512 Pixels

Federico Viticci, writing at MacStories:

There is no doubt in my mind that the essence of iPadOS – how menus appear, lists scroll, buttons are tapped, heck, even what a pointer should look like – has been designed with more taste, thought, and care than anything in Windows 11. There is no checklist that can quantify when an interface “feels” nice. The iPadOS UI, particularly in tablet mode, feels nicer than any other tablet I’ve tried to date.

The problem is that an iPad, at least for people like me, isn’t supposed to be a companion to work that happens somewhere else. It is the work. And ultimately, I think it’s fair to demand efficiency from a machine that is supposed to make you productive. I feel this every time Stage Manager doesn’t let me place windows where I want on an external display; every time I can’t place more than four windows in a workspace; every time I can’t record podcasts like I can on a Mac; every time a website doesn’t work quite right like it does on a desktop; I feel it, over a decade into the iPad’s existence, when developers like Rogue Amoeba or Raycast can’t bring their software to iPadOS.

We can’t talk about art in software in a vacuum. As a computer maker or app developer, you have to strike that balance between the aspirational and the practical, the artistic and the functional – the kind of balance that, by and large, Apple is achieving on the Mac. Unfortunately, when it comes to iPadOS, I feel like Apple has been prioritizing the artistic aspect over the functional, and it’s not clear when that will be rectified.

I was wondering how the 2019 Mac Pro’s lifespan was holding up compared to older models, and it’s not great. I can’t imagine Apple is happy that the Intel machine is still around.

The Mac Studio may follow in the Mac Pro’s footsteps with a longer-than-average lifecycle, according to Mark Gurman.

Geeze, Jupiter, take a break.

Richard Fausset, writing at The New York Times:

Keedran Franklin, a community organizer and social justice activist, runs a South Memphis food truck these days called " The Check-in." The idea, he said, is not only to feed the people of Memphis, but also to ask them how they are getting by, emotionally and spiritually, in one of the poorest large American cities, and one of the most dangerous.

“It’s a combustion chamber of trauma — that’s what Memphis is,” said Mr. Franklin, 36. “We push it down and push it down, until it explodes. That’s what happened with Tyre.”

The funeral this week for Tyre Nichols, a 29-year-old FedEx employee and skateboarder who died after being severely beaten by Memphis police officers who said they pulled him over for a traffic infraction, triggered a national moment of mourning — for Mr. Nichols, and for the many other Black men brutalized at the hands of American police. At the same time, the bloody incident took its place on an ignominious roster of events that have shaped the story of Memphis as much as its 20th-century musical innovations, justly celebrated for transforming pop culture.

Situated in the heart of the South’s old cotton kingdom, on the lip of the Mississippi Delta, Memphis has always had a front seat to the brutal consequences of slavery and organized racism, tangibly reflected in the city’s 26.5 percent poverty rate for Black residents. And Memphians readily admit that the 1968 assassination of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. on a balcony of the Lorraine Motel opened a gash in the collective psyche that has never quite healed.

This week, as an ice storm paralyzed much of the city, Memphians seemed to be taking stock, amid their rage and grief, of how far they have come and how far they must still go, if they are to not only endure the latest wound, but heal from it.

No one thinks it will be easy.

As usual, Jason Snell is on top of things over at Six Colors:

Apple on Thursday announced its fiscal first-quarter results, and it was a step backward. The company’s year-over-year revenue fell $6.7 billion, though with total revenue of $117.2 billion it was still the company’s second largest quarter ever.

Click through for loads of charts.

Jess Weatherbed, writing at The Verge:

Twitter will no longer provide free access to the Twitter API from February 9th. As announced by the official Twitter Developer account late Wednesday night, Elon Musk’s social media hobby will stop supporting free access to the Twitter API and will instead provide a “paid basic tier.” Twitter hasn’t provided any information regarding pricing, but said that it will provide “more details on what you can expect next week.”

“Over the years, hundreds of millions of people have sent over a trillion Tweets, with billions more every week,” said the Twitter Developer account. “Twitter data are among the world’s most powerful data sets. We’re committed to enabling fast & comprehensive access so you can continue to build with us.”

This probably means the end of this site auto-posting things to Twitter, so now is probably good time to get subscribed in other ways:

• via RSS
• via Mastodon

Underscore David Smith:

Back in 2017 I had created a site which took the the audio of some of my favorite podcasts and tried to make them searchable by passing them through an automated speech-to-text engine.

In the original version of this the transcription was done with very rough, slow, low accuracy system which resulted in transcripts that were fit for keyword searching but not much else.

Thankfully since then OpenAI has released Whisper a powerful speech-to-text engine that I can run right on my Mac and results in transcripts that are shockingly good. They aren’t quite at the level of a human transcriber but they get darn close in many instances. Getting close to the level where you could use them to grab a pull quote with only a little bit of tidying up to do.

I’m thrilled that Connected is archived in the new version of PodSearch. This tool is amazing.

This week on Connected:

Stephen talks a bit about what has been going on in Memphis, Federico gets folded up over rumors and Myke has a surprise.

Two decades ago, the space shuttle Columbia broke up during re-entry. I was in high school, and remember it well, feeling the connection with the shuttle disaster that took place the day I was born.

There’s a lot of great stuff out there marking the anniversary:

• Eric Berger: Two decades after the Columbia disaster, is NASA’s safety culture fixed?
• Lee Hutchinson: The audacious rescue plan that might have saved space shuttle Columbia
• Daisy Dobrijevic, Elizabeth Howell: Columbia Disaster: What happened and what NASA learned

If you’ve never heard the Song Exploder episode on The Long Winters song “The Commander Thinks Aloud,” it’s a great listen.

Apple Support:

When using Boot Camp and Microsoft Windows 7, FireWire (IEEE 1394) devices may affect system responsiveness if they are connected to the FireWire port of an Apple Thunderbolt display.

Apple includes directions on how to update the FireWire driver within Windows.

Michael Steeber:

Updates are coming to Apple Tice’s Corner in Woodcliff Lake, New Jersey. The store will be temporarily closed from January 31. I’m a little bit nervous about this renovation because Apple Tice’s Corner is the last location in the world with an original 2001 storefront design, and I wish for it to remain intact perpetually.

I can’t imagine the original design will remain after the remodel, so it’s a good time to soak in this iconic design: