An alternate Genmoji app, a Shrinking creator interview, a passkey vs. magic link login blog post, how to kill spam messages online, an MKBHD year-end recap, a beautiful media year-end recap, and a sobering look at the sum total of human creation.
If given the choice, I’ve decided that I’d prefer a 3x telephoto lens to a 2x one as second camera on my iPhone. But I guess that wouldn’t work out as nicely to get a sharp crop from the 48MP main lens. Still, it’d be nice if I could choose the zoom of that extra button on the Camera’s interface.
Matt Birchler: ‘Sign up for X to see that amber alert. Yikes’
I believe it’s a good thing to meet your constituents where they are […]. However, it is very bad for them to put essential information on a private website they don’t own and that blocks access from logged out users. [And] zero logged out users would see a thread, since for a year or so X has only shown one post at a time to logged-out visitors.
This is why it’s important for people to own their presence on the web, especially when it comes to government agencies that need to communicate with people.
👏 Own 👏 Your 👏 Web 👏
🔗 Joe Rossignol: ‘Satechi’s New Mac Mini Hub Solves the Power Button Problem’ macrumors.com
With the extra frontside ports and built-in external storage for backups, I continue to think these made-specially-for-Mac-mini stand things are a great investment.
🆕📝 I’m switching from Raindrop to Apple Notes for saving my shopping links
It sounds inconsequential, but I think it's going to make an outsized difference. I've been toying with the idea of 2025 being The Year of Small Improvements, and this plays nicely with that theme.
Tom Warren: ‘Microsoft is using Bing to trick people into thinking they’re on Google’
If you use Bing right now without signing into a Microsoft account and search for Google, you’ll get a page that looks an awful lot like… Google.
[…] The Google result includes a search bar, an image that looks a lot like a Google Doodle, and even some small text under the search bar just like Google does. Microsoft even automatically scrolls down the page slightly to mask its own Bing search bar that appears at the top of search results.
That’s really something. Microsoft, your lack of taste is showing.
🔗 All we have is a tiny portable propane grill, and I’m no grillmaster. So the $400 price point on this Brisk It grill is attractive, as is the assistive cooking AI — if it actually works as advertised. theverge.com
🔗 2025 will be the year — and perhaps this Schlage Sense Pro Pro Smart Deadbolt (what a mouthful!) will be the unit — that I invest in a smart lock. I’ve spent too many years fumbling with my key in the bitter cold and my arms full of gear. 9to5mac.com
🔗 ‘Shazam Fast Forward predicts 50 breakthrough artists in 2025’ Ben Lovejoy / 9to5mac.com
I’m looking forward to their 2025 Predictions playlist, presumably available after the 5-day countdown.
🎁 Folks who share gift links to paywalled articles, I appreciate you. 🙌
Or, for this crowd, “The Constitution is all very well up to a point, but the needs of [Apple] must come first.” Fuck that sentiment. theatlantic.com
🔗 It speaks to Lutron’s rock-solid performance that I now unreservedly covet $400 smart window shades. casetawireless.com
‘Blogging: you’re doing it right’ manuelmoreale.com
The Frame Pro is also getting the same litany of AI-powered features as Samsung’s other 2025 TVs. AI is such a focus this year that there’s a dedicated button on the remote for activating Click to Search, which can show you “who the actors are in a given scene, where that scene is taking place, or even the clothing the characters are wearing,” according to Samsung’s press release.
And it’ll get you recipes for foods on-screen, as well as do live translations for captions. The future is coming fast and furious. But I wonder how much of this will still be included in five years.
Adam Newbold poses a great question on syndicating posts vs. pages that he’ll answer with Neato:
Our websites have pages that don’t get syndicated (what we think of as “static” pages) and things that do (what we think of as “blog posts”). But… why? Why not just syndicate everything? If you have an “About” page and you change it, why wouldn’t you want to add that to your feed and let your readers know about the update? If you make a nice new static page, why should you have to announce it and link to it in a separate blog post when having that page appear in your feed does the job for you?
James Thomson reveals the secrets — and his role — in how the Mac OS Dock came to be. Make sure to read to the very end! 🔗 tla.systems
‘Friction is a Feature’ 🔗 Steve Ledlow / tangiblelife.net
‘Intentional Web Manifesto’ 🔗 Steve Ledlow / tangiblelife.net
Lou Plummer describes his perfect day (and it, indeed, sounds super nice). 🔗 amerpie.lol
I should probably start listening to Zane Lowe’s show on Apple Music, because I always love artist interviews when I happen across them. This one with Maggie Rogers on NPR Fresh Air was short, sweet, and wonderful. Hard to believe she’s my age. 🎙️ overcast.fm
Celeste Davis: ‘Why aren’t we talking about the real reason male college enrollment is dropping?'
For every 1% increase in the proportion of women in the student body, 1.7 fewer men applied. One more woman applying was a greater deterrent than $1000 in extra tuition!
This post is long, and I won’t pretend I read every word, but I got the gist and was nodding along. Our institutional disregard, dislike, and devaluation of feminism will continue to bite our ass as a society. The only way it’ll change is by teaching kids by example to accept and celebrate people as they are.
🤧 I spent week 1/52 of 2025 as sick as a dog. Thankfully, it was a light week, and I could shift responsibilities around. But it was a harsh reminder not to procrastinate on yearly vaccines. My much smarter wife got hers — just one day of feeling lousy before her body bounced back. Lesson learned.
Jason Becker: ‘Banning Books that are “developmentally inapporpriate”'
“Developmentally inappropriate” is largely a term used to mean, “A topic that a child brings to an adult that they feel uncomfortable talking about with a child of that age.”
Most exposures to content that somehow becomes traumatic is only much more so when the world signals to a child that they should never talk to an adult about what they saw and how it made them feel because they were wrong to have come across it in the first place.
Hear, hear.
Manton Reece: ‘The long goodbye for Tim Cook’
Tim Cook has led Apple to incredible success, but his words are hollow. Even the principles he seems to care most passionately about, like user privacy, are in doubt. I’m increasingly thinking it’s an act.
I used to consider Tim Cook with nothing but admiration. From graceful filling the impossibly big shoes Steve Jobs left behind, to recognizing the responsibility his role gave him and coming out as the first and most prominent openly gay CEO, to his advocacy for user privacy.
The shine’s worn off over the years. Actions speak louder than words.