Anybody growing up in the New York area who listened to a radio heard this station at one point or another — doubly so if you found yourself in a cab to or from the airport. Audacy also owns 1010 WINS, the only other all-news radio station, which is sticking around.
#Susan had an incredible story and did some amazing things at Google. Really profound loss for the tech industry.
#Completely unsurprising but still viscerally understood stories of folks feeling like they can’t stay in their homes and raise their families. Family costs (housing, childcare, basics) are a national crisis.
#The kids are 8 and 11 and only found out on the plane ride to Russia when their parents were freed that they were not Argentinian. From a correspondent quoted in The Guardian:
#They are high-class professionals who devoted their whole lives to the motherland, making sacrifices that ordinary people could never understand. They raised their children as Spanish-speaking Catholics. Now they will have to teach them what borscht is.
Some fun details in this story include the list of other candidate combinations he’s snatched up and the unfortunate tale of what happened when he tried to sell ClintonKaine.com back in 2016.
#Tejal Rao in The New York Times on the French dip at Houston’s in Pasadena, California, and the “smooth and corporate” feeling of the restaurants of the Hillstone group.
[T]he sandwich is pleasant, polished, a bit expensive and utterly generic on the surface. But you’d never mistake it for another restaurant’s version.
A lovely retelling of the nostalgia of a competent experience with a little nostalgia tucked in for good measure. (Gift link.)
#Via vanshnookenraggen, a very interesting reconsideration of The Power Broker, and the comparative power of Robert Moses and Robert Caro by Jason M. Barr:
Yet, whereas Moses, the man, was in power until the early 1960s, Caro’s portrait of Moses has been “in power” since 1974. He hovers as a living ghost that haunts New York and holds vast influence, perhaps more so than the flesh-and-blood version ever did.
I forgot to put on my status list that I hope to actually crack that book (and the related podcast) this month.
#Dorothy Thompson’s immortal words have been making the rounds once more.
#The tab sweep has come up a little short, but I still have a few at the end. Why? Vacations, that sort of mid-summer malaise, the Olympics, current events that just don’t seem to fit what I’m looking to write about here. Disruptions, really. Anyway, roughly four months in on this corner of the web.
I’ve been taking some notes based on the work of folks like Jason Kottke’s media diets, Deane Barker, and David Sparks’s Lab Reports. There’s something very refreshing about laying out a review or retrospective of what one’s done recently, or where one’s focus is. Some recent updates:
I’ve been experimenting with Readwise Reader for two things:
I haven’t gone all the way to buying the infamous Boox Palma (yet?) — if you’re unfamiliar, I’m pretty sure Craig Mod’s post on Threads was the shot heard ’round the world — but I did try installing the app on my Surface Duo. I’m not sure if it’s unoptimized or just using a framework that taxes the device, but it’s one of few apps that makes the Duo show its age.
My time has been interestingly spent between a number of different devices: A couple of iPads — the Pro mainly for productivity, the mini largely for consumption; a Mac for “work work”; my phone; and that Surface Duo as a sort of triage work machine / quick check in device.
This has been pretty brilliant for the work I’m currently doing, since the Duo-based check ins are quick (and close with a satisfying snap). On the consumption side, while I wish my mini had a nicer display it’s still much better than some thrashed Fire device even for YouTube.
This generally feels like it’s working, but (as I describe below) I think there’s room for improvement.
I’m not quite ready to commit to slash pages like Deane’s approach, but here are some things I’m working towards this month:
Some other food for thought:
An impressive stat due to a peak power draw of 10kW helped by a built-in battery to get over the challenge of using typical US home energy. It’s not cheap, though: $6K is a lot for a cooktop of four elements (though there’s currently a $500 discount for pre-orders).
One niggle on The Verge’s quickpost on the matter: “Zero to 100 in 40 seconds? Yes, please.” makes for good headline, but unless you’re starting from ice, it’s more like 22–100°C in that time.
#Wonderful feature on what became of all the R&D behind Art Lebedev’s Optimus Maximus keyboard, which captivated me back nearly 20 years ago when the concept was unveiled.
#Another sweep of the last couple of weeks of links floating around on my browser.
In Apple news, I didn’t link to Nilay’s explanation of next-generation CarPlay on The Verge at the time — I thought it was interesting but maybe not relevant — but then I saw this really excellent-looking video by BlackBox Infinite about attempting to recreate classic gauge clusters. See also, Michael Tsai on CarPlay at WWDC24.
Unrelated to the above, “I did retail theft at an Apple Store,” a compelling story about Jane Appleseed.
Back in New York, the MTA board confirmed Gov. Hochul’s pause of congestion pricing — link via The City — with no small amount of complaint and at least a nod to being ready to implement when a politician grows a spine. Related, The New York Times sent sent 27 people to count cars and see how much money the city lost on what would have been day one.
#A thorough accounting in The Verge of the person behind much of the AI-generated slop found in the affiliate commerce space. It’s disappointing and yet also completely unsurprising.
#Jason Kottke did a day of posts on Project 2025 earlier this week. I was recently going through some old newspapers (lovingly referred to as “Mount Barajas” by a friend) and found this article — from 2023. It surprised me because despite imagining the report was only several months old, it’s been out for nearly a year.
#Reported by 404 Media, with a lot of sourcing to friend Christina Warren, the site is doing messy scraping of old TUAW content (that the new owners didn’t purchase) and regurgitating the summaries as new work. For a small spell until this and other media caught on, they were using the names of former contributors like Christina with fake headshots.
The Verge dug deeper on the site and its affiliations and thinks it has tracked down the new owner, who appears to be trying to scrub his tracks.
Disgusting.
#A deeply reported piece on the fiasco behind the launch of Fanatics’ MLB jerseys and what they did to prepare for their NHL jerseys. According to the story, they were thrown under the bus by Nike on the baseball jerseys despite acquiescing to their demands, and came out with a completely different strategy for hockey.
#Via The Verge, a well-researched article on what exactly Perplexity’s system is doing when it ignores robots.txt and doesn’t announce itself while scraping content it’s not supposed to see. See also, Robb Knight’s detailed exploration of how they work.
In my most generous mind, I can see where someone providing a service that leverages several different means of gathering information might see an LLM and web scraping as distinct activities. That said, the opacity and move-fast-break-things nature of most AI startups have already left a bad taste in people’s mouths, and this is just another case of it.
#Great, thoughtful essay. A must read, especially if you have ever encountered the concept through social media.
#Do not click if hungry.
#Trailer for a wacky game produced by Panic, arriving August 1 on various consoles. Feels like keenly British humo(u?)r. Looking forward to seeing how it plays.
Forgot to wrap this into my tab sweep, but now glad it gets to stand alone.
#Another roundup of links from the last week or so. The amount of information from Apple’s developer conference is overwhelming my tabs, but I wanted to get these out first.
So, New York City — yes, people are cycling, now more than ever, and great things are happening there, but I feel it will take some more before New York City can be called a true cycling city.
See also, from Hell Gate: “Profiles in Cowardice: Governor Hochul Executes Craven 11th-Hour Flip-Flop on Congestion Pricing”
#Ben Surtees, the original developer of the Mac app Bartender, sets the record straight about a flurry of reportage about him selling to Applause, whose self-described mission is to “unlock the potential of the iOS indie app ecosystem.” There are a lot of feelings about the whole thing — see Michael Tsai for the greatest hits, along with TidBITS and 512 Pixels.
All that said, I wonder about the underlying reasoning behind him selling in the first place. You have small indies talking about the process of working on an app, like “Under The Radar” and “Core Intuition”, but there’s clearly something missing in the indie scene that would compel someone to sell like that. Is it an indie-focused support shop? Small business support for learning how to grow healthfully or responsibly? A better community for being able to talk about the challenges of being an indie? Something to chew on.
#A really interesting post about using the Internet in the most remote place on Earth — and a good reminder about the need to build more resilient websites. If you haven’t read it, Brr is a fantastic personal blog.
#Via Kottke, with a comment recommending the podcast “Who Shat on the Floor at My Wedding?” which sounds absurd enough I might take a quick listen.
It reminds me to get going on 99% Invisible’s “Power Broker Book Club”, and my current favorite of 2024, “The Universe” by Crash Course (also on YouTube).
#An investigation into what must be some of the most 90s art that exists.
(via Waxy.org)
#The unhinged story of what one woman went through after her phone was stolen and then subsequently sold. The accompanying screenshots of these messages are wild.
#A touching story, beautifully illustrated by Gaia Alari, about a man (the author, Sam Anderson) and his dog. There’s a companion podcast that I haven’t listened to, but if it’s as thoughtfully told as this story, it would certainly be worth your time.
#Baseball’s most controversial umpire is calling it a career. Angel Hernandez, who has been criticized by many in the game for decades, will retire.
He’s infamous for his touchiness on the field and questionable pitch calling (to put it generously). Couldn’t imagine a better eulogy of his career than Umpire Auditor on Threads:
#From the bottom of my heart, thank you Ángel Hernández.
You gave me more content than I could have possibly dreamed of.
I didn’t deserve you.
Enjoy your retirement, king.
Described by my brother as “your kinda splurge,” I was curious enough to put down a deposit after seeing some chatter about it on Threads.
Om Malik, who got to try a prototype: “This is an endeavor worth cheering for.”
This has my mind thinking about things. More to come soon.
#The City on the repair people who keep Coney Island’s historic boardwalk in ship shape.
#A fun story about a quirk of the interstate highway.
#I bought one of these devices back when they were being on fire sale after stopping manufacture back in 2022. From the FAQ:
We recommend resetting your Car Thing to factory settings and safely disposing of your device following local electronic waste guidelines.
I hope someone looks into hacking this into something more useful.
#Just quoting Manton here on this interesting idea:
Jason Fried previews the next product from 37signals on Twitter X, called Workbook:
It’s a dead simple platform to publish web-based books. They have covers, they can have title pages, they can have picture pages, and they can have text pages. Each book gets its own URL, and navigating and keeping track of your progress is all built right in.
I remembered being enamored with Pollen back in the day, which isn’t quite the same but scratches a similar itch. There’s something about the discrete organization of longer, bundled content that I feel no web publishing tool has yet solved.
#From The Times’s obit:
#“His main contribution was his vision of the future,” said David Cutler, a senior technical fellow at the Microsoft Research Lab and a leading software engineer, who worked with Mr. Bell at both Digital and Microsoft. “He always had a vision of where computing was going to go. He helped make computing much more widespread and more personal.”
A deeply revealing interview ahead of the publication of the journalist’s memoir, In My Time of Dying, about his brush with death and thoughts of what comes after:
#Junger writes, “I became aware of a dark pit below me and to my left.” It was “the purest black and so infinitely deep that it had no real depth at all.” He was horrified, knowing that “if I went into that hole I was never coming back.”
Some inside looks from The Verge and Inverse. From The Verge’s intro video:
Right off the bat, it’s hard not to be impressed by this design. […] They feel like headphones from a company that’s been doing this for a very long time.
I’ve really liked the Sonos system I’ve built over the years, though I haven’t spent enough time with their much-ballyhooed app upgrade. I’m bummed the Ace won’t support their TV Audio Swap feature on my (admittedly old) Playbar. My current ANC-capable over-ear headphones are the Sennheiser Momentum 3, which are just fine.
#Lovely discussion between Jean MacDonald, Manton Reece and Christina Warren to open Micro Camp 2024. They talk about the challenges and opportunities of the current moment of decentralization.
#Unsurprising.
(Do be sure to go see her statement, if you haven’t. It’s unsparing.)
#Studio Neat makes perhaps my favorite simple desk pen, the Mark One. (Sadly missed their gorgeous “Lagoon” limited edition.) I’ve looked for advice on refills from every possible direction and am glad to see they’ve made their own guide.
#You know it’s serious when the Journal is writing about this. But in all seriousness, the more visibility Strong Towns can get, the better.
#As reported by The Verge, a legitimately important feature to come out from Google this week: you can create tables with automated filtering, sorting, and grouping. If I were Monday.com or Airtable I’d be a bit more nervous today.
#Lovely profile of some folks at Panic by GamesIndustry.biz. A couple of quotes from the piece:
Now we have our ducks in a row, the goal is to push the platform… There’s a lot of people who still don’t know about Playdate"
That’s from Greg Maletic, Panic’s head of special projects and Playdate. Also from Arisa Sudangnoi, head of Playdate’s developer relations:
#So many people have mentioned to us that it’s their first time making a game and it just brings them so much joy… that in itself is a success"
A new mother just trying to make it work:
On a typically atypical work day:
The baby comes to a lot of things with us; we don’t have any childcare and trade her off. She joins me on all the meetings and shoots.
A fairly raw and honest interview. I’m always rooting for her success and have been queueing up her Cooking 101 series. Now I have to put her cookbook, Start Here, on my to-read list.
#Tough to decide what to quote here without including it all or giving it away. I’ll leave you with this:
#Nothing about the web has changed that prevents us from going back. If anything, it’s become a lot easier. We can return.
None of the “big three” American car companies (if you can call Stellantis an American car company) sell sedans in the United States. This piece smartly explains some of the reasons why, and why it matters.
#Got an instant aha moment from this article by Jean Hsu on Medium:
Western society is very much ask culture. A classic example can be found in proverbs. “A squeaky wheel gets the grease” is an American proverb, enforcing the ideas of individualism and that asking for what you want will benefit you.
After a story about a family event, she wrapped up with this:
This is guess culture — and it’s a lot of saying not really what you actually want, and it’s a lot of reading between the lines to try to figure out what people want.
It all rang too true to me. There’s a pivot in the piece to the working world, which is obviously a strong ask culture (and she has a follow-up piece. I’ve had to do a lot of work and stretch myself to function in an ask-culture society.
#Been catching up on iPad news since last Tuesday’s event. I’m not going to wade into the “Crush” discourse — not my realm — but I’ve been interested in the perspectives of reviewers and those who have a vested interest in the further evolution of iPad as a platform.
I’m starting with a couple of non reviews because they’re frankly more interesting. Both of these have a lot in them, but much of it is really important for Apple to figure out as I hinted at before the event:
And of course, Michael Tsai has rounded up similar links.
Broken out into categories by media.
These are famously difficult to share in a usable way — find and listen to them in your podcast app of choice — but some of the more interesting conversations I’ve heard on the subject.
An interesting deep dive on the media / entertainment social media darling, which was acquired by LBG Media in late 2023.
#Interesting to read about the second alternative app store launching in the European Union, Setapp Mobile. The Verge goes over some of the differences between it and AltStore PAL, which made a huge splash with the release of the Delta emulator.
#I originally saw this in my inbox, but the article (gift linked here) has a more fun illustration to open it. I’m looking forward to seeing how the series evolves as they describe the challenges of mobility in New York.
#People found iPod and iPhone worth the price without an App Store. For the other form factors they’ve produced since then, Apple has asked customers to imagine what each of these could be used for, not necessarily what they already can do out of the box.
I find myself in strange disagreement with Louie here. I strongly recall the original iPad announcement laying out the specifics of what made the device superior compared to the alternatives, placing itself distinctly between the Mac and iPhone.
Arguably since then, the tide has shifted — but mostly due to the ambitions of the devices. Where we perhaps agree (is it a matter of semantics?) is the focus appears to be on making world-changing products instead of finding one thing to solve and putting the care and attention behind it. That said, few companies even attempt the ambition of Apple today.
#Jack Cheng created a simple text capture app as a way to learn iOS development; in this article, he goes through his design and development process.
I downloaded it but haven’t quite found a way in that doesn’t instead remind me of Drafts, but I like the simplicity of it all the same. Going to give it a more honest effort here in the coming days.
#Another installment of now-stale links I wished I’d posted at the time.
If one of the many crises that befall our society is loneliness, third places offer a solution. These environments are where the community gathers, where you can be either actively engaged in conversation or passively taking in the bustle around you.
Some of the common culprits of the challenge of finding good third places in the US: late-stage capitalism, hostile architecture, the surveillance state.
#No pricing yet but a lot of details about colors, trim levels, and seating. Would have been nice to see more photos.
#I like to think of HTML and CSS like the 2×4 in construction: When the nail gun replaced the hammer or the power drill replaced the screwdriver, they changed the context, speed, and process of building a home—but the 2×4 is still the most stable structure.
I love this piece.
#A splash video on Arc’s expansion to Windows with some Q&A on YouTube. The app was officially released on Tuesday. In my last full-time role, I lived in Arc — it worked incredibly well for keeping things organized, especially as a person who worked on several different projects with dozens upon dozens of tabs.
#In case you missed the news earlier this week that Tesla laid off more than 500 employees, InsideEVs does a good job here of talking with former employees about how things were going and how flummoxing this change in strategy is to them. Lots of great quotes, including this:
“We couldn’t keep up. And now the network is even larger,” he said. “Now, guess what? There are even more consumers. There’s gonna be a lot more issues that could possibly come up.”
See also, from Electrek: “Tesla is already pulling back Supercharger plans after firing team”
#Not to become an iPad blog (see: ‘Where Does iPad Fit?’) but David Pierce has an essay in The Verge about what the platform needs ahead of Tuesday’s event. His take?
I think the iPad’s modular potential is actually much bigger.
If Apple wants to get there, it needs more accessories — so, so many more accessories. The iPad is a screen and a processor, and everything else should be an add-on for whenever you need it.
I agree in principle with this thought and process, but embedded in this idea is the mistaken belief that Apple needs to be the one providing all of these accessories. Third parties should be the ones who are incentivized to build the kinds of extensions to the “Naked Robotic Core” (to use a term from John Siracusa) that make iPad a maximally flexible platform.
That said, Apple needs to do its own work to make that worthwhile — hopefully by getting their entire product line in order to play nice with a broad ecosystem. They started with getting everything onto USB-C as a connector but things like keeping the Smart Connector in the same place or aligning on USB 3 or 4 would be welcome enhancements.
#Some links that have been bouncing around the internet and worth noting, without comment:
Speaking of The New Yorker and baby-led weaning, treasured food writer Helen Rosner wrote on the newsletter The Green Spoon about her 1.5-year-old’s meals. The name, for the uninitiated, is a play on The Grub Street Diet, a fun and sometimes enlightening tale of eating, usually in New York City. From Helen’s piece:
While the mushrooms were cooking I supremed a Sumo citrus, for no reason other than I wanted to be able to say I’d done that while writing this food diary.
She gets it.
#The New Yorker has a good and very aesthetic feature on baby-led weaning as part of their Food Issue:
(The “weaning” part refers to the practice of introducing solid foods alongside breast milk or formula, rather than just replacing them.) As the name suggests, it requires following a baby’s lead, which some adults find challenging. Babies are, well, babies. What do they know that we don’t?
It’s relatively progressive idea about allowing children first learning to eat explore food on their own rather than be fed purées. We do it, and while I don’t think it means my daughter won’t eventually beg for dino nuggets, buttered noodles, and a plain cheese quesadilla, she’s getting the chance to test out an expansive palette.
#Long, beautiful remembrance of The Ithaca Times movie critic Bryan VanCampen, who died in September. Lots of great anecdotes by “rival” critic Beth Saulnier, with whom he did the movie-review show Take Two on local public access.
From Pete Croatto’s piece in Poynter:
#“I really feel like Bryan, until the last movie of his life, had this wide-eyed wonder of the joy of going to the movies,” Saulnier said. His appetite was insatiable.
Liz Lopatto on the Spotify-based game, Music League:
Music League makes music social in a way that social media algorithms, ironically, do not. Every league I am in has a group chat that erupts when a new playlist drops, and again when the votes are in. The comments on the songs are often very funny and might be my favorite part of the game.
The short version of how it works: Each session contains a text-based prompt for music (e.g. tracks with a good bass line), you anonymously submit one or more songs, then the league votes on submissions.
Your mileage may vary on the social aspect — the groups I’ve been in have not been quite as chatty — but it’s definitely a great way to push yourself to experience more music. Personally, I’ve found myself using it more as nostalgia digging, revisiting work I enjoyed earlier, and the right prompt can really put a huge variety of new work in front of you.
#From Curbed:
#This is turnstile No. 602 in Fare Control Area R238, at one of the entries to the Grand Central–42nd Street subway station. It looks about the same as every other one in the subway system, but it has a special distinction: It’s probably the hardest-working turnstile in the city.
New York City Mayor Eric Adams has reported to be cutting even deeper into initiatives like free 3-K and pre-K, another brick in the wall that is an unaffordable city. From The Cut:
“Parents are really struggling to find affordable, high-quality child care,” Accurso said in a TikTok on Tuesday. “Here in New York City, our mayor cut $400 million from early-childhood-education programs and is proposing more cuts.”
She’s also headed to DC to speak with representatives because the child-care affordability isn’t just an urban issue. From the comments on her TikTok: “Sometimes you’re my childcare, so thank you!!!”
Update, Apr. 19: Some of the funding has been restored, according to Gothamist.
#Rob Conery, referencing Steve Martin and his recent Apple TV documentary, notes that journaling is a major part of his craft:
He talks about his journaling process a lot in his various biographies and documentaries, but, in short: it’s a tool he uses to reflect and improve.
I’ve had that documentary on my radar and I’m more excited to watch it now. For Rob’s essay, I feel like it’s a great reminder about the importance of documenting as you go and taking that time to reflect.
#Not sure why I didn’t link it at the time, but Josh Topolsky dropped a link on Threads announcing his new financially focused site. The venture was originally announced back in January 2023 with a drumbeat of news in Ben Smith’s media newsletter in Semafor.
I’ll be curious to see how this one goes. Visually, it has very strong echoes of Gawker and The Outline, but with the added richness of data visualizations like Datawrapper and Chartr, which Sherwood Media smartly acquired late last year.
Disclosure: Josh and I used to work together at BDG, where we launched and redesigned several sites including Input and Gawker, may they rest in peace.
#Originally, I wasn’t going to write about Matt Birchler’s article on missing his iPad. It felt more like a follow up on feelings about Apple Vision Pro, which I’ve yet to demo, but as it sat with me it and others commented on it, it made more of an impression. Finally, a feature on iPad at 14 on Inverse convinced me I needed to write about it.
For background, I’ve tried working exclusively off an iPad for a long time. I’m no Federico Viticci, but I saw iPad as a means for flexible computing from the very start.
Today, I own two iPads: a mini and a 12.9-inch Pro. The smaller one takes the bulk of my usage despite its less-impressive specs. It’s the device I’ll grab whether I’m catching up on YouTube (via Play), cooking using Mela, or triaging RSS feeds in NetNewsWire.
The Pro, by comparison, waned in its value to me over the years. I purchased the original in 2015 and update with generation new version until the 3rd. As many have noted, the software hasn’t kept up with the hardware, so despite the more impressive screen and blazing SoC performance, the cost didn’t seem worth the upgrade.
Considering some highly anticipated new iPad hardware, largely underwhelming software updates, and the renaissance of Mac hardware, I think it’s an opportune moment to look at the strengths and weaknesses of iPad.
While I bristle at the idea that iPad is only meant for consumption (in fact, this post was entirely composed on iPads), there is something that’s light and easy in the ability to plow through inboxes and lean back with reading or watching. This is a natural primary use and I don’t think it’s going anywhere.
For a next level of light productivity, there’s a lot to recommend for the Magic / Smart Keyboard. It’s more difficult to suggest this with a 12.9-inch iPad Pro — it’s so much heavier than say, a MacBook Air — but the versatility of removing the keyboard is pretty nice.
Additionally, for the working artist, iPad has really done a tidy job of covering pen-based input. Surface may come on top for features like an integrated kickstand, but its writing implements are wanting.
Finally, I recently had the opportunity to use a fifth-generation iPad Pro on the same setup as my MacBook Pro. The improved Stage Manager in iPadOS 17 along with other creature comforts add up to an impressive upgrade, and you really could get through the vast majority of a modern creative professional’s workflow this way. Some specific notes here:
I’ll save my specific gripes for a future installment.
What holds iPad back isn’t apps per se, although I would argue poorly maintained apps or ones that don’t follow OS conventions (stares annoyedly at Google’s suite) are not helping. It’s actually Apple’s most important app on iPadOS, Safari.
If iPad is supposed to scale from a Chromebook rival to a laptop replacement, the browser is at the center of both of those experiences. And if iPad, like the Mac, is the kind of platform that needs as many expressions of applications as possible to run as easily as possible, today that means the web. While plenty of websites are poor sports, optimizing for Chrome at the expense of Safari, the browser still stands to be improved so it can recede when needed for web apps.
“Add to Home Screen,” for example, is a great if still-not-fully-baked idea. Where it falls down is in knowing the whole browser is right there at the edges. Using Figma, for example, feels revelatory at first. A project loads, you start to click around successfully, and then you try to rename something. There needs to be a greater disconnect between web apps and Safari as the chrome that surrounds it, and I don’t see anything from the DMA requiring this kind of work to happen.
GitHub Codespaces is another example of a web-based tool that just does not feel at home on iPad. You can get it to work, sure, but there’s just something about that experience that’s lacking. Maybe it’s as simple as disabling some of Safari’s keybindings on an installed webapp, but it needs love.
Beyond the browser — which should not be taken lightly — there’s the continued challenge of multitasking. While better, Stage Manager isn’t quite there. It needs things like a higher limit of app windows, named/pinned/restricted groups of app windows that don’t disappear, and a fix for the many varied bugs and challenges involved with app switching. If you’ve never encountered a focus issue like accidentally closing a window you thought was in the background, you effectively haven’t used Stage Manager.
We’re entering a moment where gadgets are about to proliferate to attempt to squeeze out old computing forms, either as sidekicks to or replacements of what you carry in your pocket or bag. Many allege themselves to be contextual computers, and in this generation I’d say they aren’t aiming that high.
iPad still has some serious legs in terms of its ability to better insinuate itself into the regular flow of people who have since pushed it aside in this manner.
It’s largely still in the hands of Apple’s OS and Safari developers to make an experience that treats the web as a first-class citizen and tightens up the docked experience. That said, I think this hardware renaissance has the opportunity to give fresh ideas to iPad’s ecosystem: foldables and dockables just scratch the surface of what could make it a better contextual computer.
#Missed posting this last week when it was first published but was reminded of it on an episode of The Vergecast. I agree with the premise though I would say the underlying issue with notifications is that people are generally predisposed to allow them because of FOMO. (I do not; I am ruthless with most notification requests.)
That said, it pairs nicely with a recent MrMobile video recalling the Palm Pre, with an excellent walk down memory lane of the early WebOS days.
#I thought this process shot, shared by Bethany Bongiorno on Threads, was worth seeing.
Updated Apr. 13: It’s a real shame about the state of Ai Pin at this point. The reviews have been unkind to be delicate (see also: requisite Michael Tsai roundup), with that overwhelming sense that it just wasn’t ready.
I think the team certainly deserves at least credit for getting to launch, and you can hear the painful earnestness of the vision of Imran Chaudhri and Bethany Bongiorno in Raymond Wong’s interview with them on Inverse. But vision isn’t enough, and the execution so far (according to the reviewers) is rough. Hopefully time will help them right their way.
Speaking of Raymond, his review is much more generous than most, and speaks to this hope:
#[S]imilar to how the Apple Watch didn’t get good until Series 3, if Humane can make some big improvements by the second or third generation, I think this AI-powered wearable that hangs off your shirt could have a future.
Tabs and personalization in Docs: Now with tabs you can organize information in a single document instead of linking to multiple documents or searching through Drive to find what you’re looking for. We’re also making it easy for you to personalize documents with full-bleed cover images that extend from one edge of your browser to the other. Both features will be generally available in the coming weeks.
As someone who’s spent an inordinate amount of time organizing documentation within Google Docs in past lives, this is a huge deal.
#Matt Haughey preaches on the unique experience that is the total solar eclipse:
It was truly an amazing experience. That 2017 summer day in Oregon at home blew my mind completely and utterly. I can confidently say I would willingly travel to the ends of the earth to see another again now.
Here in Rochester, we had significant cloud cover so we weren’t able to see the sun. That said, watching darkness coming from the horizon and passing through totality for more than three minutes was still breathtaking.
#A depressing but unsurprising tale of Trader Joe’s stringing on small businesses only to steal their products in Taste. Brooklyn Delhi, a small producer of South Asian-inspired sauces, is the main subject of the story. Its founder was also featured in an episode of The Sporkful, “The Problem With The International Aisle.”
See also: David Chang’s Momofuku packaged goods company (remember when he ran restaurants?) is attempting to trademark “chili crunch” and sending cease-and-desist letters to other producers.
#Speaking of Louie Mantia, he’s made a few updates to his personal website. Simple but inspiring.
#A long piece detailing everything Matt would love to see in a CMS focused on blogging. He describes Ghost, which he currently uses, as “the least bad one out there.” The combination of features and functionality he describes are hugely challenging to pull off — like I said, it’s a long one — but it would be the project I’d want to work on.
#This was mentioned offhand on a recent Waveform podcast on productivity apps guest starring The Verge’s David Pierce. I’ve been trying it out the last few weeks and it’s an interesting mix of productivity tool with an eye towards personal knowledge management. It released in February after an initial May 2020 (!) announcement.
You may remember the Superlist folks from their previous work, Wunderlist, which was infamously purchased by Microsoft to become the basis of their To-Do app.
#I’m embarking on a project I’ve been thinking about for more than a decade — I’m starting a blog in 2024.
There’s a lot of chatter about starting (and restarting) blogs these days. Some of my favorites: Louie Mantia’s plain and direct instructions for getting started, Anil Dash once again reminding us about the opportunity of being free of platforms, and of course Jason Kottke just carrying the torch this whole time.
It finally hit a solid rolling boil this spring watching old RSS feeds alight once more with people’s words and the drumbeat of those revolutionizing the media through blog posts. It had me checking in on some of my blogroll of the early aughts to see whether they’ve been coming back — some have, some never left.
So here I am, putting my shingle out, either a decade too late or maybe right on time.
In the pandemic, I had the opportunity to be deeply observant of my local neighborhood keeping up a (now-defunct) site of businesses, and I’ve missed that habit along with the general fun of tinkering with websites by extension. I’m hoping to do all that here in addition to quick linkposts of things that catch my attention around the web.
Pardon the dust as things get started; I literally created the repo today. RSS and the website are functional right now, and I’ll get to refining and building out some of the features that have been in my mind here these past dozen or more years.
As I close, I’m also reminded of the classic Field Notes tagline: “I’m not writing it down to remember it later, I’m writing it down to remember it now.” Recently, I understood the words more deeply, and they’re resonating with me these days.
I’ll see you out there on the web.
#The Rochester Democrat & Chronicle with a long takeout on the evolution and ultimate end of the effort to create a business improvement district downtown.
#The work of Professor Kahneman and Professor Tversky, [David Brooks] concluded, “will be remembered hundreds of years from now.”
Thinking, Fast and Slow is an excellent book.
#I remembered walking through Wake when I first went to Seattle. Powerful work.
#Just lovely. I didn’t quite follow his advice, but kinda close.
#A better look at the pin with more faces and details about future plans, and much more human (to use a term) than their first demo. Others noted the delays in response time, but the thing that strikes me is the poor quality of the voice. To add insult to injury, listen to some of the location instructions. Cities, states, and ZIP codes for addresses in SoHo?
#A cofounder of the seafood restaurant wrote a Bourdain-esque requiem for Brooklyn Magazine.
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