You learn something new every day! Today it was all the ways your phone is significantly more secure before its first unlock after a reboot.
A good quote, a Lego reenactment, a tool for alt text, an awesome Action Button shortcut, a feel-good climbing film, a fully monospaced website, and a new (short) podcast.
Here’s your periodic reminder that, with just a simple automation in Shortcuts, you too can have Taylor Swift welcome you back to New York as you cross the border. It’s delightful. 😁
Turns out you cannot use Type to Siri when connected to CarPlay. Good idea if you’re the driver, but a little annoying if you’re the passenger.
Wow. Both are great.
AirPods Pro 2 are $1 more than AirPods 4 ANC right now on Amazon...just $170!
AirPods Pro 2: https://geni.us/R8s79dB
AirPods 4 ANC: https://geni.us/AikMWPo
(Affiliate links)
Matt Birchler: ‘More Birchtree is on sale this week’
Just a quick post today to say that I am running what I expect to be my only sale of the year on More Birchtree. If you sign up for a year from now through Friday November 29, you can get a yearly for $35. […]
Click here to sign up and thank you for supporting the site!
Heck of a deal! Good writing, great guy.
Measure to change
I enjoyed this article by itseieio, ‘Measuring something changes it - and sometimes that’s enough’, and see a lot of it in myself:
So instead of force of will I turned to measurement. I made a simple Google Form with a few questions:
- When did I go to bed?
- When did I wake up?
- Was I tired when I woke up?
- When was I ready to do something (write code, see friends, etc)
- Did I play piano / exercise before starting to do something else?
I committed to non-judgmentally filling this form out every morning. And I waited.
And my behavior began to change! Some of these changes were relatively intuitive to me. I was more conscious of my bedtime and found myself saying “it’s past 1:00 AM, I’m not doing anything worthwhile, and my data will look better if I go to bed.”
But some of my behavior changes surprised me. I was more conscious of how I spent time in the morning, but also conscious of how I’m often not ready to do “hard” things immediately after waking up. Historically I’ve dealt with this by wasting time mindlessly browsing the internet which ~never makes me feel good. But quantifying how much time I’d spent on this each week pushed me to replace that time with something I enjoyed more. Often that was playing a game! Which isn’t a particularly productive activity - but swapping out “mindless browsing” for “playing a fun game” has consistently made my days more enjoyable.
It all makes sense. It’s easy to convince yourself that things aren’t as bad as you might think, but very hard to ignore hard data. Maybe I need to start observing and measuring more of my behavior to get better in control and able to make changes.
No-Shave November check in, day 24
Michael Burkhardt: ‘Indie App Spotlight: ‘Pestle’ is the ultimate recipe manager, and it just got a big update - 9to5Mac'
Pestle 2.0 adds two big features – TikTok support, and support for recipe notes.
Using an on device AI model, Pestle is now able to save recipes from TikTok by transcribing the captions and processing it on device, and its able to do all of that in under a second. If you happen to see a cool recipe on TikTok, Pestle will now be able to save it fast and privately.
Clever clever.
Joe Rossignol, on the Wolfs sequel cancelation:
In an interview shared by Deadline today, Wolfs director Jon Watts said he canceled the sequel because he “no longer trusted” Apple as a creative partner. He told the publication that Apple made a last-minute decision to pivot away from widely releasing the movie in theaters without discussing that decision with him in advance.
Watts also said that Apple ignored his request to not mention the planned “Wolfs” sequel in its press release […].
Good movie. Bad look for Apple.
TIL the “closed” of ‘closed captions’ refers to your ability to hide or “close” them, as opposed to open captions, which are always shown.
If you find yourself flummoxed by the, to be clear, abhorrent way Donald Trump moves through the world, this podcast episode is doing a pretty good job at providing words to describe his behavior.
Just had a nice use for Apple Intelligence’s writing tools where you can describe the change you want to make. I stream-of-consciousnessed some app feedback for a developer using dictation and then selected it all and asked writing tools to “fix it up and format it as an email.” Worked like a charm.
Said another way, an adventure without challenges is no adventure at all.
E.B. White knew what was up.
I’m starting a new experiment where I use Ticci Tabs by @refactoredd@mastodon.online to be my dedicated Micro.blog app. There are things that are just better about MB in the browser and having its own dedicated one seems nice. Not sure how long this will last! cc: @viticci@macstories.net
I’m in the midst of trying to decide which accounting software to use for my small business. I’m leaning toward QuickBooks because it seems the most established and it has all the integrations, but I’m open to suggestions. Anybody have strong feelings about accounting software they’ve used?
Wow, I guess November 21st is just always going to be a prolific writing/sharing day for me. (This link won’t work on the 22nd.)
Since it’s now cool to do so, I should mention that I do have a Bluesky account if you’re social networking over there. I’m @heyjb.me, and everything I post to my microblog gets crossposted there. I can even see and respond to replies using my blog because @manton’s worked some real magic with it.
Just tested the waters of going all-in on Micro.blog with a titled blog post, and then checked my stats. This will be my 2001st micropost!
Billie Eilish takes the (second) cake
In addition to being nominated for seven more GRAMMY Awards this year — including Record of the Year, Album of the Year, and Song of the Year — Billie has also become the first person to earn Apple Music Artist of the Year honors twice, having won the inaugural award in 2019.
At first glance, it seems a bit rich to award her twice in five years, but she’s got the stats.
Following a historic second Academy Award win and two additional GRAMMY Awards for her contribution to Greta Gerwig’s feature-length film Barbie, “What Was I Made For?,” Billie released her third full-length album, HIT ME HARD AND SOFT. At once vulnerable and bold, it’s the sound of a generational artist taking a massive leap forward — and the best music of her career. Upon release, the album soared to No. 1 on Apple Music’s all-genre albums chart in 138 countries worldwide.
Billie continues to make her presence felt across culture. She performed her hit “BIRDS OF A FEATHER” while representing her hometown of Los Angeles at the closing ceremony of the summer games this August — and drove her biggest day ever for Shazam volume in the process. Billie also linked up with Charli xcx for “Guess,” one of the songs of the summer, and is currently headlining the sold-out HIT ME HARD AND SOFT tour, which will extend her triumphant year well into 2025.
Their editorial team knew this year’s award would cause a stir, so they’ve made a compelling case. I’ll have to give her latest album another listen today.
Oh, and don’t forget, Billie was featured as one of Apple Music’s first Up Next artists back in 2017, very early in her career.
Stephen Hackett made a keen observation in his (just superbly titled) blog post about Apple ending its butterfly keyboard repair program: ‘The Eeeend d of an Eraa’
It’s wild to think about how much about this generation of MacBook Pros has been erased from the product line. The Butterfly keyboard is gone, as is the Touch Bar. The Thunderbolt-only future that these machines promised didn’t pan out, and the current MacBook Pro design brought with it the return of MagSafe, HDMI, and even the SD card slot.
I hadn’t realized this, but he’s right.
John Gruber has had some good hits lately, but this one was a miss. This bit, in particular, rubs me the wrong way:
What I can say, personally, is that I read and pay for several publications on Substack, and for the last few weeks I’ve tried using their iOS app (more on this in a moment), and I’ve never once seen a whiff of anything even vaguely right-wing, let alone hateful. Not a whiff. If it’s there, I never see it. If I never see it, I don’t care.1
Just because you don’t see it, doesn’t mean you shouldn’t care. Erland made a good analogy.
Wow, @sindresorhus@mastodon.social is killing it with Supercharge. Its rapid development is making it a must-have utility.
Ben Lovejoy, 9to5Mac: ‘Satechi M4 Mac mini stand and hub supports up to 4TB extra storage’
A Satechi M4 Mac mini stand and hub promises to let owners of the new ultra-compact desktop Mac add up to 4TB of fast SSD storage, together with an SD card slot and three USB-A ports.
These stand/hub things are really cool. I debated getting one for my M1 Mac mini, but it would have made it too tall for the riser it’s in.
But what would really seal the deal for this version is (1) a headphone jack on the back, and (2) somehow, a pass-through power button back there too.