What an absolutely riveting tale of human survival. Wow. 🥶😮
One day later and now AirPods Pro 2 are even cheaper than AirPods 4 with ANC! $154 vs $169 🤯
I really like the sound improvements, addition of ANC, and other little upgrades of my AirPods 4. But, after several months of use, I have to conclude that the AirPods 1 (& 2) design still fits my ears best.
David Sparks is frustrated by the slow adoption of passkeys. Me too. And he pointed out why sites hedging their bets and letting you set up both a password and passkey can be dangerous, which I hadn’t considered:
When a site offers both options, it creates a tempting target for bad actors. Imagine this: You try to log in with your shiny new passkey, and a fake prompt tells you it failed. Next thing you know, you’re asked to log in with your password instead. Guess what? You just handed over your credentials to the bad guys.
It works directly against the promise that passkeys are unphishable.
After handling a friend’s 14-inch M3 MacBook Pro this weekend, I’m settled on holding out for an M4 MacBook Air. It was just beyond the size and weight that I’d want for a “take everywhere” computer. 🤞 for a nano-texture option and not too long of a wait!
Nick Heer: ‘How Sports Betting Has Changed the U.S. – Pixel Envy’
It is strange to me how the world of sports gambling is now just an open business like any other. It makes sense to me that it is legal, but to integrate it so tightly with every aspect of athletics is something I admit to being confused about and a little troubled by.
I was at a friend’s house this weekend and his whole family, it seemed, had taken up making a bunch of small (~$10) bets on a variety of games. Sounded like they had good fun with it, but it was novel dinner conversation to me.
Wes Davis: ‘Meta’s mixed-reality attempt at a Wii Sports knockoff is coming’
Like Nintendo’s simplistic motion control-based sports series, Home Sports offers several games: hockey, badminton, pickleball, mini-golf, and bowling. It’s playable solo and multiplayer, where your Meta avatar represents you in a match. Meta says the game can adapt to your play space, but it also uses the Quest boundaryless mode for those with access to wide-open spaces.
They couldn’t have changed the logo to at least hide their shame?
David Sparks is calling his Black Friday sale a “Gratitude Sale” and I really like it. Especially as these things have trended toward a week or more of discounts, “Black Friday sale” doesn’t really make much sense anymore. But “holiday sale” or “gratitude sale”, those sound better.
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?