🆕📝 Microsoft hinges away from the Surface Studio
So long svelte Studio, you big, beautiful beast. 🖥️
I’m quite happy with how this auto-emojifier bit turned out in an update to my 7 Things shortcut! 😄
Apple is expected to debut the first version of its cellular modem next year in the iPhone SE 4, the iPhone 17 Air, and the base model iPad. The following year, it will debut a higher-end version of the chip with faster 5G connectivity for the iPhone 18 Pro.
As part of this transition, Apple is also investigating bringing cellular to the Mac as soon as 2026
That timeframe is less than ideal. I plan to buy a MacBook Air when it gets an M4 chip (early 2025?) but I so want cellular!
🆕📝 MacStories Unwind’s Best Music of 2024
🎵 I made a playlist and a Raindrop collection with all the featured albums!
Matt Birchler: ‘How Flight Simulator helped my flying anxiety (members post)'
But from the third person perspective, I was able to see that while landing, the plane is actually going very slow relative to its size. It’s not a perfect analogy, but if you’re an ant in a car, it might feel like it’s going impossibly fast and slowing at a remarkable rate, even if the car’s just casually slowing down for a stop sign on a residential road. In a plane, I’m the ant and I’m in an 80 ton machine — it feels impossibly intense to me, but at the plane’s scale, it’s not a huge deal.
I like the analogy. 👍
S2E9 of Shrinking (“Full Grown Dude Face”) is one of my favorite episodes yet. And that’s saying something for this Very Good Show. 🥲
Big day. After many years of sending typos to Gruber, I got one in return. 😅 (I hope he doesn’t mind my sharing this DM. Just found it very funny and surreal.)
Alright, with the Release Candidate of iOS 18.2 installed, I’m finally getting off the beta train. I can wait for the new features to get fleshed out before I give them a spin, and betas don’t always play well with my apps.
🆕📝 A few Apple features that I was super excited for, but have yet to ever try
What are yours?
In the Apple TV app, you can use casual language search terms to find exactly what you’re looking for, typing in genres, actors, and moods. Searches like “movies about natural disasters,” “movies with cats,” “movies with Zendaya,” and “exhilarating movies” all bring up relevant results.
The Apple Music app supports similar searches, and you can look for genres, moods, activity, decades, and more.
Cool! Now do it for playlists and radio stations.
🔗 This new smart thermostat from Meross works with Matter (Jennifer Pattison Tuohy / theverge.com)
The Meross Matter Smart Thermostat costs $99.99, works over Wi-Fi, and features a white glass panel with a touch screen, smart scheduling, and can track system usage through the Meross app.
Meross makes great smart home stuff. With Apple Home automations, you really don’t need learning smarts from the likes of more expensive options from Nest and Ecobee. This thing looks nice, covers the basics, and is only $70 at launch. I’d probably go with this if I didn’t already have an Ecobee!
David Pierce: ‘Twos is a handy to-do list app with exactly the right amount of AI’
AI turns Twos into not just my to-do list but the jumping-off point for all my tasks. Since the app works across platforms — it’s fundamentally a web app, but there are versions for Android and iOS, Windows and Mac, and more — it’s easy to just dump information into. […] You can store and organize things inside of Twos, but I find myself using it transiently, just for the small things in day-to-day life. I need to make bread: click the sparkles, bread recipes appear.
Intrigued! But on first launch, it’s a lot.
I’ve started keeping a list of things that I’d personally like to see improved at Micro.blog. It’s not to take a shot at @manton about issues. It’s a utility for me to keep track of things I want, and to revel in crossing items off when they get implemented — as they often do. I wish cause I care! 😘
🆕📝 Deck your Dock with holiday lights with Simon Støvring’s Festivitas app
I'm so happy that this app exists! 🎄
If you’re annoyed at my recent uptick of posts and replies, you have @jsonbecker (👋) to blame. He got me back onto keeping up with my timeline using RSS. I don’t miss things now, and replying is all too easy with @sod’s experimental feeds that include links to open posts on the web or in the app.
Jeff Bezos today on Donald Trump: “You’ve probably grown in the last eight years. He has, too.”
https://www.theverge.com/2024/12/4/24313549/bezos-trump-optimistic-dealbook-summit-doge
I loved @gruber@mastodon.social’s take:
Next up after Bezos at DealBook Summit was Charlie Brown, who professed optimism regarding his next attempt at kicking a football held by Lucy Van Pelt. What the fuck did they put in the water at this conference?
Do not take Trump's complaints and threats against the media as inconsequential. The consequences are happening before our eyes.
🆕📝 OpenAI’s 4o model cost me a whopping 62 cents last month
And I use it a lot! If you’re paying $20/month for ChatGPT Plus just to use the API, you’re vastly overpaying.
🔗 Threads takes an important baby step toward true fediverse integration (Wes Davis / theverge.com)
You can now follow fediverse accounts on Threads, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has announced.
While fediverse posts won’t show in feeds, Instagram head Adam Mosseri says their profile and posts do appear on Threads, and you have the option to get notifications when they publish. That’s something, at least. Mosseri posted a video of what the process looks like…
A baby step indeed, but one step closer to getting to ditch my Threads account and point people toward @jarrod@micro.blog. 🤞
My wife is leading the charge on tough contract negotiations for her ER team after receiving disrespectful (hostile?) offers. It seems they scheduled her meeting first as the youngest, newest member, but they’ll find she’s not to be trifled with. Send her some good vibes while she holds her ground!
🔗 Disney+ app debuts new ESPN tile, adds free Hulu and sports content (Ryan Christoffel / 9to5mac.com):
To get all of the content available inside the Disney+ app’s ESPN and Hulu tiles, you’ll need to subscribe to the three-service bundle.
However, Disney is offering a nice perk for standalone Disney+ subscribers too.
Line 10: Bundle
Line 20: Unbundle
Line 30: GOTO Line 10
(I don’t mind the integration, though.)
Alex Heath: ‘Xreal’s new glasses are a surprisingly good TV for your face’
The Xreal One uses a custom birdbath lens system to achieve what the company says is equivalent to a 1080p display with a 50-degree field of view. Practically, based on my experience watching Netflix’s Rebel Ridge from my plane seat (a very good movie), that translates to a fairly immersive viewing experience.
I think these kinds of dedicated, personal display glasses have some legs (well, arms, I s’pose) while the AR/VR wars wage on.
🔗 Guess What Apple Paid to “Buy” the Firefox Extension for iCloud Keychain (Erlend / havn.blog):
“But now Apple has managed to scrape together the cash to build one themselves??"
Not quite… Apple reached out to Aurélien, through Mozilla, to ask if Apple could simply get the code of the unofficial plugin. (Source)
“Ah, so instead of starting from scratch, they instead bought a good starting-point. Smart."
Well, not quite…
The developer asked for a $1 GitHub sponsorship in recognition of the “sale”. Apparently, it’s been crickets.
Gross, Apple, your cheapness is showing.
PSA for Micro.blog app users: If you can’t scroll to see the text you’re composing (🤯), try showing the title field (in post settings). That’ll allow you to scroll for some reason. Until you hit a character limit, then you need to tap into the title field and back out to reenable scrolling. Wild.
