April 25, 2020
Tidbits for 2020 Week 16
About a month worth’s of links:
- Tip is a programmable tooltip that can be used with any Mac OS app github.com
- Tidi helps organize your Download (or other folders) with reminders and an easy interface. tidi.app
- Service Station is a macOS app for customizing your right-click menu in Finder. servicestation.menu
- Salmon is a macOS search tool specifically for files and folders. salmon-app.com
- Turn a Wyze Cam v2 (and Pan) into a Webcam.
- ViDL • Mac app to download videos from YouTube and hundreds of others websites. GUI wrapper around
youtube-dl.
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April 25, 2020
Roland Moore-Colyer on tomsguide.com:
Given the cult-like following Apple has, if it can make a 12-inch MacBook that sits somewhere between say $600 and $900, and retains a premium design, then it’ll almost certainly sell like crazy. This is another incentive for macOS app developers to get on board as they’d have a strong guarantee that efforts to rework their apps would pay dividends, both figuratively and literally.
Not sure destroy is the right word. But high-end Chromebooks and mid-range Windows laptops would suffer, and I would love the clarity of recommending a MacBook on the $800 range.
However, the question would be how Apple would differentiate with iPad. Historically Apple has no problem cannibalizing themselves, but always to push a newer technology. To do it as way to offer options will be a new approach. One that I don’t think will happen under Tim Cook.
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April 6, 2020
Chuq Von Rospach on his blog chuqui.com:
And that’s where the sad reality comes in. A Blog is no longer a viable place to create content and expect to attract traffic to it.
Lots to chew on here.
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March 30, 2020
Michael Potuck on 9to5mac.com:
The update makes it more seamless to share content directly with your contacts in WhatsApp from the web, apps, and everywhere else you can pull up the Share Sheet in iOS.
Thought this wasn’t a public feature. Will make link sharing much more useful.
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March 27, 2020
Doc Searls on blogs.harvard.edu:
If you were in a browser instead of an app, an extension such as Privacy Badger could tell you there are trackers sniffing your ass. And, if your browser is one that cares about privacy, such as Brave, Firefox or Safari, there’s a good chance it would be blocking trackers as well. But in the Zoom app, you can’t tell if or how your personal data is being harvested.
After the last year’s Mac hidden web server case, we officially discourage Zoom’s use at work. Currently I use Zoom Redirector to force the web client.
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March 26, 2020
nin.com:
GHOSTS V: Together is for when things seem like it might all be okay, and GHOSTS VI: Locusts… Well, you’ll figure it out.
Soundtrack for these strange times.
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March 23, 2020
Tidbits for 2020 Week 12
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March 16, 2020
Tidbits for 2020 Week 11
- Apple to close US retail stores and all others outside China until March 27th theverge.com
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March 3, 2020
Tom Maxwell on inputmag.com:
There’s a new investor note out today from Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo which says that Apple is planning to revise the 13-inch MacBook Pro later this year. The laptop would be bumped up to a 14.1-inch display with mini-LED technology and also see Apple replace the much-derided butterfly keyboard with a scissor switch Magic Keyboard.
Been holding on to my work 2015 MBP for this one.
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March 2, 2020
Tidbits for 2020 Week 9
- Tot • new minimal text editor app from Iconfactory. tot.rocks
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February 24, 2020
Riccardo Mori on morrick.me:
What we’ll see in Mac OS 10.16 is probably going to be the proverbial moment of truth.
I so hope this is the case. Catalina has been an indifferent release for me — but mainly because I took extra steps last year to quit geeky shortcuts I was using. Which is bad news if you aren’t getting anything in return for the “sacrifices”.
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February 24, 2020
Laurens Cerulus on politico.eu:
The use of Signal was mainly recommended for communications between staff and people outside the institution. The move to use the application shows that the Commission is working on improving its security policies.
I’m curious of what does the EU use for chats internally. I see an overlap on this going forward: if Signal is more secure than Slack/Teams/whatever… doesn’t internal communications now become the weakest link?
Internal systems do have the additional layer of controlling those that have accounts, but I struggle with my team to keep communications on official channels — I’m sure it’s a common case.
What I’d love would be a federated system akin to Mastodon, where we could run an instance of Signal and control users with accounts on it.
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February 17, 2020
Tidbits for 2020 Week 7
- Google Fi SIM cards are now available on Amazon inputmag.com
- Clear Linux is Faster than Ubuntu and Federa even cheap laptops. phoronix.com
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February 13, 2020
John Siracusa on hypercritical.co:
SwitchGlass adds a dedicated application switcher to your Mac in the form of a floating window that shows an icon for each running app.
I purchased his previous mini-app (Front and Center) as a way to support him — but this one I do see using. Why?:
- Alphabetical sorted Dock on the side of the screen,
- Shift-click to alternate between Active or Show All Windows.
And knowing John’s OCD, he sweated all the speed and design details.
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February 7, 2020
Jason Fried on hey.com:
With HEY, we’ve done just that. It’s a redo, a rethink, a simplified, potent reintroduction of email. A fresh start, the way it should be. For web, iOS, and Android.
Color me excited.
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February 3, 2020
Tidbits for 2020 Week 5
- Apptivate global hotkeys for your files and apps. Oldie but goodie — just reinstalled this after years.
- Fantastical is teasing the features of it next big upgrade.
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January 27, 2020
Tidbits for 2020 Week 4
- My WiFi Sign → quickly create a printable sign with your WiFi credentials. Very useful.
- Audius streaming service and iOS app is out. audius.co
- MarkTwo → web-based Markdown editor that stores files in Google Drive.
- Tomato 2 → free Mac pomodoro timer written in swiftUI.
- Clew → Cloud search on Mac for Google Drive, GitHub, Figma and Dropbox.
- The new Chromium Microsoft Edge is officially available for Mac and Windows blogs.windows.com
- Winston → a free typewriter simulator for macOS.
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January 26, 2020
Mike Rockwell, on initialcharge.net:
I use Things and have it setup to only show badges for items with a deadline. And I only add deadlines to a few tasks each week.
Great tip, just switched to this setting.
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January 17, 2020
On hindenburgresearch.com:
We think Opera collapses on its own worsening financials, with that timeline accelerating significantly if Google bans its lending apps or if its Chairman/CEO continues to draw cash out of the business through questionable related-party deals.
They basically pivoted into a very shady mobile lending business. So sad to read.
Although, on the investor.opera.com you are greeted with this:
The Company is aware of and has carefully reviewed the report published by the short seller on January 16, 2020. The Company believes that the report contains numerous errors, unsubstantiated statements, and misleading conclusions and interpretations regarding the business of and events relating to the Company.
Oh, drama.
Update: Arjan from Opera writes:
Sounds like there’s something fishy on the reporting. Shouldn’t have posted without reading more.
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January 15, 2020
Sam Henri Gold presents applearchive.org:
Dedicated to the unsung studio designers, copywriters, producers, ADs, CDs, and everyone else who creates wonderful things. 
This is amazing. Already blew past by bedtime hour browsing through the 2000’s.
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January 15, 2020
Sian Cain, on theguardian.com:
In a letter filed this week in federal court in New York, Audible’s attorneys, writing on behalf of both sides, announced that the parties had resolved their disputes and expected to submit the settlement documents by 21 January. No other details were provided.
Doesn’t sound like the feature is coming anytime soon.
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January 13, 2020
Tidbits for 2020 Week 2
- Firefox Lockwise — password manager — take your passwords everywhere mozilla.org
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January 8, 2020
Great message by Andrew Duckworth:
However you do it. It’s vital to share. And share what you’re working on before you “solve it”.
The earlier you share an issue or idea the more room you have to ask the right questions and get answers you can handle.
This is the sort of quote that lies at the intersection of productivity and creativity. I’m keeping this one around.
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January 8, 2020
Very thought provoking essay by paulgraham.com:
What I didn’t notice, because they tend to be much quieter, were all the great moments parents had with kids. People don’t talk about these much — the magic is hard to put into words, and all other parents know about them anyway
With a a few hard punches:
I hate to say this, because being ambitious has always been a part of my identity, but having kids may make one less ambitious.
And a closing slap in in the face:
[…] The fact is, most of the freedom I had before kids, I never used. I paid for it in loneliness, but I never used it.
This one inspired me to revisit a few drafts and put something together.
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January 8, 2020
★★★★★
Foundryside (Founders, #1) by Robert Jackson Bennett
Enjoyed this book from the first page. The world it creates incorporates magic incantations with coding, and the results works perfectly for me. The characters are good, and the story is very well timed. It’s the beginning of a series, and I’ll be back without a doubt.
January 4, 2020
Catalin Cimpanu on zdnet.com:
Song said the exposed database — an Elasticsearch system — was not a production system; however, the server was storing valid user data.
Elasticsearch is a really powerful tool, but it loves data. The more the merrier. If you designed a safe(ish) production environment and change management process for it — then things should be ok. But dev environments usually have more relaxed rules - which is ok, they also have less less data to work with - which is a pain to test, which usually leads to “lets just copy prod data for a test” - which becomes the weakest link in your security chain without you realizing it.
Song confirmed that the leaky server exposed details such as the email addresses customers used to create Wyze accounts, nicknames users assigned to their Wyze security cameras, WiFi network SSID identifiers, and, for 24,000 users, Alexa tokens to connect Wyze devices to Alexa devices.
As a big Wyze user: dammit.
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December 16, 2019
Tidbits for 2019 Week 50
- Photo Editor : Pixlr Editor - 2020 version pixlr.com
- I’d buy this Apple TV Remote in second if available internationally. Update: it is just $20! someone in Zürich please buy me this.
- Craigslist Launches Mobile Apps. This AppStore thing might take off. 9to5mac.com
- Plex launches ad-supported streaming service in over 200 countries. techcrunch.com
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December 2, 2019
Tidbits for 2019 Week 48
- Dual-screen Android/Linux Cosmo Communicator is out. I love this modern Psion Series 5 exists, just can’t justify one. zdnet.com
- Add CarPlay to Any Car With an Android Tablet and Adapter redmondpie.com. This is very hacky, but still intriguing.
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November 28, 2019
Denise Grady on nytimes.com:
A lifelong swimmer leapt into deep water near his lakeside home, and was horrified to find himself completely unable to swim. Had his wife not rescued him, he might have drowned.He had recently received an electronic brain implant to control tremors and other symptoms of Parkinson’s disease, and somehow the signals from the device had knocked out his ability to coordinate his arms and legs for swimming.
What the heck? Just one initial study, but interesting to see where the research leads.
November 27, 2019
Enrico Campidoglio on his blog megakemp.com:
[…] git pull isn’t actually a core command per se, but rather a combination of two other commands: git fetch and git merge; the former downloads any missing commits from a remote repository, while the latter merges them into your current branch.
Very educational post, and great recommendation. I’ve been bouncing off the article here in the office, and even if you don’t go ahead with his reco, the discussions started have been useful.
November 25, 2019
Tidbits for 2019 Week 47
- Looom iPad + Apple Pencil artsy looping animation app. Keeping an eye for when it’s out.
- Legra, render your image using Lego like bricks.
- The 50 best nonfiction books of past 25 years. One down, many to go. slate.com
- Open source illustrations kit, free for commercial and personal use. Good to keep around. illlustrations.co
- Maxtand portable sit-to-stand desk. Very temped to back this. kickstarter.com
- Spark iOS updated with new design and more customizable UI. Will give it another try.
w46Done
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November 20, 2019
★★★★★
The Wizard and the Prophet: Two Remarkable Scientists and Their Dueling Visions to Shape Tomorrow’s World by Charles C. Mann
Some books are hard to put down, this one was hard to abandon. It took me most of 2019 to read it, and although it’s long (~600 pages), the slowness was mostly because some of the ideas had to be digested.
The Wizard and the Prophet was a strange book for me. It’s the typical show-off book to causally mention you’re reading, but I struggled with it silently. It’s surprisingly, or even purposely, not an opinionated book. Even though it deals with many of topics I’d argue loudly with my uncle. It’s a extremely factual book, with the only preaching it hints at being: to always look for some unseen impact in all the simplifications that are required to arrive at these facts.
Above all it’s a calming book. It has a soft cadence that would make me read, stop, think, and picture many of the ideas. Lastly at least for me, it’s a humbling book. Many concepts that I attributed to recent fads, or corporate marketing are shown to have origins decades, and even centuries, in the past. It shows people that died not being rich, even though their work has improved my life even more than a smartphone or an app even could.
I can’t recommended it enough. I even bought a copy for my uncle — not to argue, but because I’m curious if given the facts, we can have a more intelligent argument.
November 18, 2019
Ryan Hanson on medium.com:
With Catalina, Apple made some incremental updates to macOS’s built in window management, including the addition of default menu items for tiling windows left and right in the “Window” menu for an application. Interestingly enough, we can actually configure keyboard shortcuts for these menu items directly within macOS.
It didn’t even occur to me to configure with the default keyboard shortcuts functionality. Giving it a try this week in with a slight modification:
WM Shortcuts
This way I can have both the full Window style and also the simpler move to side of same screen mode.
November 18, 2019
Tidbits for 2019 Week 46
- Drafts Mac Beta with support for actions is out. This post being generated via my Dropbox Action.
- New MacBook Pro 16 is imminent according to Mark Gurman on twitter.com
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November 14, 2019
Dave Teare, founder on blog.1password.com:
Accel will be investing USD$200 million for a minority stake in 1Password. Along with the investment — their largest initial investment in their 35-year history — Accel brings the experience and expertise we need to grow further and faster.
Hmmm… color me worried. While it’s not a marketing filled PR post, it’s a bit light on details. The one thing that jumped at me was:
Security is a process, not a product. 1Password already has the most modern security design, and Accel will help us take our processes, protections, and research to the next level.
Ok, I buy this. Just like anti-virus apps evolved from static definitions to behavior analysis, I can totally see how the next step in the _password maintaining _toolset is something that requires a lot of investment.
I’ve been a 1Password user for 11 years: it’s the first app I install on any new devices (Mac or iOS) and my trusted app given it’s function.
I’m totally along for the ride, and trust their love for the product. But still, it worries me.
November 13, 2019
Rui Carmo on taoofmac.com:
This oddly shaped, unwieldy chunk of purple plastic (which is around 6cm to a side, if you’re wondering) has been on my office desk for nearly twenty years now, and despite it being fundamentally useless (it doesn’t even make for a good paperweight) I keep it as a daily reminder of how dogma and preconceived notions can turn well-meaning engineering into a massive iceberg of technical debt.
Great story from the dinosaur days of the web on telco infrastructure design and implementation.
November 13, 2019
Press Release on apple.com:
The new Magic Keyboard also features a physical Escape key and an inverted-“T” arrangement for the arrow keys, along with Touch Bar and Touch ID, for a keyboard that delivers the best typing experience ever on a Mac notebook.
Great, now I just have to wait for this keyboard to trickle down to the 13in or the MacBook Air. Maybe looking at an aligning of planets next year of new keyboard with ARM processor.
November 12, 2019
aclu.org:
In a major victory for privacy rights, a federal court in Boston today ruled that the government’s suspicionless searches of international travelers’ smartphones and laptops at airports and other U.S. ports of entry violate the Fourth Amendment.
This will go back and forth, but I hope this interpretation holds. It feels very un-American to have your devices searched at the airport.
November 12, 2019
Jason Fried on m.signalvnoise.com:
Basecamp Personal includes 3 projects, 20 users, and a gig of storage space. So kick off a couple projects, invite some friends, family, teammates, or volunteers.
At some point I organized everything on Backpack, the predecessor to Basecamp. Their tools are very opinionated on design and functionality — but if they work for you, they’re extremely well designed.
November 11, 2019
CJ Chilvers, on www.cjchilvers.com:
Every morning, set aside some time to start your day by writing in a stream-of-conscience way. No editing. No censoring. Just keep the pen moving (pen and paper tend to work better for this).
Did this for a while earlier in the year and it felt very cleansing(?) . This time around I’ll try to do some habit stacking ../../kb/Habit Systems for before I grab my iPhone.
November 11, 2019
Rosalie Chan, on businessinsider.com:
Candice Ciresi, GitLab’s director of risk and global compliance, has resigned after less than six months on the job, apparently saying that the $2.75 billion startup is “engaging in discriminatory and retaliatory behavior.”
Mostly a post to self, but this has to be a very uncomfortable situation with Gitlab. Almost all compliance issues that the enforcing bodies investigate result from disgruntled employees — when the whistleblower is the actual compliance director, I can’t imagine the headache.
November 11, 2019
Tidbits for 2019 Week 45
- Airalo eSim data packs store for over 100+ countries. I’ve dreamed of this for years — hopefully I’ll need it again someday.
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5typos.net
Thought this wasn’t a public feature. Will make link sharing much more useful.