Nothing is so perfect…
Automobiles have been around for well over a century. During that time, we’ve gotten pretty good at designing and building their basic components and controls: seats, doors, pedals, steering wheels, mirrors, etc. But when today’s automakers decide to make an electric vehicle (EV), they seemingly forget much of what they once knew, creating new versions of features that are objectively, obviously…
I spend a lot of time thinking about what Apple should be doing differently. I wrote Apple Turnover because so many of my notions kept running into a dead end: I could no longer bring myself to believe Apple would do these things without a change in leadership. When a company is described as being “ in turnaround ,” that usually means it needs to be restored to financial health and solvency. Apple…
Mac users of a certain age may remember Ambrosia Software , maker of iconic shareware hits like Maelstrom and Escape Velocity . For over a decade, the Ambrosia website included this quotation on its homepage: “ Virtue does not come from money, but rather from virtue comes money, and all other things good to man. ” ―Socrates In other words, don’t try to make money. Try to make great things, and the…
Two months ago, I launched Hyperspace , a Mac app for reclaiming disk space without removing files . The feature set of version 1.0 was intentionally very conservative. As I wrote in my launch post , Hyperspace modifies files that it did not create and does not own. This is an inherently risky proposition. The first release of Hyperspace mitigated these risks, in part, by entirely avoiding certain…
Love, Death & Robots is an animated anthology series on Netflix. Each episode is a standalone story, though there is the barest of cross-season continuity in the form of one story featuring characters from a past season. I love animation, but I’m hesitant to recommend Love, Death & Robots to casual viewers for a couple of reasons. First, this show is not for kids. It features a lot of violence,…
--> My interest in file systems started when I discovered how type and creator codes 1 and resource forks contributed to the fantastic user interface on my original Macintosh in 1984. In the late 1990s, when it looked like Apple might buy Be Inc. to solve its operating system problems, the Be File System was the part I was most excited about. When Apple bought NeXT instead and ( eventually )…
The recent Beeper controversy briefly brought the “ blue bubbles vs. green bubbles ” topic back into the mainstream. Here’s a brief review for those of you who are (blessedly) unaware of this issue. Messages sent using the iMessage service appear in blue text bubbles within the Messages app. Messages sent using something other than the iMessage service (e.g., SMS , or ( soon ) RCS) appear in green…
The graphical user interface on the original Macintosh was a revelation to me when I first used it at the tender age of 8 years old. Part of the magic was thanks to its use of " direct manipulation ." This term was coined in the 1980s to describe the ability to control a computer without using the keyboard to explain what you wanted it to do. Instead of typing a command to move a file from one…
While the utility of Generative AI is very clear at this point, the moral, ethical, and legal questions surrounding it are decidedly less so. I’m not a lawyer, and I’m not sure how the many current and future legal battles related to this topic will shake out. Right now, I’m still trying to understand the issue well enough to form a coherent opinion of how things should be. Writing this post is…
I first read about the “ blue ocean ” strategy in a story (probably in Edge magazine ) about the Nintendo Wii . While its competitors were fighting for supremacy in the game-console market by producing ever-more-powerful hardware capable of high-definition visuals, Nintendo chose not to join this fight. The pursuit of graphics power was a “red ocean” that was already teeming with sharks, fighting…
“The Plumber Problem” is a phrase I coined to describe the experience of watching a movie that touches on some subject area that you know way more about than the average person, and then some inaccuracy in what’s depicted distracts you and takes you out of the movie. (This can occur in any work of fiction, of course: movies, TV, books, etc.) Here’s an example. A plumber is watching a movie with a…
--> --> It is said that every five years , Hypercritical t-shirts return. The last sale was in 2018, so the time has come! This sale ends on Saturday, August 12th, so if you want a shirt, don’t delay. Last time, I hinted that it would be five years before the shirts were sold again, and some people didn’t believe me. But it was true then, and it’s true now. If you want a shirt, buy it now, or…
I’m part of the MTV generation . If you can immediately picture the videos for Hey Mickey , The Safety Dance , You Might Think , Money For Nothing , and Take On Me , you might be too. I was transfixed from day one , not just by the bands and the music, but by the format. Some videos told a story (of varying levels of coherence ). Others were more of a vibe , as the kids say these days. But always,…
SwitchGlass 2.0, the first major update to my customizable app switcher for macOS, is now available on the Mac App Store . It’s a free update for existing SwitchGlass users. Since the initial release of SwitchGlass in 2020 , the top feature request has been the ability to manually reorder apps in the app switcher. Version 2.0 adds that feature, and many more . To learn more about SwitchGlass, read…
When I graduated college in 1997, I started a full-time job with the same dot-com startup that I had been working for part time during my senior year. In the twenty-five years that have followed, I’ve had a series of jobs in the same field ("full-stack web development," in today’s parlance). I’ve worked for companies of all sizes, from tiny startups to enterprise businesses with billions of…
Ever since the story broke , I’ve had one overriding thought about the Hey.com App Store rejection controversy. It’s a point I’ve already tried to make on a recent episode of ATP and on Twitter . Before WWDC arrives with its own wave of Apple-related news, I’d like to take one more run at it. Here goes. Everyone wants apps that are feature-rich, easy-to-use, secure, and have good customer support.…
When DragThing was finally left behind—after 24 years of service—by macOS Catalina’s lack of support for 32-bit apps, I knew I’d miss many of its features. I missed its (optional) modification of the Mac’s window-layering policy so much that I made my first Mac app, Front and Center , to replace it. My second Mac app, SwitchGlass , also replaces a feature I miss from DragThing. (Thank you, James…
By the time Mac OS X was first released in 2001, I had been using what would eventually be known as “classic” Mac OS for seventeen years. These were seventeen formative years for me, from the ages of 9 to 26. The user interface of classic Mac OS was as ingrained in me as Star Wars or any other cultural institution. My love for classic Mac OS is why I started researching and reviewing Mac OS X. Big…
The upcoming sequel to the 1986 classic Top Gun has reminded me of a favorite memory from my youth. When I was a kid, I spent a lot of time looking over the TV listings. Each daily newspaper had the TV listings for that day, but there was also a weekly TV guide that came with the Sunday paper. This was the one I’d pore over while eating breakfast each morning. The weekly guide had a section where…
According to any reasonable set of quantifiable measures, Jony Ive departs Apple as the greatest product designer who has ever lived. His hit products sold in vast numbers and were fundamentally transformative to both the company he worked for and the world at large. We all know their names: iMac, iPod, iPhone, iPad. Together, these products helped set the direction for the most consequential…
These are some of my favorite video games. They also happen to be truly great games, though they vary widely in terms of the required time commitment and gaming experience. Many of these games are old enough to have spawned “ remastered ” versions. The remasters are usually easier to find, and are often—but not always—the versions I recommend playing. See the descriptions for more details. This…
Five years ago , I sold t-shirts commemorating my first podcast, Hypercritical , which ran for 100 episodes in 2011–2012. The shirts also celebrated this website, which is updated nearly once per year. Thanks to everyone who purchased a shirt all those years ago. Since then, I've gotten many requests to sell the shirts again, either to replace old shirts or because someone missed the previous sale…
Nearly 15 years ago, I wrote my first review of Mac OS X for a nascent “ PC enthusiast’s " website called Ars Technica . Last fall, I wrote my last . Though Apple will presumably announce the next major version of OS X at WWDC this coming June , I won’t be reviewing it for Ars Technica or any other publication, including the website you’re reading now. Those who listen to the ATP , the weekly…
I reviewed OS X 10.10 Yosemite for Ars Technica . This is the eleventh major release of OS X, and I've reviewed them all . There are several ways to read my review. Read it for free on the web Buy it from Apple’s iBookstore for $4.99 Buy it from Amazon’s Kindle store for $4.99 Subscribe to Ars Premier for a month for $5 and get all of these options: Read it on a single, ad-free web page Download…
I reviewed OS X 10.9 Mavericks for Ars Technica . I’ve been reviewing OS X since 1999, and this is the tenth major release. There are several ways to read my review. Read it for free on the web Buy it from Apple’s iBookstore for $4.99 Buy it from Amazon’s Kindle store for $4.99 Subscribe to Ars Premier for a month for $5 and get all of these options: Read it on a single, ad-free web page Download…
Hypercritical t-shirts 2.0, clockwise from the top-left: Silver, Gold, Black, and Navy. Let's try this again . Last month, inspired by Marco and bolstered by the drop-dead-simple Teespring website, I put the first Hypercritical t-shirt up for sale. The response from fans was amazing, vastly exceeding my expectations. Unfortunately, that sale was aborted due to my unauthorized use of copyrighted…
Hypercritical t-shirts, clockwise from the top-left: Silver, Gold, Black, and Navy. Update - May 14, 2013: I regret to report that the Hypercritical t-shirt has been canceled due to the unauthorized use of an icon from a past version of the Macintosh operating system. All purchases will be refunded in full. This situation is entirely my fault. I'm sorry for disappointing everyone. Thanks to all of…
The mobile market, everyone agrees, is the technology industry’s future. What’s not so clear is which company is best positioned to thrive in that future. For smartphones in particular, the traditional metrics are confusing. Android has 70% market share , but Apple is taking 70% of the profit . Google, meanwhile, is not benefiting from Android’s market share dominance as much as Samsung, which…
The iPhone 5 caught some flak for being “too light.” Similarly, some consider the latest revision of the iMac to be “ too thin .” You’ll find some incredulity in the articles that address this topic. It’s a little silly, right? After all, what’s the alternative? Thicker and heavier? Stagnation? But these complaints are not entirely unreasonable. When it comes to electronics, density is often a…