512 Pixels

My thanks to The Sweet Setup for sponsoring 512 Pixels this week. Their 2021 Digital Planner is built for the iPad and based on a proven system for clarity, margin, and focus. Download now, and see for yourself. Comes with a 30-day, money-back guarantee.

No spoilers, but on yesterday’s episode of Connected, we had to contend with how big the iPhone’s notch is, and how it may have changed sizes over the years since the introduction of Face ID in 2017.

Just looking at a pile of iPhones isn’t that helpful when trying to investigate such minutiae. What you need is detailed documentation.

Thankfully, Apple provides just that, in the form of a document named “Accessory Design Guidelines for Apple Devices,” which is freely available on Apple’s developer website.

The document is for companies creating chargers, cases and just about anything else that can be clipped on, paired to or used with an iPhone. Thankfully, it also works for podcasters with ridiculous jobs, as it includes detailed drawings of every iPhone going back to the iPhone 5.

Using that information, I put together these charts showing the size of the notch¹ on various iPhones:

Right off the bat, it’s easy to see that the LCD panel used on the iPhone XR and 11 resulted in a larger notch. At the time, Apple made a big deal of being able to use an LCD panel for a design with rounded edges, but this was a trade-off of that work. As you can see, the iPhone 12’s move to OLED brought the mainstream iPhone more in line with its more expensive siblings.

The thing that really surprised me was how much the notch has changed over the years. Side-by-side, notches on OLED iPhones all look the same, but clearly Apple has done a fair bit of tinkering over the years to the design. In fact, the notches on the iPhone 12 line are taller than any other models.

I wonder what that means when it comes to vastly shrinking the notch, which I think Apple really wants to do at some point in the future…

Big week on Connected:

2020 is over. Products have been released, notches have been measured and an Annual Chairman has been named. As if that wasn’t enough, the 2021 Rickies have been etched into a Google Doc for all time.

On Connected Pro, Myke decides to install macOS Big Sur and Federico explores Alfred.

This is one of my favorite episodes each year.

My thanks to our sponsors:

• Squarespace: Make your next move. Enter offer code CONNECTED at checkout to get 10% off your first purchase.
• TextExpander, from Smile: Recall your best words. Instantly, repeatedly. Get 20% off your first year.
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Thanks to Todoist’s annual reporting, I have found a lot of information about how I worked last year. In total, I completed 4,362 tasks in 2020, which breaks down to these averages:

• 11 tasks per day
• 82 tasks per week
• 363 tasks per month

April was my most productive month, as you can see from these numbers showing how many tasks I completed by month. You can see that March wasn’t very good, and that I put my head down in April to work through the panic:

• January: 388
• February: 362
• March: 192
• April: 449
• May: 398
• June: 400
• July: 376
• August: 373
• September: 400
• October: 330
• November: 336
• December: 358

By far, I tend to do the most work on Tuesdays. I have no idea why, but here we are:

• Sunday: 245
• Monday: 553
• Tuesday: 899
• Wednesday: 629
• Thursday: 565
• Friday: 789
• Saturday: 682

My most productive time is 5 PM, but I defer more tasks around 6:30 PM than any other time, especially on Fridays.

Go figure.

Mark Zuckerberg:

The shocking events of the last 24 hours clearly demonstrate that President Donald Trump intends to use his remaining time in office to undermine the peaceful and lawful transition of power to his elected successor, Joe Biden.

His decision to use his platform to condone rather than condemn the actions of his supporters at the Capitol building has rightly disturbed people in the US and around the world. We removed these statements yesterday because we judged that their effect – and likely their intent – would be to provoke further violence. Following the certification of the election results by Congress, the priority for the whole country must now be to ensure that the remaining 13 days and the days after inauguration pass peacefully and in accordance with established democratic norms.

[…]

We believe the risks of allowing the President to continue to use our service during this period are simply too great. Therefore, we are extending the block we have placed on his Facebook and Instagram accounts indefinitely and for at least the next two weeks until the peaceful transition of power is complete.

A big move from the world’s largest social media company, but it’s pathetic that it took the events of January 6 to make it happen. Facebook and others have seen incredible user engagement and raked in political ad money since Trump first announced he was going to run in June 2015.

2021-01-08 Update: Twitter just permanently suspended the @realDonaldTrump account.**

Apple Support:

After updating to Mac OS X 10.5.5, you may not be able to print to some USB-based printers. This message may appear in the printer queue: “Printer is currently off-line.”

I remember this bug showing up at a couple of schools I supported back when I was a full-time Mac consultant and it suuuuuucked.

Flashback is back for a second season:

In 2012, Google announced a sphere-shaped media player that was meant to be used with a TV or sound system. It was a disaster. However, nearly a decade later, set-top boxes are nearly everywhere. How did the market move past a weird Google product to offer a wide range of compelling products?

Quinn Nelson and I have some fun stuff planned for this season, so be sure to check it out.

I needed better access to the back of my new streaming PC, and then I realized I already had the perfect solution: Mac Pro wheels.

Somewhere, Jony Ive is dying inside.

From my Alma mater, The Sweet Setup, is the new, 2021 Digital Planner built for the iPad and based on a proven system for clarity, margin, and focus.

Use the Planner to:

• Get clear on the areas of life that matter most to you.
• Make choices about how you will spend your time and energy each day.
• Maintain margin and breathing room in your life.
• Celebrate and recognize your progress.
• Keep a manageable list of tasks (instead of an overflowing, overwhelming list).
• Time block your day for maximum productivity and reduced stress.

Download now, and see for yourself. Comes with a 30-day, money-back guarantee.

This week on Mac Power Users, David walked me through his concept of “Contextual Computing,” and why it is isn’t as hard as it seems.

On More Power Users, I issued a challenge to my co-host concerning the future of his Mac setup.

My thanks to our sponsors this week:

• 1Password: Have you ever forgotten a password? You don’t have to worry about that anymore.
• Sanebox: Stop drowning in email!
• The Intrazone by Microsoft SharePoint: Your bi-weekly conversation and interview podcast hosted by the SharePoint team
• Pingdom: Start monitoring your website performance and availability today, and get instant alerts when an outage occurs or a site transaction fails. Use offer code MPU to get 30% off. Offer expires on January 31, 2021, and can be used only once.

Adobe:

Since Adobe will no longer be supporting Flash Player after December 31, 2020 and Adobe will block Flash content from running in Flash Player beginning January 12, 2021, Adobe strongly recommends all users immediately uninstall Flash Player to help protect their systems.

I wonder how many Mac users still have Flash on their systems today.

2001 was a huge year in terms of Apple history. Just check out this list of some of the announcements and news from 20 years ago:

Software

• Mac OS 9.1
• Mac OS 9.2
• Mac OS X 10.0
• Mac OS X 10.1
• iTunes

Hardware

• Titanium PowerBook G4
• First SuperDrive
• White iBook G3
• Power Mac G4 QuickSilver
• Original iPod
• Two iMac G3 revisions

Throughout 2021, I’ll be writing about some of these topics in a new series. I’m looking forward to reliving a wild year in Apple’s history.