By Joseph Rosensteel
Write once, run anywhere. For a while I’ve been trying to automate some of the annoying little things that I have to do to post to my blog. It’s not exactly a hardship, but if I make certain kinds of typos in the front matter of my posts it can result in the post not appearing (a safety feature!) or appearing with the wrong date and time and littering everyone’s RSS feeds. You might recall this…
One of the things that I think about from time to time is Apple’s collection of apps. Some are the crown jewels, like Apple’s pro apps, and others help an everyday consumer to tackle their iLife. All are pretty starved for attention and resources, outside of infrequent updates aligned with showing off the native power of Apple Silicon, Apple Intelligence, or demos of platform integration that…
General Motors CEO Mary Barra and Chief Product Officer Sterling Anderson were on The Verge’s Decoder podcast with Nilay Patel. Nilay has talked to every automotive CEO that’s been on Decoder about CarPlay, and it’s no surprise he discussed it with Mary and Sterling. If you want to skip to the start of the transcript that’s about CarPlay it begins with a kind of rambling question about Google…
The release of the Sora slop-feed monstrosity has really done some shock and awe on the general public and on the press. People are wowed by the fidelity and the stability of the product, especially when compared to what previous iterations of Sora, and models like it, have been able to generate. This fidelity has also lead more people to ask questions than they were initially when it was…
This is a great video —and it has Todd Vaziri! Todd is a smart, talented guy who is very aware of common misconceptions that most people have about what VFX is. People think they see “CGI” when there’s some fantastical element on screen, but they really don’t comprehend the extent to which modern filmmaking —and television— augment photography. As someone who is intimately familiar with audience…
As I have written about previously, I have been trying to read more often to avoid filling my time entirely with social media, or entirely with the deluge of awful news that makes my anxiety spike. I suppose if those weren’t things that concerned you then you could just read for “fun” or something. Scott McNulty does an excellent monthly round-up of books he’s read , and I like to refer to it for…
Stephen Robles has a good run through of all the new features in tvOS 26 on YouTube. I don’t have the energy, or enthusiasm to detail these features, so please refer to his fine work. I will never, ever, ever have as much to say about the Apple TV Sing app as Stephen Robles. That’s a promise. It’s a specific piece of nerdy corporate synergy (singergy?) I’m not even sure people will remember the…
I had a thought while I was watching the latest iPhone launch event—other than, “This is what I’m doing with my free time?”—and it’s that iPhones are basically cars. It finally did it. The real Project Titan was the iPhones Apple made along the way. Continue reading on Six Colors ►
I appreciate what Adobe is doing with Project Indigo . It’s a free iOS camera app, but it is heavily disclaimed as being experimental with unique features you can’t find in other apps. But Adobe also says they’re targeting “casual” photographers, which seems misguided. A few people I know have even been evangelizing Project Indigo because they love it so much , especially when they compare it to…
Apple Maps navigation might be on par with Google’s these days, but Apple’s location data is not. Google offers broad coverage for many points of interest, while Apple’s data has mostly relied on knitting together bits from competing business partners. This attempts to mimic Google’s comprehensive coverage without Apple having to do the foundational work itself. Apple recently announced it would…
I acknowledge this is a pretty strange complaint when you think about all the other ways that Shortcuts could be improved (so, so many) but allow me to walk you through my thinking: I want to do something with Shortcuts because it is Apple’s only cross-platform automation tool. I don’t know how to do it in Shortcuts because the actions are poorly documented and often use oddball names that the…
Joanna Stern might be the best person to interview Apple executives. She doesn’t lob insults, or fiery condemnation, that would end the interview, but she doesn’t avoid asking serious questions about the unfulfilled promises. Remember when she interviewed Craig seven months ago about Siri and Apple Intelligence? Go back and listen to that spin. Her questions are often so brief and direct, that you…
I wasn’t satisfied with Apple, and Tim Cook, going into WWDC this year, and I remain dissatisfied after the fact. I don’t have the warm fuzzies when I see Craig on screen. There’s a distinct lack of new ideas in how the event is put together , and in many things in the event itself, despite all prior criticism about these very tame presentations lacking an air of sincerity and feeling incredibly…
Unlike Reel 2 Real, I do not like to move it, move it. I moved a lot when I was a kid and I hate everything about it. I’m generally a pretty anxious person so telling me I have to go through everything I own and squeeze it into a smaller space, or get rid of it isn’t going to relax me. Jason and I have been together for nearly 16 years. In 2020 we each ditched our one bed, one bath apartments and…
Here’s the problem with CarPlay Ultra: It’s still CarPlay. Based on what we’ve seen of CarPlay Ultra, Apple believes that if it controls the appearance of the displays in cars, then using the car will be a good experience. I’m not sure that’s an assumption I’d make, especially when styling isn’t directly connected to function—as is the case with most of what distinguishes CarPlay Ultra from…
Jess Weatherbed at The Verge writes : The leaked call also gave some insight into what the device likely won’t be — Altman said that it isn’t a pair of glasses, and that Ive wasn’t keen to make something you’d need to wear on the body, having recently slammed the Humane AI Pin . Altman has also denied rumors that OpenAI is developing a phone . _The Journal_previously reported that Ive and Altman…
Apple released a new Apple Watch band for Pride, like they always do. From their press release : Featuring a tapestry of rainbow stripes that vary in shape and size, each Pride Edition Sport Band is assembled by hand from individual stripes of vibrant color that are compression-molded together, creating subtle yet striking variations. No two bands are exactly alike, reflecting the individuality of…
9to5 Mac noticed that Apple had an Apple Snapshots page up . There’s no announcement, or statement about what’s it’s supposed to be, or who it is for, so it’s unclear if there’s supposed to be more to this: https://snapshot.apple.com/ It’s puzzling why it would appear for public consumption in the state that it’s in. It’s already being indexed by search engines, so if they didn’t mean to release…
Last week, Roku held a press event in New York where they unveiled their latest streaming devices, wireless cameras, and minor adjustments to their existing, content-driven interface. If you were hoping for a dramatic update to Roku OS, Lucas Manfredi has the disappointing details over at The Wrap : The platform introduced a “Coming Soon to Theaters” row and personalized sports highlights. It also…
Scharon Harding’s post for ArsTechnica starts with the UK, but it gets around the globe . For the US, the recommendation garnering the most attention is one calling for a 5 percent levy on UK subscriber revenue from streaming video on demand services, such as Netflix. That’s because if streaming services face higher taxes in the UK, costs could be passed onto consumers, resulting in more streaming…
Adobe has a new blog post up outlining their vision for “agentic AI” in Adobe’s products . At Adobe, our approach to agentic AI is clear, and it mirrors our approach to generative AI: The best use of AI is to give people more control and free them to spend more time on the work they love – whether that’s creativity, analysis or collaboration. We’ve always believed that the single most powerful…
My blog is made by a rube, if you will. This site is a static blog generator that’s basically a single 300-ish line Python script from 2014 . I was “inspired” to make it when static site generators were all the rage and I figured it would help me with my Python skills, as Python is a language often used in VFX software. I don’t recommend people use any of my code, or write their own site like…
Jason Snell wrote about how he rejoined Netflix on the ad-supported tier , and it was a poor experience for him. Not only because he’s not used to seeing TV shows with ads these days, but because Netflix shows aren’t always made with ads in mind. While the ads played on, I began creating a thought experiment: There’s a $10 difference between the ad and ad-free plans. If Mr. Netflix (he wears a top…
Here’s another “Joe complains about Shortcuts” post for you. Last time I complained about not being able to reverse a list . This time I’m complaining about how Shortcuts handles time zones. I know time zones are the bane of every programmer’s existence, but I’m not going to give the Shortcuts team a break because they have all the time zone data, they just implemented it in the worst way they…
I know, linking to myself is very Obama-awards-Obama meme . This post is relevant if you’ve been keeping tabs on what I’ve been writing about on my blog recently. Those posts here helped me see a pattern. I’m not sure if anyone else sees a pattern, or if I’ve just made a mess with red string and a pile of mashed potatoes that looks like Devil’s Tower, but I like to think it makes sense. So here’s…
A while ago Jason Snell said that he would do a streamer box/dongle shoot-out on an episode of Upgrade, and today’s the day he hit publish . It’s well worth your time to read it, particularly if you aren’t as familiar with “the state of the art” in the streaming landscape. The last time I did a “device shoot-out” was in 2016 , and none of the platforms are the same. I certainly stopped…
It certainly took me by surprise when Apple contacted me, of all people, to be the sole news outlet to run the story about the fifth MacBook Air color being added to the recently updated line-up. Certainly they were contacting me out of deep respect, and not as a prank, right? Second, I didn’t know why this color was released so soon after the line was refreshed. When I hopped on the WebEx call…
Today I needed to scan a document I received in the mail and email it to someone. Nothing arduous, I just don’t do it very often so I forgot where the “Scan Document” function lived. I’m glad that Scan Document function exists, and it works just fine. Bravo to the people at Apple that made it. First, I opened the Camera app —because this is the app that takes photographs— and it wasn’t there. It’s…
Apple’s statement to John Gruber last week that they are delaying “More Personalized Siri” has certainly sparked some conversation. With Gruber himself going on to write a pretty scathing post about this whole debacle. People certainly took note . A key part of what John wrote was that he believed in the company’s claims, because it would be unlike Present Day Apple to promote something that they…
I hate Shortcuts. I don’t ever want to use it . The interface is bad, nothing ever makes any sense, but it’s the only way to do certain things, especially if you want to have some kind of automation that works on iOS too. Yesterday, when I was writing my blog post, I wanted to include screenshots of the ugly PlexAmp interface. The screenshots for iOS are almost always vertical 9:16, so it’s…
Since my previous blog posts on this subject, where I found out that all the streaming services are either bad because of how they treat artists, or bad because how they treat the world, I tried some far less desirable options. Self-Loathing —I Mean Self-Hosting PlexAmp I have been very resistant to using Plex. I used Handbrake a million years ago to rip DVDs for my iPod Video, and iPod Touch. It…
David Pierce apparently ran a parallel music app project while I was doing my own. He has a much wider pool to draw from at The Verge so he has services I’ve never heard of, like Astiga , which can stream your music from any cloud storage source, but they do charge a monthly subscription for that. David got the same feedback I did, that people love Plex for music with the Plexamp app. Plexamp and…
I wrote about my dissatisfaction with Apple, and Tim Cook , a few weeks ago and said that I would be looking for ways to reduce what I’m spending with Apple. There is no great alternative for all of Apple’s products and services, because many alternatives are run by companies that align themselves with the same authoritarian interests as Apple. If I’m going to change something then there should be…
Netflix deeply regrets accidentally making Netflix a better product for its customers. It temporarily pushed out a change that let people see Netflix shows in the Apple TV app , a change people have been asking for since the debut of the Apple TV app in 2016 with its Up Next queue and content aggregation features. Fortunately, Netflix swiftly corrected the error before too many of its users could…
I was recently in New York City and that meant I was juggling Google Maps and Apple Maps to get around. They’re largely comparable products these days, but there are some strengths and weaknesses that make it worth my time to juggle them. I created a Shortcut to help with that . Google Maps is where my boyfriend and I go to check location information, and to collaboratively edit the Google Maps…
Jason Snell released his annual Apple Report Card ! It’s a bunch of people that talk about Apple for a living, and some other people that are too online, like myself. The full text of the survey responses is available in a separate post, here . I tried not to be too wordy, but if you’re following this blog I assume it’s because you’d like me to elaborate on my comments, so I shall. The two things…
I know this is a rather dramatic headline and that some people might incorrectly assume that I’m mad about some particular piece of hardware or software, but it should come as no surprise that I’m hopping mad at Tim Cook for how he’s ingratiating himself to President Trump again. The President has done, and will continue to do, harm to marginalized communities. Harm was a promise of his campaign…
Chance Millar at 9to5Mac wrote up the new changes to notification summaries that are in the iOS 18.3 developer beta released today. When you enable notification summaries, iOS 18.3 will make it clearer that the feature – like all Apple Intelligence features – is a beta. You can now disable notification summaries for an app directly from the Lock Screen or Notification Center by swiping, tapping…
I’ve been very conscious of how much I use Instagram. I deactivated my Facebook account many years ago, and I don’t use any other Meta products, but for a variety of reasons Instagram’s still there. What Do I Use It For? It’s the primary venue for finding out about what’s happening in the lives of friends and family —that might sound familiar because that was allegedly what Facebook was for. It’s…
I’ve been doing a little blog post series on travel that’s mainly focused on the technology side of things. There was France , Japan , Switzerland , and now Hong Kong. Planning Ahead Drafts Jason didn’t prepare a detailed itinerary for this trip like we had for the others so there was no Google Sheets document to deal with. I collected names of coffee shops, cafes, etc. as we watched travel…
I wrote about my building frustrations with Mail for Six Colors . I knew my draft was way too long before I turned it in, and apologized to Jason Snell. Instead of having a bee in my bonnet about Mail, I had a whole bee hive. The post on Six Colors is a much more focused, and more relatable, blog post that went right into the problems with Categories. That’s why Jason’s a great editor, folks. I’ll…
Jason Koebler at 404 Media went a TCL event and published his coverage of it today . It’s grim stuff. I am watching films that were made for TCL, the largest TV manufacturer on Earth as part of a pilot program designed to normalize AI movies and TV shows for an audience that it plans to monetize explicitly with targeted advertising and whose internal data suggests that the people who watch its…
Yesterday marked the “public release” of Sora, OpenAI’s video generator. Of course they had to almost immediately shutdown signups so was it released? We’ll need a team of philosophers to weigh in on that. The release was also five days after Google made their video generator, Veo, “available” by launching a private preview. I thought it was already privately previewed for Donald Glover who they…
OK? I apologize if the person running Apple Music Replay cares deeply about it, and is under resourced by someone above them who doesn’t care. Somewhere in that organization is a person, or group of people, who sees having Apple Music Replay as a feature to check off on a list, and they feel like they checked the box again for 2024. That’s mostly evident from the lack of progress from last year ,…
I really like this column that Jason Snell wrote for Macworld, though I did grab the title from his own Six Colors site instead of the Macworld one. Jason’s absolutely right in his assessment of why Mac app distribution is superior to the iOS App Store. In fact, not long after I read the piece Sarah Perez from TechCrunch posted about the TV Time app being pulled from the App Store because a rights…
My post for Six Colors yesterday is a video demo of Clean Up and other photo retouching tools for iOS. It’s not an embarrassing video, even though it isn’t exactly how it turned out. I don’t like to do anything at all with video, which is ironic considering I’ve been a visual effects artist for film, TV, and commercials for 19 years. That’s different because someone else has to set up the shot,…
This isn’t always a “tech” blog, but it’s not always a personal blog. I might as well put a marker here for the cornucopia of negative emotions I’ve been living with since Tuesday night. I keep trying not to think about the many ways in which this presidency will definitely, absolutely be bad, but I’d be lying if I said those intrusive thoughts weren’t constantly percolating up. I don’t have it in…
Good evening, and welcome to the pre-taped iOS call-in show where we tape all our shows about iOS releases, one release in advance. I’m your host, Ken Doral, and let’s try it again. It’s really not that hard, okay? Our topic once again is iOS 18.2. We’re taping it now, and it airs when the iOS 18.3 beta comes out. Okay, so if you’re watching me talk about iOS 18.1, don’t call to talk about it.…
There are many features of Apple’s Health app that I don’t have a reason to use, or to use frequently. One of the ones I had never tried before was Medications. However, I’ve basically been sick for nearly all the month of October, and have had a few different medications I needed to take on a consistent schedule for the first time over the course of this month. Don’t worry, everything seems to be…
For a long time there was the Siri face, and now there’s this Smart Stack face which is basically the same thing. However, now it claims my Watch in ways that are frankly irritating . When I look at my Watch I want to see my Watch face. I use Modular, and it’s laid out with complications in specific places so I can glance at my Watch and see what I want without having to interact with it. Things…