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Douglas Adams:

I’ve come up with a set of rules that describe our reactions to
technologies:

Anything that is in the world when you’re born is normal and
ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works.
Anything that’s invented between when you’re fifteen and
thirty-five is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can
probably get a career in it.
Anything invented after you’re thirty-five is against the
natural order of things.

 ★ 

Douglas Adams:

I’ve come up with a set of rules that describe our reactions to
technologies:

Anything that is in the world when you’re born is normal and
ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works.

Anything that’s invented between when you’re fifteen and
thirty-five is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can
probably get a career in it.

Anything invented after you’re thirty-five is against the
natural order of things.

Read More 

Two more on the “best decade ever” front. First a classic 2010 John Oliver segment for The Daily Show, wherein he “hopes to find the better, simpler time before America was ruined.”

Second, this 2007 Tom the Dancing Bug comic by Ruben Bolling.

 ★ 

Two more on the “best decade ever” front. First a classic 2010 John Oliver segment for The Daily Show, wherein he “hopes to find the better, simpler time before America was ruined.”

Second, this 2007 Tom the Dancing Bug comic by Ruben Bolling.

Read More 

Craig Hockenberry returns to the show. Topics include the upcoming Daylight DC-1 monochrome “e-paper” tablet, more thoughts on the new iPad Pros, and what we expect/hope for from Apple at WWDC. Also: a one-button keyboard.

Sponsored by:

Trade Coffee: Enjoy 30% off your first month of coffee.
Squarespace: Make your next move. Use code talkshow for 10% off your first order.
Nuts.com: The world’s best snacks, delivered fast and fresh.

 ★ 

Craig Hockenberry returns to the show. Topics include the upcoming Daylight DC-1 monochrome “e-paper” tablet, more thoughts on the new iPad Pros, and what we expect/hope for from Apple at WWDC. Also: a one-button keyboard.

Sponsored by:

Trade Coffee: Enjoy 30% off your first month of coffee.
Squarespace: Make your next move. Use code talkshow for 10% off your first order.
Nuts.com: The world’s best snacks, delivered fast and fresh.

Read More 

Tantacrul, on X:

I’m legit shocked by the design of @Meta’s new notification
informing us they want to use the content we post to train their
AI models. It’s intentionally designed to be highly awkward in
order to minimise the number of users who will object to it. Let
me break it down.

Each step of the process exhibits one or more dark patterns — and there are an absurd number of steps. Meta at its worst. This exemplifies everything untrustworthy and icky about Meta and AI itself. It’s just gross.

 ★ 

Tantacrul, on X:

I’m legit shocked by the design of @Meta’s new notification
informing us they want to use the content we post to train their
AI models. It’s intentionally designed to be highly awkward in
order to minimise the number of users who will object to it. Let
me break it down.

Each step of the process exhibits one or more dark patterns — and there are an absurd number of steps. Meta at its worst. This exemplifies everything untrustworthy and icky about Meta and AI itself. It’s just gross.

Read More 

Ryan Christoffel, writing for 9to5Mac:

However, after seeing what a new third-party autobiography app is
doing with AI, I’m convinced Apple could have a blow away moment
if it showed off an AI-supercharged Journal app.

The Journal app is a curious offering from Apple. It was first
introduced at last year’s WWDC as an iOS 17 feature, but didn’t
end up shipping to users until the end of the year in iOS 17.2. In
an era where Apple is pushing cross-platform solutions like
SwiftUI and Mac Catalyst, Journal debuted as an iPhone exclusive.
As a result, you couldn’t (and still can’t) create or even view
Journal entries on your iPad or Mac.

If you have a spare iPhone and sign into iCloud, you can see that Journal does in fact sync everything via iCloud with end-to-end encryption. There just aren’t — yet? — versions of Journal for iPad or Mac to sync to. I actually like the focused, super-simple nature of Journal a lot. But it’s damn curious to me that it’s still iPhone-only.

2024 is the Year of AI, so if there is any Journal-related news at WWDC next month, I’m sure some of that news will be about improving the AI-backed suggestions. But Journal is missing some fundamentals that strike me as far more essential:

iPad and Mac apps.
Search.
Import and export.

I worry that import and export aren’t priorities for Apple. Apple Notes can import RTF and plain text files, but its only option for exporting is, bizarrely, PDF — which is a file format Notes can’t import. A good system for import/export would allow for full fidelity round-tripping. You should be able to export to a file or archive format that Notes can also import, without losing any formatting, metadata, or image attachments. Notes doesn’t even try. And if Notes still doesn’t support robust import/export, 17 years after it debuted as one of the original iPhone apps in 2007, we probably shouldn’t hold our breath for Journal.

Search, on the other hand, feels like something Apple must add to Journal. What’s the point of keeping a journal if you can’t search for previous entries? I’d like to see Apple add tagging too — but proper tags, like the ones you can use in the Finder, not gross hashtags like they shoehorned into Apple Notes a few years ago. (I’d love to see Apple reverse course with Apple Notes itself, and change those gross hashtags to proper tags.)

Conceptually I think of Journal as a personal, private social media timeline. Many of my entries are just a sentence or two. I don’t think of entries as days, but rather simply as posts or items. Threads has shown how proper tagging can work with a social media timeline.

 ★ 

Ryan Christoffel, writing for 9to5Mac:

However, after seeing what a new third-party autobiography app is
doing with AI, I’m convinced Apple could have a blow away moment
if it showed off an AI-supercharged Journal app.

The Journal app is a curious offering from Apple. It was first
introduced at last year’s WWDC as an iOS 17 feature, but didn’t
end up shipping to users until the end of the year in iOS 17.2. In
an era where Apple is pushing cross-platform solutions like
SwiftUI and Mac Catalyst, Journal debuted as an iPhone exclusive.
As a result, you couldn’t (and still can’t) create or even view
Journal entries on your iPad or Mac.

If you have a spare iPhone and sign into iCloud, you can see that Journal does in fact sync everything via iCloud with end-to-end encryption. There just aren’t — yet? — versions of Journal for iPad or Mac to sync to. I actually like the focused, super-simple nature of Journal a lot. But it’s damn curious to me that it’s still iPhone-only.

2024 is the Year of AI, so if there is any Journal-related news at WWDC next month, I’m sure some of that news will be about improving the AI-backed suggestions. But Journal is missing some fundamentals that strike me as far more essential:

iPad and Mac apps.
Search.
Import and export.

I worry that import and export aren’t priorities for Apple. Apple Notes can import RTF and plain text files, but its only option for exporting is, bizarrely, PDF — which is a file format Notes can’t import. A good system for import/export would allow for full fidelity round-tripping. You should be able to export to a file or archive format that Notes can also import, without losing any formatting, metadata, or image attachments. Notes doesn’t even try. And if Notes still doesn’t support robust import/export, 17 years after it debuted as one of the original iPhone apps in 2007, we probably shouldn’t hold our breath for Journal.

Search, on the other hand, feels like something Apple must add to Journal. What’s the point of keeping a journal if you can’t search for previous entries? I’d like to see Apple add tagging too — but proper tags, like the ones you can use in the Finder, not gross hashtags like they shoehorned into Apple Notes a few years ago. (I’d love to see Apple reverse course with Apple Notes itself, and change those gross hashtags to proper tags.)

Conceptually I think of Journal as a personal, private social media timeline. Many of my entries are just a sentence or two. I don’t think of entries as days, but rather simply as posts or items. Threads has shown how proper tagging can work with a social media timeline.

Read More 

Jason Kint, on X:

As I’ve said in the past, nothing makes a statement on important
news close to the newspaper front page. Across America, almost
every editor went with the simple fact, “Guilty.”

Quite the collection of front pages.

Trump and his lickspittles can and will argue that the trial was unjust. The state of New York was against him. The city was against him. The judge was against him. But it wasn’t the state, city, or judge who convicted him. It was a jury of 12 ordinary citizens, chosen jointly by prosecutors and Trump’s own lawyers. That’s the beauty and power of our criminal justice system.

 ★ 

Jason Kint, on X:

As I’ve said in the past, nothing makes a statement on important
news close to the newspaper front page. Across America, almost
every editor went with the simple fact, “Guilty.”

Quite the collection of front pages.

Trump and his lickspittles can and will argue that the trial was unjust. The state of New York was against him. The city was against him. The judge was against him. But it wasn’t the state, city, or judge who convicted him. It was a jury of 12 ordinary citizens, chosen jointly by prosecutors and Trump’s own lawyers. That’s the beauty and power of our criminal justice system.

Read More 

Adam Engst, writing at TidBITS:

Apple seems allergic to saying that an iPhone won’t charge with
MagSafe during Continuity Camera. However, it may not charge over
USB either. Several users in a Reddit conversation
reported that their iPhones lost charge during Continuity Camera
sessions, even while plugged in.

I suspect that Continuity Camera taxes the processor sufficiently
that the iPhone heats up. (It’s always warm when I take it off the
mount after a meeting.) Since MagSafe charging also causes the
iPhone to get warm — warmer than USB-based charging — Apple’s
battery optimization system may be putting charging on hold to
protect the battery from thermal overload. Which is good, if
unexpected in the moment.

 ★ 

Adam Engst, writing at TidBITS:

Apple seems allergic to saying that an iPhone won’t charge with
MagSafe during Continuity Camera. However, it may not charge over
USB either. Several users in a Reddit conversation
reported that their iPhones lost charge during Continuity Camera
sessions, even while plugged in.

I suspect that Continuity Camera taxes the processor sufficiently
that the iPhone heats up. (It’s always warm when I take it off the
mount after a meeting.) Since MagSafe charging also causes the
iPhone to get warm — warmer than USB-based charging — Apple’s
battery optimization system may be putting charging on hold to
protect the battery from thermal overload. Which is good, if
unexpected in the moment.

Read More 

Wild story from Josh Whiton, who bought a cheap pair of wired Lightning-connector headphones in Chile, but couldn’t get them to work unless he enabled Bluetooth on his iPhone:

A scourge of cheap “lightning” headphones and lightning
accessories is flooding certain markets, unleashed by unscrupulous
Chinese manufacturers who have discovered an unholy recipe:

True Apple lightning devices are more expensive to make. So
instead of conforming to the Apple standard, these companies have
made headphones that receive audio via bluetooth — avoiding the
Apple specification — while powering the bluetooth chip via a
wired cable, thereby avoiding any need for a battery.

They have even made lightning adapters using the same recipe:
plug-in power a fake lightning dongle that uses bluetooth to
transmit the audio signal literally 1.5 inches from the phone to
the other end of the adapter.

Commenters on the thread on X are blaming the supposedly high licensing fees Apple charges for Lightning peripherals, but I don’t think that’s it exactly. I wrote about this back in 2021 — there’s a baseline assumption that Apple kept the iPhone on Lightning as long as it did because it made a lot of money selling (a) its own Lightning cables; and (b) from requiring certified third-party Lightning products to pay a stiff licensing fee.

But go search for “Lightning cables” on Amazon. You can buy Lightning USB cables for $1 apiece in bulk. Temu sells them for under $1. These cheap cables probably aren’t up to spec or officially licensed. But they are cheap. It doesn’t really matter what the actual licensing fees from Apple are, because these knockoff cable makers wouldn’t pay them anyway.

I think the problem these cheap manufacturers are solving isn’t that Lightning is expensive to license, but that it’s difficult to implement for audio. Actual Lightning headphones and headphone adapters have a tiny little digital-to-analog converter (DAC) inside the Lightning plug. It’s like a little computer. Doing it with Bluetooth and using the Lightning plug only for power is surely easier. It’s just lazy. But it’s kind of wild that the laziest, cheapest way to make unofficial “Lightning” headphones is with Bluetooth.

Now this makes me wonder though: do dirt-cheap USB-C headphones work the same way, or do they tend to include a DAC for actual wired playback?

 ★ 

Wild story from Josh Whiton, who bought a cheap pair of wired Lightning-connector headphones in Chile, but couldn’t get them to work unless he enabled Bluetooth on his iPhone:

A scourge of cheap “lightning” headphones and lightning
accessories is flooding certain markets, unleashed by unscrupulous
Chinese manufacturers who have discovered an unholy recipe:

True Apple lightning devices are more expensive to make. So
instead of conforming to the Apple standard, these companies have
made headphones that receive audio via bluetooth — avoiding the
Apple specification — while powering the bluetooth chip via a
wired cable, thereby avoiding any need for a battery.

They have even made lightning adapters using the same recipe:
plug-in power a fake lightning dongle that uses bluetooth to
transmit the audio signal literally 1.5 inches from the phone to
the other end of the adapter.

Commenters on the thread on X are blaming the supposedly high licensing fees Apple charges for Lightning peripherals, but I don’t think that’s it exactly. I wrote about this back in 2021 — there’s a baseline assumption that Apple kept the iPhone on Lightning as long as it did because it made a lot of money selling (a) its own Lightning cables; and (b) from requiring certified third-party Lightning products to pay a stiff licensing fee.

But go search for “Lightning cables” on Amazon. You can buy Lightning USB cables for $1 apiece in bulk. Temu sells them for under $1. These cheap cables probably aren’t up to spec or officially licensed. But they are cheap. It doesn’t really matter what the actual licensing fees from Apple are, because these knockoff cable makers wouldn’t pay them anyway.

I think the problem these cheap manufacturers are solving isn’t that Lightning is expensive to license, but that it’s difficult to implement for audio. Actual Lightning headphones and headphone adapters have a tiny little digital-to-analog converter (DAC) inside the Lightning plug. It’s like a little computer. Doing it with Bluetooth and using the Lightning plug only for power is surely easier. It’s just lazy. But it’s kind of wild that the laziest, cheapest way to make unofficial “Lightning” headphones is with Bluetooth.

Now this makes me wonder though: do dirt-cheap USB-C headphones work the same way, or do they tend to include a DAC for actual wired playback?

Read More 

New from Lux, makers of Halide:

Today we’re excited to launch Kino, a powerful filmmaking
app for beginners and experts alike. As say they say in
screenwriting, “Show, Don’t tell,” so let’s walk through a few of
the tent-pole features in our huge 1.0 release. […]

Last fall, everything changed when Apple introduced “Log” video
support on the iPhone 15 Pro. When recording in this format,
your iPhone saves a version of your video with most of the
original information, and before any creative decisions have
been applied. Using that cake analogy, it’s like the iPhone now
saves all the ingredients that make up a cake, but leaves you to
do the baking.

That’s great if you’re a skilled baker… er… colorist… but it’s
challenging for most of us. Out of the box, Apple Log footage
looks really flat. It’s not meant to look good. It’s meant to be
edited later.

But what if you didn’t have to edit? What if you could use all
that powerful extra color data and get a cinematic look with
one tap?

What a delightful prosumer balance Kino strikes. Preset color grades include some from Evan Schneider, Tyler Stalman, Stu Maschwitz, Sandwich Video, and Kevin Ong.

And I just adore some of the UI touches in the app, like drawing a big red border around the entire display when recording footage. It’s like those big red lights in TV studios.

Kino is going to cost $20 as a one-time purchase, but is available at launch for just $10. What a great deal.

See also: Lux cofounders Sebastiaan de With and Ben Sandofsky were my guests on The Talk Show back in October, and dropped some hints about what is now Kino.

 ★ 

New from Lux, makers of Halide:

Today we’re excited to launch Kino, a powerful filmmaking
app for beginners and experts alike. As say they say in
screenwriting, “Show, Don’t tell,” so let’s walk through a few of
the tent-pole features in our huge 1.0 release. […]

Last fall, everything changed when Apple introduced “Log” video
support on the iPhone 15 Pro. When recording in this format,
your iPhone saves a version of your video with most of the
original information, and before any creative decisions have
been applied. Using that cake analogy, it’s like the iPhone now
saves all the ingredients that make up a cake, but leaves you to
do the baking.

That’s great if you’re a skilled baker… er… colorist… but it’s
challenging for most of us. Out of the box, Apple Log footage
looks really flat. It’s not meant to look good. It’s meant to be
edited later.

But what if you didn’t have to edit? What if you could use all
that powerful extra color data and get a cinematic look with
one tap?

What a delightful prosumer balance Kino strikes. Preset color grades include some from Evan Schneider, Tyler Stalman, Stu Maschwitz, Sandwich Video, and Kevin Ong.

And I just adore some of the UI touches in the app, like drawing a big red border around the entire display when recording footage. It’s like those big red lights in TV studios.

Kino is going to cost $20 as a one-time purchase, but is available at launch for just $10. What a great deal.

See also: Lux cofounders Sebastiaan de With and Ben Sandofsky were my guests on The Talk Show back in October, and dropped some hints about what is now Kino.

Read More 

Lorne Michael, a decade ago, as SNL hit its 40th anniversary, and the widespread believe that the show was better “back in the day”:

“Generally when people talk about the best cast I think, ‘Well,
that’s when they were in high school,’” said Michaels. “Because in
high school you have the least amount of power you’re ever gonna
have. … Staying up with friends later on a Saturday is great,
and people attach to a cast.”

Jibes with yesterday’s post on “America’s best decade”.

 ★ 

Lorne Michael, a decade ago, as SNL hit its 40th anniversary, and the widespread believe that the show was better “back in the day”:

“Generally when people talk about the best cast I think, ‘Well,
that’s when they were in high school,’” said Michaels. “Because in
high school you have the least amount of power you’re ever gonna
have. … Staying up with friends later on a Saturday is great,
and people attach to a cast.”

Jibes with yesterday’s post on “America’s best decade”.

Read More