Notebooks and Laptops

Apple’s change in naming from Notebook to Laptop across products, documentation and software is bittersweet. It makes sense, most people call them Laptops, and Notebooks usually require an explanation.

So the most noteworthy aspect of this change is… how not noteworthy it is. But this is the bitter part. Ten years ago, this change would have prompted a never ending stream of expectation from everyone. Well, at least from me.

They’re changing the name to Laptops because Notebooks are going to be a new category.

I fell for this before with the renaming of iBooks ebooks reading app to Books. Which ended up being, just a name change. And it seems this time no one has falling for it. Not even myself.

What does this say to the state of Apple product line? Is it just this complete? Or have we lost the capacity to dream up unreasonable-but-exciting product categories? Probably a little of both.

GitHub Projects on GitHub Mobile Public Beta

From github.blog:

Stay connected and up to date on your work with GitHub Projects on GitHub Mobile, now in public beta. This marks the first milestone to bring GitHub Projects to your hands, so that you can track issues and projects from anywhere at any time. We would love for you to try it out on iOS TestFlight or Google Play (Beta) and give us your early feedback.

Github Issues and Projects keeps getting more features — which is great for us at work since all of our development is based on it. Sadly my most needed feature Ability to add a project to a project, it forever in the future column.

Micro.blog Day

Two toys in play today with Micro.blog:

• Mastodon integration: existed before, but finally enabled it. Will be going down this route instead of moving to another instance after 2022-10-07 mastodon.technology Instance Will Shutdown in a few weeks.
• Publish to Micro.blog from Obsidian: with Micro.publish plugin. Not sure how this fits in my workflow — but it’s fun to have.

An obvious question comes to mind: why are these daily post here on 5typos.net and not my micro.blog ? I know the answer, but not the reason for it.

Still, the point of this experiment is not a coherent online presence, but to create the habit of writing and posting everyday. This is day 6.

Looking Forward to Apple October Announcements

Looking forward to either: Apple Fall Event invite, or press release just launching stuff. It did seem like a press release combo announcement fall this year:

• MacBook Pro’s with M2
• iPad Pros’ with M2
• macOS Ventura release

A redesigned base iPad would justify an event. However, if the low-end iPad is getting the iPad Air/Pro design language, then that sounds more likely to happen next year to minimize iPad Air cannibalization.

Tidbits for 2022 Week 41

• Actions for Obsidian: Obsidian actions for Shortcuts on macOS and iOS.

• Ask Command: Mac app which runs terminal commands questions thru Open AI’s GPT-3 before suggesting a command.

• Tot Mini: Tot app now has an Apple watch version.

• Quick Launch: Yet another iOS lock screen launch app — but free and from a great developer.

• ‎Soro: Shortcuts for Sonos.

The Long Fix

I’ve been trying to reconnect a Wyze Cam V2 to my network for about a year. One day it stopped connecting and — it never worked again. I’ve tried everything from factory reset to setting up a temporary 2.4Ghz network. No dice.

The stages of fixing mindset has gone through anger, to acceptance, to a sort of curiosity now. Every few weeks when I’m (likely) procrastinating, I pick the damn thing off the shelf, and attempt to solve the puzzle with some additional twist.

Will it ever be fixed? with each passing day the likelihood seems smaller, but I just can’t give up on the $25 thing.

Two Days Until Monday

Ladies and gentlemen, the weekend… and I’m thinking about some tool changes for Monday:

• Revisit Bunch: specifically for setting up Shutdown, Projects Review and GitHub Sorting, context scenarios.
• Setup Personal Profile in Arc: this has been a rough edge vs. Brave. It was updated yesterday and I missed it.

Workflow based contexts take effort to create and maintain — and when explaining them, it’s hard to not have a giant OCD sign above your hear. However, the act of setting them up is clarifying.

Not Going Away

The Twitter sale news circus is making me pause more, not because I care about Twitter — really don’t anymore — but because of the announcement 2022-10-07 mastodon.technology Instance Will Shutdown instance is going away.

Mind you, this is exactly why Federated networks are great. The implication is just a few minutes of exporting, and a lot more minutes of finding another instance. But, the little voice at the back of my head which tells me:

While the tech is great, it won’t catch on because it can’t scale.

I played with Mastodon hosting earlier in the year, with the idea of replacing a Slack group — but that failed miserably. So then, if the tech doesn’t scale, and the 2022-04-15 Mastonaut Mastodon Mac Client is Now Open-Source Free… is it a case of Much Ado About Nothing?

Amazon WorkSpaces Introduces Ubuntu Desktops

Sébastien Stormacq, on aws.amazon.com:

Starting today, you can also provision Ubuntu desktops for your developers, engineers, or data scientists.

For this launch, we chose to use version 22.04 LTS (Jammy Jellyfish). Canonical has optimized the base image for cloud development use cases. We have preinstalled AWS CLI and SDK.

Initially no support from their macOS client, but this is good news.

WM within AWS are common recipe nowadays¹ when some data needs to be manipulated with something web tools can’t deal with. It’s “close” to the data, and destroy the VM afterwards. Reducing the trail of data and leak points.

mastodon.technology Instance Will Shutdown

Ash Furrow, on ashfurrow.com:

Dear mastodon.technology community,

I have sad news that I have decided to shut down the mastodon.technology instance. In accordance with the Mastodon Server Covenant, the server will be shut down no earlier than December 1, 2022.

He cites personal reasons and complexity in managing the instance. I really hope him the best, and will miss the instance.

Hello Daily World

Welcome to an experiment. This is a combination of multiple ideas:

• Write every day.
• Find time for writing.
• Something is better than nothing.
• Build systems not goals.

So, here’s the experiment: I’ll be writing a post throughout each weekday. At 12am the next day, whatever is here will be published. It would appear as a post, but won’t go out on the RSS feed.

Some days it might be coherent, on most it won’t. But since it’s only staying on my blog and not going out to RSS/social media, it stays between us — 🏼 hi gang! All 3 of you.

Hyperkey.app is Now Free

hyperkey.app:

Convert the caps lock key or any modifier keys to the hyper key, all four modifiers combined: ⌃⌥⌘⇧

Ryan Hanson on reddit:

[…] I’ve decided to make my single-purpose hyper key remapping app, Hyperkey, free! For everyone that purchased it in the past, thank you for your support! You can obtain a coupon code for my “pro” version, called Superkey, from within Hyperkey if you purchased it

On Superkey:

Superkey has all of Hyperkey, and its main feature is called Seek, where you can type in a search bar and it will use OCR to scan the screen for matches. You can select a match and use the keyboard to click (or right click, double click, middle click, etc). Personally, I remap caps lock to Seek and make it so it clicks when I release caps lock. This makes using Seek feel quick like executing a keyboard shortcut.

There’s a lot of power there, but I’m still wrapping my mind around it.

I wrote about Hyperkey before, and it changed how I used my Mac. I started using Karabiner last year because of a weird bug with my Bluetooth keyboard. But the simplicity of Hyperkey is unmatched. Highly recommended, specially now that it’s free.

Amazon Kindle Scribe

press.aboutamazon.com:

Kindle Scribe features the world’s first 10.2-inch, 300 pixels per inch (ppi), Paperwhite display, and an included pen that never needs charging. The premium, front-lit, and glare-free display feels like reading and writing on paper, with crisp text and ample space for larger fonts, images, charts, and documents. Designed for reading and notetaking in millions of books, adding notes to documents, journaling, and more, Kindle Scribe is available for preorder today from just $339 and will ship later this year.

Will like to take some fake credit by calling this before the event and the leaks.

Other than the screen, hardware-wise it doesn’t seem too impressive. It’s thicker than the RM2, and a bit heavier. The design is similar to the Kindle Oasis, which is functional, but not particularly pretty.

Two things it has going for it are: screen and Kindle books.

The screen is hi-dpi and backlit. Both things that leave the RM2 behind. However, im curious on the latency. The promotion videos seem to show some lag, but that could be my imagination.

The Kindle ecosystem is a very nice plus. At least it makes it easier to justify the device for many.

Looking forward to the reviews.

Changes to reMarkable Connect

From remarkable.com:

Our new approach is simple: Everything that happens on the paper tablet, comes with the paper tablet. Integrating with Google Drive, Dropbox, and OneDrive, converting handwritten notes into text, sending your notes by email, and presenting your ideas on the big screen — it’s all included when you buy a reMarkable.
[…]
Connect, as the name suggests, gives you full access to cloud functionality beyond the paper tablet.

Most previously paid Connect features are now free, and new paid plan is $2.99/mo. (down from $7.99/mo.). The Connect plan boasts:

[…] notes will always be stored safely in the reMarkable cloud and instantly accessible from other smart devices using reMarkable’s desktop and mobile apps. Subscribers will also receive exclusive offers in the reMarkable webshop and additional peace of mind with a reMarkable 2 Protection Plan.

I had voted with my wallet and cancelled with Connect account after just a couple of months. With this change I resubscribed on Sunday. Excited to see where this goes. I do hope this is part of the coherent plan and not a desperate attempt to grow their services cashflow.

Whisper Speech Recognition from OpenAI

From openai.com:

We’ve trained and are open-sourcing a neural net called Whisper that approaches human level robustness and accuracy on English speech recognition.
[…]
Whisper is an automatic speech recognition (ASR) system trained on 680,000 hours of multilingual and multitask supervised data collected from the web.

Looks amazing. The fact that it has multilingual data makes it specially interesting — at least for those of us that speak with an accent.

Applications for automatic speech recognition (ASR) go way beyond than dictation. But I think the UX of Voice/Keyboard/Pen input still lacks. There’s no “mouse pointer” equivalent — yet?.

Framework Laptop Chromebook Edition

frame.work:

The Chromebook Edition is available for pre-order in the US and Canada today starting at $999 USD, with first shipments starting in early December.
[…]
The Framework Laptop Chromebook Edition is built with the Titan C security chip and receives automatic updates for up to eight years, all to keep your Chromebook fast and secure.

Fun. The pricing is crazy when you compare it with the M1 MacBook Air — but if you’re into Chrome OS, seems like the best/coolest option after Google giving up on the Pixelbook.

I’ve always had a soft-spot for Chrome OS. Sadly, it has never reached its full potential imho.

Spotify Launches Audiobooks in the US

Nir Zicherman on medium.com:

Today (September 20, 2022), we at Spotify are launching audiobooks. For the first time ever, any Spotify user in the United States can discover their next great read in our catalog of 300,000+ books, buy it, and listen to it across any Spotify-enabled device.

Not crazy about yet-another-not-music-content in Spotify — my music app. But at least they’re not throwing it in our face like Podcasts. Price wise, the appears competitive vs Audible, but I still found books cheaper (and DRM free) in Downpour.

Still, Audiobook competition against Amazon/Audible is good news for everyone.

Dynamic Island and iPhone 15

Ross Young on twitter.com:

Yes, Dynamic Island expected on standard models on the 15. Still not expecting 120Hz/LTPO on standard models as supply chain can’t support it.

If true, great news. I would have thought it would remain an iPhone Pro feature for a while.

Tidbits for 2022 Week 38

• Speedy: link to contacts from Lock Screen with WhatsApp support.

• Link HUB: launch links on iPhone, iPad and Mac.

• HabitBoard: simple and flexible habit tracker for iOS.

• LockFlow: free app to run shortcuts in the Lock Screen and Home Screen

• Mango Baby: Newborn Tracker with Siri Shortcuts.

• Lock Launcher: Yet another Lock Screen Widgets launcher.

• LineupSupply: iOS app to create playlists from music festival posters.

DeDRM Tools for Calibre 6

github.com/noDRM/DeDRM_tools:

This is a fork of Apprentice Harper’s version of the DeDRM tools. Apprentice Harper said that the original version of the plugin is no longer maintained, so I’ve taken over, merged a bunch of open PRs, and added a ton more features and bugfixes.

If you update to Calibre 6.x — which has M1 support - the old DeDRM don’t work anymore. If you buy books from Amazon, but prefer to save them as ePubs to read in Apple Books, this is the way.

5 Word Review of Apple September 2022 Event

• Apple Watch SE: Almost, but no always-on screen.
• Apple Watch 8: Will upgrade to S7 then.
• Apple Watch Ultra: Not as expensive as expected.
• AirPod Pro: Noise cancelling with lanyard loop.
• iPhone 14: Better camera, but too big.
• iPhone 14 Plus: Killed the mini for this?
• iPhone 14 Pro: The Pro is geek again.

Adobe to Acquire Figma

news.adobe.com:

Today, Adobe (Nasdaq:ADBE) announced it has entered into a definitive merger agreement to acquire Figma, a leading web-first collaborative design platform, for approximately $20 billion in cash and stock. The combination of Adobe and Figma will usher in a new era of collaborative creativity.

Makes sense. The multiple of Figma’s revenue says something about how serious Adobe saw the threat. It will likely set a new level of expectations for future acquisitions, but that’s a problem for another day.

On an unrelated note, I couldn’t find Virtual Ubiquity’s purchase on Adobe’s news website — because it only goes back to 2009. Seems I’m old now.

Tidbits for 2022 Week 35

• Teapodo: Lightweight Audio Editor for Mac and Windows.

• Until App: Track upcoming events with Widgets on iOS and WatchOS.

• Quick Capture: minimal not taking iOS app with keyboard, dictate and camera inputs.

• Cheqmark: online checklist maker that exports to PDF.

• Montaigne: Build a website, blog, or portfolio using Apple Notes. Keeping an eye on this one.

• Duolingo Math app: not out yet, but I signed up to the waitlist.

• Nomad Pen: very nice looking titinium pen.

• Reorder It!: for reordening a contact numbers in iOS.

• Airshow: Feedbin’s iOS Podcast client now has CarPlay.

Using Linkify Obsidian Plugin to Reference Github Issues

Today I did a quick setting to easily link my Obsidian notes to github issues in multiple repos. I’m using the linkify plugin:

This plugin converts text into links based on regular expressions. The regular expressions and link destinations are configurable on the Options page for the plugin.

Setup is ver easy, just added the following regex:

gi:([-_a-zA-Z0-9]+)#(\d+)

And the URL: https://github.com/YourOrg/$1/issues/$2

A now, when I write the following nomenclature: gi:RepoName#issueNumber , i.e. gi:sre#123 will open as: https://github.com/yourORG/sre/issues/123

Very usefull for the daily note, or weekly note when issue numbers are mentioned and want to follow-up later.

Complementary Compromise Habits

For me, it’s a struggle to create a habit. Over the past year I’ve focussed on the design and logging aspect, but no real improvement. Or at least no new strong habits.

A new experiment is showing promise: Complementary Compromise Habits, or ComCom Habits. In reality, this is not new. My most successful acquired habit in adulthood as been daily journaling. And the way I accidentally achieved it was by continuously failing to meditate.

Every night when I had to choose to either goi the living room to meditate or just go to bed and write something… and for whatever reason, journaling won. Now, I’m not able to fall asleep without writing something. A real habit.

While I’m still remixing my current batch of habits, but here’s my current working version:

Each set are both a complementary and a compromise habit between each other — ComCom’s. Which also provides a bigger/easier objective, without increasing the habit list. Which usually leads to dissapointment when you miss too many in a day.

Let’s see if I report back on the compliance of these in a few months. Or, more likely, if a year later I come back with another scheme as disguised excuse for not achieving the previous few attempts.

Stage Manager Origin Story

Cricket, on techreflect.net:

Although they look visually similar, the Stage Manager interface is definitely much more refined and compact. Part of that is because shrinkydink pre-dated retina displays, so there was only so much shrinking you could do before it just looked awful (or more awful). Without the green-light, it never got sufficient attention from the Human Interface team.

Post was deleted, here’s the internet archive version. It does make appreciate the feature more knowing it’s been around as a concept for a few years.

MacSparky Initial Thoughts on Stage Manager

David Sparks on macsparky.com:

In my initial testing, Stage Manager feels like the best window management system Apple has ever put on the iPad and perhaps the most accessible window management system Apple has ever proposed on the Mac. The trick is holding everything to that one screen.

I don’t really miss multitasking on the iPad — nor do I have one that can run Stage Manager. But on the Mac — I’m continuously on the lookup, and Stage Manager looks workable.

Tidbits for 2022 Week 26

• | InventoryWatch”>InventoryWatch: macOS app what monitors Apple Store inventory and notifies when model comes in-stock. This is going to be useful.

• Knotend: fast keyboard-first flowchart editor with collaboration.

• Like like: wandering through Twitter via likes. Fun.

• WorldWideWeb: lightweight, simple and free web server for Mac’s.

• Octave: learn and practice sheet music.

Speculations on the Rest of the M2 Cycle

Howard Oakley, on eclecticlight.co:

Later this year, we should expect M2 Mac minis and iMacs, most probably around October-November. It looks unlikely that the Pro and Max versions of the M2 will be available in production quantities this year, but might be released in 14 and 16-inch MacBook Pros as early as late Spring 2023. That leaves the high-end Studio with its M2 Ultra for July or September 2023 at the earliest, and possibly as late as November, ready for the M3 to be announced at WWDC in June 2024.

Best informed speculations you’ll likely find. I’m using it to manage my expectations.

Setting Up Camp on the Viewing Spot

Once you reach the hilltop, the waterfall, the panoramic cliff — You don’t set up camp exactly there. You retreat to the closest protected spot. Even on the most pristine beach, you’d likely take a few steps away from the shore — just in case.

The rush of the best view possible is amazing, but for our down-time we seek shelter. A few steps from “marvel x” is a perfectly acceptable compromise in any hotel description. Few complain that their room is not on the ancient ruins.

Even if the special location doesn’t hold any danger, a separation is a feature. The mundane parts of our routine can spoil the amazingness of the spot. We can’t snap to a mindfulness state in a second, but a few minutes of arrival time help us transition.

I think the same things applies to our daily lives, the connecting stuff between the high-points are required. Not only to reach the hilltops, but also to be able to appreciate it once I’m there.

Tools, Toys and Distractions

Sometimes you do something just to try a tool. Nothing wrong with this. It’s your craft, practicing it for the sake of practice is valid.

But once you get started down this path, there seems to be multiple destinations:

• Pushing the tool to explore all of its possibilities feels like art.
• Using the tool because it’s fun, seems like procrastination.
• Testing the tool to see how it improves your workflow

The truth probably lies in a combination of the above, but my conscience will always lean the productivity angle.

Which is never going to be one you remember when you look back. Those great stories on your deathbed are unlikely to celebrate an optimized process, versus a colossal chaos that ensued after you overdid something.

Still, better to be somewhere in the above matrix, that not even play.

Arc Browser Teased

Austin Carr, on bloomberg.com:

A grid of buttons pointing toward favorite destinations remains glued to the top of the panel. Each of these services operates more like a desktop app than a web page. Clicking the Gmail icon will take the user back to a single, original Gmail inbox, rather than reloading gmail.com in tab after tab. Hovering the mouse over a Google Calendar button will surface a tiny panel of upcoming appointments. Spotify comes with an embedded player to shuffle through songs. Any tabs opened throughout the day appear at the bottom of the panel and—this can take some getting used to—are automatically set to close and archive in 12 hours.

Article has the first clear screenshot of the Arc browser. I really like how it looks. Went back to using Vivaldi with side tabs as I eagerly wait for my invite.

Tidbits for 2022 Week 22

• Tweet Sweeper: delete old tweets with multiple options. I use TweetDelete, but this has a nicer interface and set of options.

• FinderFix: open every new window in the exact same position and size you want it to.

• Let’s Markdown!: collaborate on markdown files.

• Music MiniPlayer: replica of the classic iTunes MiniPlayer for Apple Music on macOS.

USV - Unicode Separated Values

Joel Parker Henderson, on github.com:

You want your data content to be able to contain commas, or tabs, or newlines. You want your data content to be able to use data groups, or database tables, or spreadsheet grids. You want your data format to be able to use data files, or database schemas, or spreadsheet folios. You want a consistent compatible standardard format, which CSV doesn’t typically provide.

Very interesting. .CSV is the most common standard file format which is-not-a-standard I deal with every day. Usually you find ways around the different quirks — but for large files, it would be nice to have a more consistent flat file.

Kindle’s will (kind of) support ePub

Andrew Cunningham on arstechnica.com:

Amazon’s Kindle Personal Documents Service will now accept ePub files sent to your device’s Send to Kindle email address, the same way it currently handles PDF files, Word documents, and other image and text files.

I use the Send EPUB to Kindle service. While this news is not as great as native ePub support, it’s something.

Paste Keyboard for iOS

From medium.com:

Paste Keyboard supercharges the default iOS keyboard to give you instant access to everything you’ve copied on any of your devices.

Still wish Pastebot came back to iOS — but this looks very useful

Tidbits for 2022 Week 21

• Screenie: macOS screenshot manager with OCR. Just saved me a bunch of time.

• PikaPods: interesting and cheap open source apps hosting — no mastodon though.

• Airplane for Mac: turns on/off Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and notifications.

• Runestone: Plain text editor for iPhone and iPad.

• Togethr: mastodon hosting with Pleroma frontend starting at$6.95/month.

• Motorist: vehicle maintenance app for iOS. A bit expensive.

Discussions With Your Boss

Three important types of discussions you can have:

1. Idea Improvement: they have an idea, but need some sparring to improve it before setting it loose.
2. Implementation: they already decided and now need you to sweat the details to get it going.
3. Venting: something is blocking above options, they just need someone to share the frustration.

The difficulty is that these 3 conversations can sound very similar, or start with one and jump to the other. You have to listen closely to identify which is the prevailing one — and you can’t ask directly, because it’s likely they don’t even know themselves.

Bike App Outliner Preview from Hog Bay Software

Jesse Grosjean on hogbaysoftware.com:

Bike is the new app I’ve been working on.

Bike is a tool for thought. It’s a fast and fluid outliner. Use Bike to record and organize your ideas.

HogBaySoftware created famous apps like TaskPaper and WriteRoom — both extremely influential to me. Sadly, since it’s a one-man-shop, he never created iOS version of either. But my current love affair with Obsidian is extremely influence by my use of both apps.

Bike looks very interesting, but again a Mac only app makes it a bit difficult to adopt on my current workflow.

Dropbox Backup Updated

From blog.dropbox.com:

Building on our popular backup functionality, Backup has been upgraded with new features our users have been asking for, including a new restoration flow, settings to manage your backups on your computer, and more. […] An easy-to-use alternative to other backup tools available in the market, Backup gives you the option of choosing a robust, standalone cloud backup solution from Dropbox, even if you don’t have a Dropbox account.

Interesting feature/product. The product page could use more details — backup limitations and such — having to go to the help pages for this info seems amateurish.

While I don’t have a paid Dropbox account anymore, my wife does. I’ll likely migrate Ana’s MacBook backup flow from Backblaze to this.

Unread Feed Reader Will Include Standalone Accounts

John Brayton, on goldenhillsoftware.com:

Feed Wrangler recently announced that it is shutting down on March 1, 2023. Standalone accounts will be available before Feed Wrangler shuts down. If you are using Feed Wrangler and are using it only as a backend for Unread, Unread’s standalone accounts will provide a suitable replacement. If you also sync to other RSS readers or if you also need a web interface, Unread supports Feedbin, Feedly, Inoreader, and NewsBlur.

Don’t see myself moving away from Reeder, but Unread is a great app with beautiful reading modes. Good alternative.

Feed Wrangler is Shutting Down

David Smith, on twitter.com:

After 9 years, I’ve decided it’s time to shut down Feed Wrangler. I’m stretched too thin with my other apps, it’s time to let it go.

I’ll turn off the servers next year on March 1, 2023.

My thanks for everyone who was a member. It was quite a ride and I learned a ton from it.

Remember signing up as soon as it came out, so I’ve been a daily user for 9 years. Sad that a reliable tool has to go away. I’d pay more $10 a year more for the same service managed by a cool dev like David. But maybe it isn’t sustainable.

Feedbin has some cool features, but luckily I have a year. I’ll probably switch to Reeder iCloud Feeds to try it out before looking at other options.