On Apple’s Photos Memory Feature

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I’m generally a fan of the Memories feature of Apple Photos, especially the inclusion of the widget starting in iOS 14.

However, there are drawbacks. The biggest of which is that Photos can surface painful past moments.1 An extreme example is the attack on the Capitol last year. Here’s Jim Newell at Slate:

What was it like being inside the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021? Kind of a blur. My colleagues and I on the congressional beat first got word that a House office building was under lockdown. Then, a couple of minutes later, we heard that the Capitol itself was going into lockdown. On the way to what would become my hiding spot, I watched as some rioters tried to smash their way through the front door on the east side of the Capitol. It was time to get behind a heavy door and keep my mouth shut.

I’ve been thinking a lot about those moments, trying to piece them all together as the one-year anniversary of the day approaches. But in going through my photos to stitch the memories into something coherent, I found that I didn’t need to. The Apple Photos app had taken the initiative and done so itself, automatically creating a cute Memories video from my pictures that day.

This story is horrifying, and I think it showcases my two big problems with this feature:

First, Apple does not give users enough control over what photos are featured. I would imagine that Newell would want to tell the system that he doesn’t want to see photos from January 6 in a Memory. To be clear, Apple does let users delete a Memory or tell their device to feature a photo or person less often. However, this is a reactionary feature, possible only after something upsetting has happened.

Secondly, iOS 15 changed the Photos widget to link to music-playing slideshows, which is a huge regression.

If the widget on my iPhone shows me a photo of one of my kids enjoying the snow we got last year, I’d like to be able to tap on it to see the photo full-size, with the ability to quickly share it with my wife. If that photo is in a Memory, getting to an individual, specific photo is still a couple of taps away. As bad as that is, the fact that tapping a photo may launch a slideshow with music playing is a huge, huge mistake on Apple’s part. I have come to live in fear of looking at Photos from the widget in quiet environments, worried that some cheesy music is going to start blaring out of my iPhone.

Apple’s Photos application and widget is pretty great, as is the Memory feature, but Apple needs to really look at these features and how they are implemented in iOS 15. There’s a lot of work to do here.

  1. Here’s my obligatory link to Lauren Goode’s amazing article on this very topic. ↩

Chevy Unveils Electric Silverado ⇢

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Andrew Hawkins, writing at The Verge:

At launch, the Silverado EV will be available in two configurations: an RST First Edition and a fleet-oriented Work Truck (WT) model. Both models will get more than 400 miles of range on a full charge (though that number still needs to be certified by the Environmental Protection Agency).

The base model work truck will start at $39,900, while the fully loaded RST First Edition, named because it will be first off the assembly line in spring 2023, will sell for the suggested price of $105,000. Chevy says that after production ramps up, various versions of the truck will be available for $50,000–$80,000. The automaker is already taking reservations.

Some of the features Hawkins outlines in his article are pretty clever, but I don’t love the looks of this truck. It’s too Avalanche-y for me.

It’ll be out a year later than the F-150 Lightning, with fewer trim levels at first, plus it comes with some unusual styling touches. One of the things I love about the Lightning is that it looks like a normal truck. I think that’s a big deal.

Speaking of the Lightning, Ford released its online configurator yesterday … and oh mama. I had my eye on an extended-range XLT trim, but to get the 300-mile battery, Ford tacks on nearly $10,000 worth of other options:

  • XLT Standard Range: $52,974
  • XLT Extended Range: $72,474
  • Lariat Standard Range: $67,474
  • Lariat Extended Range: $77,474

This has left the Lightning without a reasonable mid-range option in my mind, which is a shame. It really complicates the purchasing decision for people not wanting to spend $70,000 or more on a truck.

Chipolo Find My-Compatible Wallet Tracker ⇢

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Chipolo has announced a Find My-enabled card for slipping into a wallet. I do not like that the battery is non-replaceable, but I pre-ordered one anyway for keeping up my with my wallet.

As Matt VanOrmer writes, this plugs a big hole in the Find My universe:

When I got the MagSafe Leather Wallet with Find My, I was hoping for a solution that would A. Hold my credit cards and B. Help me find my wallet if I lost it. While it succeeds at A, it fails spectacularly at B. Chipolo has created a product that would actually help me find my wallet if it were lost or stolen.

Ford Announces it will Double F-150 Lightning Production ⇢

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Ford’s all-electric pickup is due to start rolling off the factory floor later this year, and Jonathan Gitlin reports that big numbers are coming:

In response to nearly 200,000 reservations on its books, the Blue Oval has decided to increase annual production of the F-150 Lightning. It’s nearly doubling the original production plan at the Rouge Electric Vehicle Center in Dearborn, Michigan, and will churn out 150,000 Lightnings a year to meet demand.

Ford says that three-quarters of the reservations have come from people new to the brand. Due to demand, it will be emailing reservation holders based upon when it got those reservations and asking them to log in to their Ford.com account to convert the reservation into an order. According to Ford, “Those who don’t receive invitations to convert for the 2022 model year will have an opportunity to order a future model year vehicle in due course.”

I’ve got my name in the ring with a reservation, so this news was pretty exciting to read.

A Lawless MacSparky ⇢

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My pal David Sparks:

I’ve spent the last few months shutting down my legal practice. I’ve made arrangements for my clients to get to other lawyers that can take care of them. I’ve spoken personally to all of my clients to explain why I can no longer be their lawyer. I’ve spent a lot of time on this transition, but I wanted to end this phase of my life in the right way.

So here goes. No longer do I split my time between two careers. For the first time since 1992, I will have complete control of my schedule. No longer will a client emergency force me to set aside the work that has become my calling. I’m all in, and I have big plans.

To begin with, I’m turning up two dials on my MacSparky work: quality and quantity. With me able to give this my sole focus, the content is going to get better, and there will be more of it on this blog, in the podcasts, in the Field Guides, and in everything else I ship as MacSparky. I can’t wait to get started.

I couldn’t be more excited for David. He has been working on this for months, and as you can hear in today’s episode of Mac Power Users, he has put a lot of thought and care into how is he going to pull this all off. I was happy to join MacSparky Labs, and I think you should be too.

Kbase Article of the Week: ClarisWorks: Week of Year Based on Fiscal Year ⇢

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Apple Support, kinda:1

Let’s say you would like to know what week of the year a certain date falls on. FileMaker Pro and ClarisWorks both have a WeekofYear function which returns the number of weeks from January 1 based on a supplied date. If you want to calculate the number of weeks starting at a date other than January 1, as in a fiscal year beginning date, you can use the following calculation given your file contains the field ProjectDate:

Week of Year (calculation, number result) = INT ((ProjectDate - Date (3,1,Year (ProjectDate)))/7)+1

The Date function is where the start date is formed. In this example, the start date is 3/1 of the year of the ProjectDate.

  1. According to Apple, the information in this document “was provided by Claris Corporation on 16 March 1998, and incorporated into Apple Computer’s Tech Info Library.” ↩

Kbase Article of the Week: Newton OS: Year 2000 (Y2K) Compliance ⇢

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Apple Support:

Although there currently is no official certification or industry-standard documentation process associated with Year 2000 (Y2K) Compliance, the Newton OS presents no difficulty in handling information spanning the millennium.

The Newton OS, since its introduction, has been designed to use a calculation of “minutes past midnight, January 1, 1904” or “seconds past midnight, January 1, 1993.” This calculation is used for dates prior to and after the year 2000. Therefore, dates at or beyond the 2000 mark, are simply larger numbers as a result of this calculation — and do not have the difficulty other operating systems may have when calculating dates before and after the year 2000.

There was, however, a problem waiting just a decade later.