On Albums, Shared Photos Libraries and Keywords ⇢

I have begun the messy process of merging much of my Photos library with my wife’s. At the end of this project, I can see a beautiful world in which we have access to tens of thousands of photos, with complete metadata and no duplicates.

It’s going to take me a while to get there, but I’ve already hit one snag: there are no albums in iCloud Shared Photo libraries. Jason Snell has more:

Continue reading ⇢

Apple Frames 3.0 ⇢

Federico has updated his amazing Apple Frames shortcut:

Apple Frames 3.0 is a major update that involved a complete re-architecture of the shortcut to improve its performance and reliability on all Apple platforms. For Apple Frames 3.0, I entirely rebuilt its underlying file structure to move away from base64 and embrace Files/Finder to store assets. As a result, Apple Frames 3.0 is faster, easier to debug, and – hopefully – easier to maintain going forward.

Continue reading ⇢

Apple Highlights NightWare ⇢

I have not come across this app before, but it was really neat to read about it on Apple Newsroom this morning:

NightWare is a digital therapeutic system that works in conjunction with Apple Watch and iPhone to disrupt nightmares related to post-traumatic stress disorder. Available by prescription only, it’s also the first and only digital therapeutic developed specifically to treat nightmares that is cleared by the FDA. NightWare uses information from the Apple Watch heart rate sensor, accelerometer, and gyroscope to detect a nightmare and then disrupt it through haptic feedback, generating gentle pulses on the wrist that gradually increase until the user is roused from the nightmare, but not from sleep.

Continue reading ⇢

More on Pantonageddon ⇢

Dan Vincent, writing at his excellent Userlandia:

If you’ve been reading some parts of the internet lately, you might’ve seen a brouhaha over the quote-unquote “fact” that Pantone has “copyrighted colors.” They’re forcing Adobe to pay them oodles of money for color swatches, and Adobe said “no you.” Now users have to pay $15 a month just to use COLORS? Madame is outraged!

Well, it’s more complicated than that. The reality is that the world of color is complex, even for those of us that see and feel it every day. Many working designers don’t know all the fiendish intricacies surrounding the tools of their trade. Your real questions are “how does this affect me” and “what can I do about it?” Or maybe you’re used to picking colors from all those swatch books in Photoshop and wondered why it’s such a big deal that they went away.

Continue reading ⇢

Meet the New Mail.app, Same as the Old Mail

As a long-time Mail.app user, I was excited to see Apple giving new features to the app in this year’s crop of OS releases.

Some of these additions are great; I particularly like the ability to schedule a message to be sent at a later time, as well as the ability to “unsend” a message. Sure, that second one is really just a 30 second timer set in the Outbox before a message heads off to the recipient, but it’s a really nice tool for those of us who are prone to typos.

Continue reading ⇢

More like PAYTONE, Amirite? ⇢

Jess Weatherbed at The Verge:

Last week, Adobe removed support for free Pantone colors across its Photoshop, InDesign, and Illustrator Creative Cloud applications. PSD files that contained Pantone spot colors now display unwanted black in their place, forcing creatives who need access to the industry-standard color books to pay for a plugin subscription (via Kotaku).

“As we had shared in June, Pantone decided to change its business model. Some of the Pantone Color Books that are pre-loaded in Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign were phased-out from future software updates in August 2022,” said Ashley Still, senior vice president of digital media marketing, strategy, and global partnerships at Adobe in a statement to The Verge. “To access the complete set of Pantone Color Books, Pantone now requires customers to purchase a premium license through Pantone Connect and install a plug-in using Adobe Exchange.”

Continue reading ⇢

On Downloading Ventura

Like many pervious versions of macOS, you can create a USB install disk with in just a few steps. I like having these on hand for troubleshooting or quicker installations.

Ventura Installer

As before, creating a USB Installer requires downloading a full copy of macOS Ventura from Apple. This can be done via the Mac App Store if you are already running Ventura. If not, your Mac may only download the delta update. As of the initial version of macOS Ventura, the full installer is about 12 GB.

Continue reading ⇢

Musk Reportedly Wants to Layoff 75% of Twitter Staff ⇢

Taylor Hatmaker at TechCrunch, writing about a pretty tough story:

Musk has previously gestured at plans for layoffs if he were to buy Twitter, but those cuts could go even deeper than previously imagined.

According to a new report from the Washington Post, Musk plans to purge 75% of Twitter’s workforce, or around 5,600 employees. If Musk’s vision for a much leaner platform comes to fruition, Twitter would be forced to operate with a sliver of its current staff.

Continue reading ⇢

Weatherscan Shutting Down ⇢

Benj Edwards, writing at Ars:

In the early 2000s, Americans who wanted to catch the local weather forecast at any time might turn on their TV and switch over to Weatherscan, a 24-hour computer-controlled weather forecast channel with a relaxing smooth jazz soundtrack. After 23 years, The Weather Channel announced that Weatherscan will be shutting down permanently on or before December 9. But a group of die-hard fans will not let it go quietly into the night.

Continue reading ⇢

Rogue Amoeba Turns 20 ⇢

Rogue Amoeba’s work has made the Mac a better platform for all sorts of people for two decades now. Here’s Paul Kafasis:

In 2022, Rogue Amoeba is going stronger than ever. Every day, our audio tools help countless Mac users create podcasts, enhance video calls, and so much more. Of course, most of our time is spent focusing on the future (including support for MacOS 13 (Ventura), coming very soon). But as the date of our twentieth anniversary approaches, it’s nice to celebrate, by taking a few minutes to review the past and reflect.

Continue reading ⇢