Watched: The Martian 🍿

Seemed right for home viewing last night (only $5 on iTunes Apple TV’s movie store right now!) considering the Artemis mission and Project Hail Mary being in theaters. Great movie! Although, Apollo 13 might have even more appropriate. Perhaps tonight.

I’ve finally gotten around to archiving a bunch of Apple’s videos that they’ve released over the years. I like looking back at the production quality and how they presented their products to the public. Wish I would have set this up years ago — so many of them are now private or lost to time.

Pebble wants to make super sure that you buy the right size of the Index 01 ring, so they send you a 3D-printed (or you could print your own) set of mockups at all the sizes. They ask that you test them and keep the best size on your finger for a day to be confident you’re happy with it. Good idea!

The Washington Post: (News+)

President Donald Trump threatened to wipe out “a whole civilization” if Iran’s leaders don’t agree to his terms to open the Strait of Hormuz tonight, prompting Iran to call off talks and his political opponents to question his fitness and call for his removal from office.

Trump/Republican/MAGA voters, this (and this) is on you. You were warned, and we won’t forget. I sure hope you’re ready to make some different choices. 🇺🇸

(If you vote red because of “Christian values”, I don’t know how you can see those values represented in Conservative leadership these days.)

Really cool webpage showcasing every iPhone model ever released with significant milestones, price, feature removals, colors and more all beautifully visualized.

(Via Daring Fireball)

David Pierce: ‘Vertical browser tabs are better and you should use them’

After all this time, Chrome actually executed the idea pretty well. When you switch to vertical tabs, the Chrome address bar moves up to the top row of the app, which makes the interface take up substantially less space than before. If you’re a real minimalist, you can shrink the sidebar to show only website favicons, and suddenly Chrome’s chrome is almost entirely out of the way.

I’m pretty happy with my top tabs in Safari, but I must admit that this is a pretty clean look. And Tahoe’s tabs take up more room than ever.

🔗 ‘At $150 off, the new MacBook Air is now cheaper than last year’s model’ theverge.com

Simply incredible images coming from the Artemis II crew from their time going ‘round the moon. What a privilege for them to experience such a wonderful solar eclipse. Check out The Verge’s post for some history and metadata. 🚀🌕

9to5Mac: ‘Apple faces supply chain problem as MacBook Neo demand exceeds expectations’

One option is to pay TSMC a premium to ramp up A18 Pro fabrication again, although it’s unclear how much that would cost on a per-unit basis. Apple may have to bump the price of the Neo to make the math work, preserving its preferred healthy profit margins. This could mean removing the base $599 configuration from sale, leaving only the $699 model.

A good problem, I s’pose. I think it’s unlikely that Apple would bump the price—it’s too central to its marketing. They’d restrict the $599 model, if anything.

Psyched for the next season of Dark Matter to come out in August! I loved both the book and the show.

Today, Apple TV revealed a first look at the second season of the acclaimed sci-fi series “Dark Matter,” which is set to make its global debut on Friday, August 28.

Season two will pick up where season one left off but where the book ended—so there’s no existing storyline to guide it this time. Not to worry though, author Blake Crouch serves as creator, executive producer, showrunner and writer—so it’s coming straight from the source.

The Verge has the pics without spoilers like Apple’s post.

Shoutout to @lexfri@hachyderm.io and his Your Daily Lex podcast. Man, that guy is busy! It sometimes makes one feel inadequate, but I really enjoy listening to little stories about his day and how he’s pursuing his goals and interests.

Been listening for many years, and hope to do so for many more. 🎧

I’ve been using On This Day in beta and it’s great! Ever need a quick hit of nostalgia? Just open it up. Particularly great on holidays and birthdays.

I launched my first iOS app! 🚀

On This Day Rewind shows you photos and videos from today's date in past years. Widgets, reminders, cleanup, and sharing features included - fully on device.

Props to the Artemis II crew for refusing to pander. You love to see it. 🚀 🇺🇸 🇨🇦

I’d love it if more blogging platforms built this flexibility in from the start. It’s a fun feature!

Jottit pages now have plain text and raw markdown versions.

Append .txt for stripped text or .md for the original markdown.

Example: jottit.org/@sbc/rebuilding-jottit.md jottit.org/@sbc/rebuilding-jottit.txt

Useful for reading, quoting, archiving, scraping, and CLI workflows.

Jessica Heck gets it:

There is something sobering about stepping onto a trailhead knowing you will not see your car again for days. Everything you need is on your back. Shelter. Food. Water filtration. Layers. Light.

You either have it or you do not. […]

I walked into the woods with three days of gear and realized I am good. I can problem-solve. I can manage discomfort. I can be alone without feeling isolated. I can wake up sore, make coffee in the quiet, and move forward anyway. […]

You learn quickly that self-reliance is not bravado. It is a responsibility.

And strangely, it is freedom.

Dan Moren: ‘The Back Page: Dispatches from the Apple multiverse’ 🔒

All of these worlds are like ours, but ever so slightly different. And just in case you think the grass is always greener on the other side of the quantum fence, well, be careful what you wish for. As much as some people might deride Liquid Glass, be glad you don’t live on Earth 9w4598-Ω, where Apple really ran with that whole “lickable” interface thing. Computing has never been so sticky.

😂

The speed, reliability, and flexibility of Drafts is truly something special. It’s been in my iPhone’s Dock for about a decade now and is at the center of my blogging and idea capturing workflows.

On this day 14 years ago, at about this time, I was pressing “Release this Version” button in iTunes Connect on Drafts 1.0.

— Greg Pierce
mastodon.social/@agiletortoise/116359522172916100

[Composed in Drafts]

I was about to mark-as-read and move on until I stopped and reread this takeaway from David Sparks:

I’m not saying throw out your task manager. But I’ve started asking myself a different question when I plan my week. Instead of “how much can I get done?”, I’m asking “what deserves slow work this week?” Usually, it’s one thing. And giving that one thing the bonsai treatment, patient attention without rushing to a result, has made the work better.

Striking, isn’t it? When I ask myself that question, one thing does immediately spring to mind. Great framing that I’m going to continue to use.

Lou Plummer replaced Apple Music with some apps and an iPod:

Using a big old iPod Classic forces a certain discipline.

1. Everything must be local. No cloud placeholders. Availability becomes certain instead of the streamer’s gamble of “is this still licensed?”
2. Metadata has to be correct. Artist, Album, Genre, Composer, and Year matter because that’s how the device navigates.
3. Portability means independence. The device doesn’t call home to verify a subscription.

It’s a surprisingly healthy constraint.

I’m probably not going to do it, but there is something appealing about the iPod days of yore.

Congrats to us humans on our new distance record! It was a really touching moment in Integrity as they marked the achievement by honoring Commander Reid Wiseman’s late wife, Carroll. 🚀

I really like this infographic on Instagram that puts the real distance of the moon from Earth into perspective. 🌕

To return home, able to climb another day — that’s the goal! To summit some peaks along the way, we can feel extra thankful for that. 🏔️

Happy spring, everybody! 🌱

I’ve been coming to this same realization.

My fellow people of the United States, if I have anything to teach from what Minneapolis just lived through, it is this:

Nobody is coming to save us. 

Not Congress. Not the courts. Not the ICC or the EU or NATO. Not the generals or the rank and file. Not the press. Not the markets. Not the elections. Not some mythical version of “The People” that materializes out of nowhere as some messianic external force. 

We’re it. We’re all we’ve got. If we don’t stop fascism from completely engulfing the US, then nobody stops it.

Manton Reece: ‘OpenAI got its name right’

How do we reconcile all of this? There is a feeling in the developer community that the Anthropic folks are the good guys. They’re the ones who care about safety. They’re the ones who don’t want ads. They’re the ones fighting the Pentagon.

If you look closer, though, it’s mostly a feeling. Anthropic is an enterprise software company with expensive models. I like Dario Amodei, but he has built a closed company that seems afraid of its own shadow.

Mac vs. PC. iPhone vs. Android. Claude vs. ChatGPT. Closed vs. Open is a never-ending story.

🆕📝 The difference between a company that makes money and a company that makes something worth caring about

Jobs had it. Will Ternus?