the researchers pick those three cities, but in my experience they’re the only three cities in America where people walk at a reasonable clip.
(Sidenote: #1 on Hendricks’s list was an item claiming that Firefox and Chrome users tend to be happier and more satisfied employees than Internet Explorer or Safari users, because they’re the sort of non-conformist thinkers who install third-party web browsers rather than use the system default. As if the inclusion of “Internet Explorer” weren’t hint enough that one should be skeptical of this claim, the cited source is an article from 2016, and the study only applied to people with jobs as customer service agents. Chrome has 66 percent market share for desktop browsers today — pretty sure using it doesn’t make one a non-conformist.)
★
Fun and interesting list overall (via Kottke), but #7 caught my attention:
Walking speed on the streets of New York, Boston, and Philadelphia has increased 15% since 1979. (“Shifting Patterns of Social Interaction: Exploring the Social Life of Urban Spaces Through A.I.”)
Not sure what made the researchers pick those three cities, but in my experience they’re the only three cities in America where people walk at a reasonable clip.
(Sidenote: #1 on Hendricks’s list was an item claiming that Firefox and Chrome users tend to be happier and more satisfied employees than Internet Explorer or Safari users, because they’re the sort of non-conformist thinkers who install third-party web browsers rather than use the system default. As if the inclusion of “Internet Explorer” weren’t hint enough that one should be skeptical of this claim, the cited source is an article from 2016, and the study only applied to people with jobs as customer service agents. Chrome has 66 percent market share for desktop browsers today — pretty sure using it doesn’t make one a non-conformist.)
Jimmy Carter Dies at 100
The New York Times:
While his presidency was remembered more for its failures than for its successes, his post-presidency was seen by many as a model for future chief executives. Rather than vanish from view or focus on moneymaking, he established the Carter Center to promote peace, fight disease and combat social inequality. He transformed himself into a freelance diplomat traveling the globe, sometimes irritating his successors but earning the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002.
★
The New York Times:
While his presidency was remembered more for its failures than for its successes, his post-presidency was seen by many as a model for future chief executives. Rather than vanish from view or focus on moneymaking, he established the Carter Center to promote peace, fight disease and combat social inequality. He transformed himself into a freelance diplomat traveling the globe, sometimes irritating his successors but earning the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002.
Due
My thanks to Junjie for sponsoring last week at DF to promote Due, their excellent reminder app for the Mac, iPhone, and iPad. I first linked to Due back in 2010, writing this short post:
I’ve been trying this $3 app for a few days and digging it — a
convenient, low-friction way to set short-term reminders and
timers. Sort of like Pester but for iPhone. Focused and
thoughtful design.
A lot of apps have come and gone since then. But Due has thrived. I never would have expected it when I penned the short blurb above, but here we are at the very end of 2024 and I’ve been relying upon Due for 14 years and counting. I started using it then and haven’t stopped. Due has long held a permanent position on my iPhone’s first home screen. And for several years now, Due has been available, with seamless iCloud syncing, on the Mac.
You might ask why use Due instead of Apple Reminders. For me the answer is simple. Due’s conception and presentation of “reminders” works for me and my way of thinking in a way that Apple Reminders does not. I have tons of to-do items in Reminders. But for a certain type of recurring and one-off tasks that I want to be reminded about at a certain time, they go in Due.
For example, our trash gets picked up on Monday and Thursday mornings. So I have recurring Due reminders to take out the trash every Sunday and Wednesday night. I don’t want these in my calendar. I just want them in Due, and Due makes sure I see notifications at 9:00pm every trash night. Due’s intuitive snoozing options make it easy to postpone one of these by a day during weeks when trash pickup is delayed by a holiday. I also keep my reminders related to Daring Fireball’s weekly sponsors in Due — posting the new sponsor’s ad at the start of the week, and writing my thank-you post at the end of the week — which reminders were quite meta this week.
It turns out, that brief blurb I wrote about Due 14 years ago was meaningful to the success of Due. Reading Junie’s remembrance about that post made me sit up a bit straighter, I’ll admit. I’ll accept some small measure of credit for discovering Due back then, but Due is so good, so distinctively original and useful, that I firmly believe its success was inevitable. Go check it out.
★
My thanks to Junjie for sponsoring last week at DF to promote Due, their excellent reminder app for the Mac, iPhone, and iPad. I first linked to Due back in 2010, writing this short post:
I’ve been trying this $3 app for a few days and digging it — a
convenient, low-friction way to set short-term reminders and
timers. Sort of like Pester but for iPhone. Focused and
thoughtful design.
A lot of apps have come and gone since then. But Due has thrived. I never would have expected it when I penned the short blurb above, but here we are at the very end of 2024 and I’ve been relying upon Due for 14 years and counting. I started using it then and haven’t stopped. Due has long held a permanent position on my iPhone’s first home screen. And for several years now, Due has been available, with seamless iCloud syncing, on the Mac.
You might ask why use Due instead of Apple Reminders. For me the answer is simple. Due’s conception and presentation of “reminders” works for me and my way of thinking in a way that Apple Reminders does not. I have tons of to-do items in Reminders. But for a certain type of recurring and one-off tasks that I want to be reminded about at a certain time, they go in Due.
For example, our trash gets picked up on Monday and Thursday mornings. So I have recurring Due reminders to take out the trash every Sunday and Wednesday night. I don’t want these in my calendar. I just want them in Due, and Due makes sure I see notifications at 9:00pm every trash night. Due’s intuitive snoozing options make it easy to postpone one of these by a day during weeks when trash pickup is delayed by a holiday. I also keep my reminders related to Daring Fireball’s weekly sponsors in Due — posting the new sponsor’s ad at the start of the week, and writing my thank-you post at the end of the week — which reminders were quite meta this week.
It turns out, that brief blurb I wrote about Due 14 years ago was meaningful to the success of Due. Reading Junie’s remembrance about that post made me sit up a bit straighter, I’ll admit. I’ll accept some small measure of credit for discovering Due back then, but Due is so good, so distinctively original and useful, that I firmly believe its success was inevitable. Go check it out.
The Talk Show: ‘A Professional Internet User’, With Kagi Founder and CEO Vlad Prelovac
Kagi founder and CEO Vlad Prelovac joins the show to talk about the business of web search, the thinking behind Kagi’s own amazing search engine, and their upstart WebKit-based browser Orion.
Sponsored by:
Squarespace: Make your next move. Use code talkshow for 10% off your first order.
Memberful: Monetize your passion with membership. Start your free trial today.
★
Kagi founder and CEO Vlad Prelovac joins the show to talk about the business of web search, the thinking behind Kagi’s own amazing search engine, and their upstart WebKit-based browser Orion.
Sponsored by:
Squarespace: Make your next move. Use code talkshow for 10% off your first order.
Memberful: Monetize your passion with membership. Start your free trial today.
Coding Font Selection ‘Tournament’
Via Jason Snell (back in October), who points first to this thread on Mastodon where a few of us posted about our preferences for the fonts we use for writing, and then describes this fun “tournament” from Typogram that lets you pick your favorite monospaced coding font from 32 choices. One limitation is that the only options are free fonts — some of my favorite monospaced fonts aren’t free and thus aren’t included (e.g. Consolas, Berkeley Mono, or Apple’s SF Mono). Another limitation is that some of the fonts in the tournament just plain suck. But it’s really pretty fun.
It’s also a good thing I procrastinated on linking to this for two months — it’s improved greatly in the weeks since Snell linked to it. The example code is now JavaScript, not CSS, which is a much better baseline for choosing a programming font. And there are some better font choices now.
I highly recommend you disable showing the font names while you play, to avoid any bias toward fonts you already think you have an opinion about. But no matter how many times I play, I always get the same winner: Adobe’s Source Code Pro. My second favorite in this tournament is IBM Plex Mono. The most conspicuous omission: Intel One Mono.
★
Via Jason Snell (back in October), who points first to this thread on Mastodon where a few of us posted about our preferences for the fonts we use for writing, and then describes this fun “tournament” from Typogram that lets you pick your favorite monospaced coding font from 32 choices. One limitation is that the only options are free fonts — some of my favorite monospaced fonts aren’t free and thus aren’t included (e.g. Consolas, Berkeley Mono, or Apple’s SF Mono). Another limitation is that some of the fonts in the tournament just plain suck. But it’s really pretty fun.
It’s also a good thing I procrastinated on linking to this for two months — it’s improved greatly in the weeks since Snell linked to it. The example code is now JavaScript, not CSS, which is a much better baseline for choosing a programming font. And there are some better font choices now.
I highly recommend you disable showing the font names while you play, to avoid any bias toward fonts you already think you have an opinion about. But no matter how many times I play, I always get the same winner: Adobe’s Source Code Pro. My second favorite in this tournament is IBM Plex Mono. The most conspicuous omission: Intel One Mono.