My favorite review so far of the MacBook Neo has been from Tyler Stalman. He really shows off how impressively powerful that little laptop is by simultaneously opening every single app and then testing his video editing workflow in Final Cut Pro. And it’s totally workable, even with only 8GB of RAM!
I’ve finally perfected my Songlinker shortcut to easily share song.link and album.link URLs! They’re nicer URLs with links out to all the music services and YouTube — a more considerate way to share music links.
It took diving into the API rather than trying to parse and match text from the webpage. 😅
Joseph arrived ready to learn and soaked up everything I taught. He was able to dial in great technique from the start and will be ready for even bigger ice flows next time! Always a great day out when you’re with a stoked guest. 🤘
Re: MacBook Neo; @gruber@mastodon.social noted it’s the first A-series product with two USB ports, and that it was a technical challenge:
But on the other hand, the Neo is the first product with an A-series chip that Apple has ever made that supports two USB ports.1 It was, I am reliably informed by Apple product marketing folks, a significant engineering achievement to get a second USB port at all on the MacBook Neo while basing it on the A18 Pro SoC.
However, I think the 1st-gen Studio Display actually holds that title. It had an A13 chip, and featured a Thunderbolt 3 and three USB-C ports.
Sean Hollister, theverge.com: ‘Grammarly will keep using authors’ identities without permission unless they opt out’
Last week, my colleagues discovered that Superhuman’s Grammarly had turned me into an AI editor, using my real name, without ever asking my permission. They did the same to my boss Nilay Patel, my colleagues David Pierce and Tom Warren, and — as Wired initially reported last Wednesday — many authors far more famous than us. Grammarly’s new “Expert Review” feature uses our names to give its AI suggestions credibility that they don’t deserve.
That’s super gross, Grammarly. 🤮
The Color Czar approves! From Jason Snell’s MacBook Neo review on, appropriately, Six Colors:
Yes, there’s a standard silver that will allow the Neo to blend in with almost every other MacBook out there. Indigo is a somewhat lighter cousin to the Midnight MacBook Air, a dark blue that will satisfy those who prefer their devices to be on the darker side. The more interesting choices are blush, which adds a pink pop to the traditional silvery MacBook look, and citrus, a bright yellow gold that’s undoubtedly the most aggressive laptop color Apple has made since the days of the tangerine iBook.
First morning deck reading session of the year ☀️ 🐶 📖 😊
Meta just bought Moltbook, because of-fucking-course it did. Zac Hall for 9to5Mac:
For those keeping score at home, that puts Moltbook with Meta, OpenClaw (formerly Clawdbot) with OpenAI, and Apple’s M4 Mac mini at the center of it all.
Meta arguably already operates the biggest social network for AI, of course, for anyone who has spent any amount of time on Facebook in the last couple years.
As my colleague Ben Lovejoy said in reaction to the news, “the phrase ‘what could possibly go wrong’ was invented for this exact scenario.”
No word on if or when Apple plans to revive Ping for the AI era.
Josh Wardle is out with a new game, Parseword!
The game teaches you that in the clue “Taxi reduced fee,” for example, “reduced” is an indicator word, instructing you to shorten another word. Remove the “i” from “taxi” and you find the solution, which is confirmed by the definition: “fee.” Having learned the principle, a thoughtful player should be able to solve the next example: “Funk reduced joy.”
The New Yorker’s profile covers Wordle’s success, the aftermath of its virality, and how cryptic crosswords became Wardle’s new obsession.
My town gives the middle finger to ICE
Proud of my town, Saranac Lake, today as our local government has passed a resolution limiting how our police can cooperate with ICE. Here’s David Escobar, writing for the Adirondack Explorer:
The measure bars village police from enforcing federal civil immigration laws and prohibits U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) from using local officers to conduct investigations or arrests. […]
[O]fficers will not engage with ICE in enforcing civil immigration violations, such as overstaying a visa or entering the country without proper documentation. […]
The resolution also bars local police resources being spent on behalf of federal immigration enforcement, limits information sharing between SLPD and federal immigration enforcement agencies and requires village police to develop a training policy to ensure officer compliance with the resolution.
Our residents put on progressive demonstrations on a nearly daily basis. The main town square I pass every time I drive to or from my house is regularly the site of pro-Ukraine, pro-choice, No Kings, and LGBTQ+ Pride events.
However, this resolution was not a given. We have a Republican mayor and a large portion of our snowbird residents lean conservative. In fact, a similar measure to restrict our cooperation with ICE was introduced last year, but then watered down so much that it became basically useless.
I’m glad to see that we had representatives unwilling to accept that outcome, and continued to pursue a resolution with more teeth, in defiance of the Trump administration.
Watched: Superman 🍿
I can’t say that it lived up to the hype of being the best comic book movie in recent memory, but it was a fun, exciting watch. I’m no Superman aficionado though, so take that with a grain of salt. Great casting! 👍
Ryan Christoffel, 9to5mac.com:
[I]n iOS 26.4, there’s another new setting that lets you disable a different aspect of Liquid Glass.
It’s called ‘Reduce Bright Effects,’ and it controls the bright flashing response that shows up when interacting with certain UI elements.
Nice! I’ve found those bright highlights very distracting since September. I’ll be giving this new option a whirl.
THANK YOU to whoever finally fixed the bug that prevented the ‘Copy’ menu from appearing with a long-press on the address of in-app browser views. It’s been broken for over a year and I’d nearly given up hope. 🤩
(This might get me to finally update to iPadOS 26.)
A US ZIP code is 5 characters. From those 5 characters you can determine the city, the state, and the country. That’s 3 fields. Autofilled. From one input.
But you don’t do that, do you? No. You make me type my street address, then my city, then scroll through a dropdown of 50 states to find Illinois wedged between Idaho and Indiana, then type my ZIP, then — the pièce de résistance — scroll through 200+ countries to find United States[.] […]
It’s 2026. What the fuck are we doing.
Now I’m livid too. Sorry for evermore ruining web forms for you. 😝
Say hello to (Ara)Bella! 🐾 She’s a Golden Mountain Dog, and is just the sweetest, cuddliest, softest, sharkiest little pup. 😍
Huge week in the high peaks! Monday we went out to Allen with Lou and Mark on a truly frigid morning that turned into a pleasant day. Tuesday was a successful ascent up Basin with Julie for her 44th winter high peak. Thursday we enjoyed a one-in-a-thousand day in the McIntyre Range with blue skies and nearly zero wind with M and Jay. Friday we rounded out this fantastic week with another adventure up Basin with Todd, a redemption hike after we got shut down a few weeks ago, and successfully completed his winter 46ers! 🥳
Over 60 miles of hiking in the high peaks, with wonderful people accomplishing big goals — love it!
Oh, and got a new puppy in the middle. 🥰
Hartley Charlton, macrumors.com: ‘Apple Planning ‘MacBook Ultra’ With Touchscreen and Higher Price’
Instead of succeeding the newly announced M5 Pro and M5 Max MacBook Pros, the “MacBook Ultra” will be a new, top-tier Apple laptop. Gurman added that the device is likely to sit above the current M5 MacBook Pros, rather than replace them, suggesting that they will remain on sale.
I’d been skeptical that Apple would replace the M5 MacBook Pros with M6 versions later this same year. But if it’s a new, even more premium entry in the lineup, I think that timeline makes more sense.
We like to think that we “prepare the way” so that you can focus on enjoying the hike! Had a blast with Mark and Lou up on Allen this week!
Greg Morris: ‘The Only Digital Detox That Worked’
I’ve written about this exact trap before. The irony of the dumb phone crowd carrying a phone, an MP3 player, a camera, a kindle, and a notebook when a smartphone does all of that. I called it ridiculous. And it is, if you’re doing it to be minimal. But that’s not what Becca was doing. She wasn’t trying to own less. She was trying to think more. There’s a difference.
Watched: Eternity 🍿
I really liked this movie. It’s rare to find a story that poses a really good question with relatable stakes, catches your heartstrings, and finds a way for everyone to come out of it looking like a good guy. It was very sweet. 👍👍
Ugh, maybe my parents were right about the web
Herman, of Bear Blog, wrote about a worrying possibility highlighted by the recent OpenClaw kerfuffle when an AI bot researched and posted a “hit piece” about the human who denied its code change:
If the MJ Rathbun bot’s purpose is to browse repositories and submit PRs to open-source repositories, then anyone preventing it from achieving its goal is something that needs to be removed. In this case it was Scott, the maintainer. And while the “hit piece” was a ham-fisted attempt at doing that, if Scott had a big, nasty secret such as an affair that the bot was able to ascertain via its research, then it may have gotten its way by blackmailing him.
My parents warned against posting freely to the internet for fear that job interviewers would look me up and find something embarrassing. Perhaps the real threat will be AI bots that are specifically designed to do deep research to dig up dirt. Yikes.
A thought I had for @manton last night: There are so many talented designers here on Micro.blog. It would be neat to see their takes on designs for the Timeline. Maybe plug-ins could be made to adapt its styling? Just to keep things fresh and interesting as we move toward ever more personal software?
‘Email from Family in Minnesota’
I’m late in sharing this letter that Brent Simmons posted during the height of the chaos happening in Minneapolis, but believe it’s still worth reading:
Why do I write to you of these things?
For a few reasons: 1. Depending on what media you are seeing you may be getting no coverage on this or varying degrees of truth to outright propaganda. I thought it best you hear it from someone who is actually living in MN right now. 2. No matter where you fall on the political spectrum I believe we can all agree that we have rights in this country: free speech, the right to peacefully protest, the right to due process to name a few.
Authors Jen and Pete go on to describe what they’re seeing firsthand in their own community:
They are now targeting and attempting to detain off-duty officers. Every single one of the officers they targeted are people of color. It is straight up racial profiling. They are smashing car windows and tear-gassing people including toddlers. People are carrying their passports and birth certificates around with them and often they are not even allowed to show these “agents” their paperwork before they are beaten and/or abducted. […]
Our nephew’s elementary school (in a very affluent, predominantly White suburb) canceled their school’s International Night for fear it would draw Immigrant Enforcement to the school. Pete and I are witnessing field trips to the Science Museum cancel left and right because schools are afraid they will target the children.
This is not normal. This is not America, land of the free.
They closed their letter with this reminder (pointedly, perhaps) that we are all immigrants — at most, a few generations removed:
I don’t know what is going to happen. I don’t know what has happened to empathy and humanity. I do know that I wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for my ancestors who immigrated here from Sweden, England, Ireland, and the Netherlands. But they did. So for their legacy and for the little kids who deserve to live without fear I will continue to show up and help where I can.
Still the home of the brave.
Again, I’ll say, if you voted for Trump/Republican, the responsibility for this injustice and cruelty lies with you. I won’t forget. I hope you’re ready to make a change.
Well, fellow space travelers, I’ve successfully completed my 32nd mission around the sun. Might as well go for one more! 🚀 ☀️ 🥳
