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.
Emma Roth, theverge.com:
Max is joining the growing list of streaming services that offer 24/7 cable-like channels. On Wednesday, Warner Bros. Discovery announced that it’s testing a set of always-on channels with collections of HBO shows, movies, and documentaries and it’s rolling them out to a small group of ad-free subscribers in the US.
Max is launching five channels to start, including one called HBO Comedy for original series like Curb Your Enthusiasm, documentaries about comedians, and comedy films.
I’ve not tried one of these themed, always-on streaming channels, but I like the idea!
We’re now learning that China has penetrated America’s telecommunications systems deeply, in a breathtaking hack whose scope is still being revealed. It appears this was accomplished using backdoors mandated back in 1994 for use by law enforcement. This should not be surprising. When it comes to backdoors being exploited maliciously, it’s a matter of “when”, not “if”.
As a result of this hack, government officials are making an abrupt about-face. Americans are now being urged to use encrypted communications whenever possible. That is a good idea.
😳 I did not hear about this.
David Sparks, on Apple’s AI Writing Tools:
Another problem with the text tools is the implementation of recommended changes. You can have it either replace your text entirely (without any indicator of what exactly was changed) or give you a list of suggested edits, which you must implement manually. Other players in this space, like Grammarly, highlight recommended changes and make it easy to implement or ignore them with a button.
He’s right. Not only is the proofreading not good enough despite being text-based (AI’s bread and butter), but the interface (Apple’s bread and butter) sucks too.
PSA: For many truncated RSS feeds, most RSS clients have the option to try to pull an article’s full text from its webpage. In Reeder Classic, for example, simply right-click (long-press) a feed and enable the automatic reader view. Works on the newly truncated Verge feed!
🆕📝 The Verge (finally) gets a subscription
I'm not mad about it, but I am curious to see where they draw the line for metered stories. (And the second "finally" in one day!? December 3rd's got some mojo.)