Category: Apps

Logitech’s Mouse Software Now Includes ChatGPT Support, Adds Janky ‘ai_overlay_tmp’ Directory to Users’ Home Folders

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I recently noticed a new folder in the root level of my Home directory, named ai_overlay_tmp:

ai_overlay_tmp

In preparation for a future Mac Power Users episode, I’ve been playing with a bunch of AI software, and I assumed something I downloaded generated this folder. I deleted it, just to be frustrated when the folder reappeared on its own.

Adding a new folder to the Home directory is a Cardinal Sin of Mac Programming, so I was on a mission to root out the cause. After some searching online, it seems that this folder was generated by Logi Options+, the software that came with my mouse, the Logitech MX Master 3S.1

Version 1.70 of Logi Options+ launched last week with — I kid you not — AI tools you can launch anywhere your cursor is located:

In today’s fast-paced, technology-enabled world, everyone is learning to work differently with breakthroughs in Generative AI.

Mastering prompt building enhances your efficiency and creativity. That’s why we developed the Logi AI Prompt Builder, a time and click-saving solution. Rephrase, summarize, and create custom-made prompt recipes with ChatGPT faster, with virtually no disruption to your workflow.

I cannot tell how little I want THE SOFTWARE FOR MY MOUSE to include features tied to ChatGPT … let alone a mouse with a built-in button to start a prompt.

These features are spun up into their own process named “Logi Al Prompt Builder” as you can see here:

Logi AI Prompt Builder

Best I can tell, there’s no way to disable these features, and they are automatically loaded with the Logi Options+ software is running. Some people have suggested running the “Offline” version of Options+ to avoid these features.

Update: You can also jump through these hoops to disable the AI features in the regular versions of Options+.

That seems to have done it for me, but only after I nuked everything Logitech off my system, including a 700 MB support folder buried in my Home folder. (Thanks, Hazel!)

Of course, you don’t need Logitech software to use a Logitech mouse once the initial settings are in place. For future tinkering, I’ve decided to check out SteerMouse and keep Logitech software off of my system.

As you can see, it can be used to adjust parameters on my MX Master 3S just fine, without any AI-powered bloatware:

Steermouse

I know AI is all the rage right now and having a deal to bring ChatGPT into your software is trendy, but including a tool like this in what is basically a mouse driver is ridiculous. I’m not opposed to using AI in software. I’m just opposed to when it shows up as an unexpected, poorly-implemented feature in software that doesn’t need it.

At least Logitech’s Mac developers did such a bad job with it, that it was easy to spot.

Widgetsmith 6.2 →

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Earlier today, David and I shipped version 6.2 of Widgetsmith. This release is for both iOS and visionOS, and packs some cool goodies:

Widgetsmith 6.2 brings a brand-new widget type: Background Sounds!

Beyond the standard White and Brown Noises, this release includes sounds from nature, including various intensities of rain, forest sounds for both daytime and nighttime and waves at the beach. These sounds are high quality and uncompressed, creating seamless loops for a rich soundscape. Create an immersive ambiance right from your home screen with the following sounds. All users have access to White Noise and Stream.

My favorite element to this new feature is being able to build a photo widget that doubles as a background sound widget. When David sent me a note about building that, I was pretty pumped.

I humbly suggest you give Brown Noise a test run. It’s my background noise of choice.

EU Fines Apple $2 Billion →

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The Verge’s Jon Porter and Jess Weatherbed:

In a press release on Monday, the EU Commission said its investigation found that “Apple bans music streaming app developers from fully informing iOS users about alternative and cheaper music subscription services available outside of the app,” in addition to preventing app providers from sharing instructions on how to subscribe to such offers.

“For a decade, Apple abused its dominant position in the market for the distribution of music streaming apps through the App Store,” said Margrethe Vestager, Executive Vice-President in charge of competition policy. “They did so by restricting developers from informing consumers about alternative, cheaper music services available outside of the Apple ecosystem. This is illegal under EU antitrust rules, so today we have fined Apple over €1.8 billion.”

Apple issued a statement this morning, right before releasing new notebooks:

Despite that success, and the App Store’s role in making it possible, Spotify pays Apple nothing. That’s because Spotify — like many developers on the App Store — made a choice. Instead of selling subscriptions in their app, they sell them on their website. And Apple doesn’t collect a commission on those purchases.

All told, the Spotify app has been downloaded, redownloaded, or updated more than 119 billion times on Apple devices. It’s available on the App Store in over 160 countries spanning the globe.

Apple goes on to list a bunch of ways it says they have helped Spotify achieve success, including features like CarPlay, access to Apple’s APIs, and fast App Store Review times. No one should have expected Apple to take this without a fight.

Apple Reverses Course on PWAs in EU →

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Chance Miller with some big news over at 9to5Mac:

Last month, Apple confirmed that iOS 17.4 would remove support for Home Screen web apps in the European Union. At the time, Apple said this decision was due to requirements under the Digital Markets Act related to support for alternative browser engines on iPhone.

Apple is now walking back that decision and says it will “continue to offer the existing Home Screen web apps capability in the EU.”

Here is Apple’s full statement to Miller:

Previously, Apple announced plans to remove the Home Screen web apps capability in the EU as part of our efforts to comply with the DMA. The need to remove the capability was informed by the complex security and privacy concerns associated with web apps to support alternative browser engines that would require building a new integration architecture that does not currently exist in iOS.

We have received requests to continue to offer support for Home Screen web apps in iOS, therefore we will continue to offer the existing Home Screen web apps capability in the EU. This support means Home Screen web apps continue to be built directly on WebKit and its security architecture, and align with the security and privacy model for native apps on iOS.

Developers and users who may have been impacted by the removal of Home Screen web apps in the beta release of iOS in the EU can expect the return of the existing functionality for Home Screen web apps with the availability of iOS 17.4 in early March.

When Apple said it was pulling support for PWAs in this release, it said it was because of the new rule that allows third-party browsing engines to run on iOS. Apple claimed that giving those third-party codebases all of the access that “Home Screen web apps” need to work would make the iPhone less secure.

Now, they are here to stay, but it’s important to note that these PWAs will still run atop WebKit, the engine that powers Safari. If you install Firefox or Chrome, and those browsers are using their own rendering engines, those engined will not power any PWAs a user has installed.

This is a move in the right direction. Even though PWAs aren’t widely used among iOS users, cutting them off in the EU with iOS 17.4 was a bad move. I’m curious if this last-minute change is at the behest of the EU, or if Apple is just trying to get ahead of things here. I’m also curious to see if PWAs being tied to WebKit will stand the test of time.

Simple Scan →

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Greg Pierce, the developer behind great apps like Drafts, Tally, and more is out with a new app that I am loving. It’s called Simple Scan, and it’s the fastest and least-annoying way I’ve ever seen to scan documents with the iPhone and iPad.

Here is how Greg describe it:

Do you love the Apple Notes document scanner, but would you like more flexibility in sending the scans to email, messages, files, or other apps? Then Simple Scan is for you. Simple Scan is the quick, easy way to scan paper documents to optimized, searchable PDF documents (or images) and send them almost anywhere.

I’ve tried a bunch of different scanning apps over the years and most of them are just too cluttered or come with goofy business models.

Simple Scan is different. Here’s the whole UI:

Simple Scan

This is an app clearly made by the guy who makes Drafts, as it’s all about taking information and sending it somewhere. While I often scan documents in Apple Notes, and know that I can do it in the Files app, this app is the perfect tool for scanning documents to save for later or send to another person.

The business model is also simple, as you can see. It’s just $4.99 a year or $19.99 forever. I instantly did the latter. Simple Scan is in the App Store now.

Apple’s Sports Features are Messy →

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Jason Snell:

When I got my first demo of the new Apple Sports app, I admit to being a little surprised: didn’t Apple already do live sports scores? Hadn’t I just seen the Arsenal score and play-by-play on my iPhone on Sunday morning when I was in the kitchen making breakfast?

I had. And it has led to a lot of confusion about what the Apple Sports app does and doesn’t do, which highlights just how scattered Apple’s current effort to bring information to sports fans really is. I imagine that it wasn’t planned to work this way, and I wouldn’t be surprised if Apple connects all of its disparate sports pieces eventually, but in the meantime things are a little confusing.

Let me attempt to clear it up a little bit.

I for one hope that Apple Sports becomes the single stop for all things scores, stats, and news for the teams I follow.

Apple Launches Apple Sports to Track Sports Scores →

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Today’s the opening day of MLS, and Apple has a new iPhone app out for sports lovers. Here’s a bit from the company’s press release:

Apple today introduced Apple Sports, a free app for iPhone that gives sports fans access to real-time scores, stats, and more. Designed for speed and simplicity, the app’s personalized experience puts users’ favorite leagues and teams front and center, featuring an easy-to-use interface designed by Apple. Apple Sports is available to download now in the App Store in the U.S., the U.K. and Canada.

Everyone’s favorite Report Card Daddy Cal fan Jason Snell spoke with Eddy Cue about the new app:

“I just want to get the damn score of the game,” Cue says. “And it’s really hard to do, because it seems like it’s nobody’s core [feature].” In a sports data world increasingly driven by fantasy and betting, Apple’s not trying to build an adjunct to some other app business model. (There are some betting lines displayed in the app, but there’s also a setting down in the Settings app to turn them off if you don’t want to see them.)

“We said, ‘We’re going to make the best scores app that you could possibly make,’” Cue said.

I love Eddy Cue.

The app is pretty straightforward. It pulls in any favorite teams you’ve set in the TV app, and you can add additional favorites. If you’re freaking out that your college football team isn’t listed, don’t worry, an update will be coming to add them before they get started later this year.

My beloved Memphis Tigers don’t play basketball until this evening, but in poking around the app this morning I was a little surprised at the lack of notification settings, especially given how much control sports fans have come to expect in this area thanks to apps like ESPN or Sports Alerts. I will report back after I see how this all sorts out.

In terms of data, the app has everything I would expect as a basketball fan, including play-by-plays, team stats and full box scores. However, you can only go back in time one day to see data from previous games. I would like to see Apple have historic data in the app, at least for the current season. I’d also like to see widget support, but I can see that coming in an update easily enough.

Apple Vision Pro Gaming →

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I think John Voorhees has played just about every game out for visionOS, but it’s interesting that the software isn’t the biggest issue:

In the final analysis, the trouble with the Apple Vision Pro is its lack of ports. Unless you’re relying on the games available on the App Store, that means you’ll have to contend with some sort of wireless connection. And, although there are some fun games on the App Store, the selection is far more limited than on iOS, iPadOS, or macOS, so it’s worth casting a wider net.

iTunes for Windows is Gone →

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Juli Clover:

The Apple Music, Apple TV, and Apple Devices apps that Apple has been testing for Windows machines have officially launched, ending a long preview period and bringing an end to the iTunes app on some computers.

This comes almost 21 years since iTunes for Windows initially launched. Here’s a bit from the 2003 press release:

Apple today launched the second generation of its revolutionary iTunes Music Store for both Mac and Windows users. The new iTunes Music Store offers Windows users the same online music store that Mac users love—with the same music catalog, the same personal use rights and the same 99 cents-per-song pricing. Since its launch six months ago, music fans have purchased and downloaded more than 13 million songs from the iTunes Music Store, making it the number one download music service in the world. With music from all five major music companies and over 200 independent music labels, the iTunes Music Store catalog is growing every day and will offer more than 400,000 songs by the end of October.

“The iTunes Music Store has revolutionized the way people legally buy music online, and now it’s available to tens of millions more music lovers with iTunes for Windows,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. “While our competitors haven’t even come close to matching our first generation, we’re already releasing the second generation of the iTunes Music Store for Mac and Windows.”

Project Tapestry →

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The folks at The Iconfactory have a Kickstarter campaign running for an app built for the open web:

What if you had one app that gave an overview of nearly everything that was happening across all the different services you follow? A single chronological timeline of your most important social media services, RSS feeds, and other sources. All of the updates together in one place, in the order they’re posted, with no algorithm deciding what you should see or when you should see it.

With Project Tapestry, we’ll create a universal, chronological timeline for any data that’s publicly available on the Internet. A service-independent overview of your social media and information landscape. Point the app toward your services and feeds, then scroll through everything all in one place to keep up-to-date and to see where you want to dive deeper. When you find something that you want to engage with or reply to, Tapestry will let you automatically open that post in the app of your choice and reply to it there. Tapestry isn’t meant to replace your favorite Mastodon app or RSS reader, but rather to complement them and help you figure out where you want to focus your attention.

I think this is super interesting, and pitched in $40 as soon as I saw it. I do have one feature request: to rebuild a Nuzzel-like experience, letting me quickly see what links are being talked about most across the sources I have loaded into the app.

A Tour of QuickTime VR →

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Michael Steeber:

Despite the profound impact Apple Vision Pro will have on the Apple Retail experience, I’ve scarce mentioned it here on Tabletops, and that’s no accident. A major new platform deserves careful study and an awful lot of context — the kind that’s only possible to grasp when the product is available in stores.

The future makes more sense when you understand the past, which is why I’m sharing this slice of history with you today.