512 Pixels

This week on MPU:

A nerd’s bag can say a lot about them. This week, David and Stephen empty theirs to talk through their choices and how they’ve changed over the years.

My thanks to our sponsors this week:

• 1Password: Have you ever forgotten a password? You don’t have to worry about that anymore.
• TextExpander from Smile: Get 20% off with this link and type more with less effort! Expand short abbreviations into longer bits of text, even fill-ins, with TextExpander from Smile.
• Squarespace: Make your next move. Enter offer code MPU at checkout to get 10% off your first purchase.

I love the design of these pieces.

My thanks to Magic Lasso Adblock for sponsoring the site this week.

It allows you to experience a cleaner, faster web – without ads. As a native Safari content blocking extension, Magic Lasso blocks intrusive ads, pop ups and trackers when browsing the web.

And unlike some other ad blockers, Magic Lasso Adblock respects your privacy, doesn’t accept payment from advertisers and is 100% supported by it’s community of over 150,000 users.

Charlie Harrington, writing about looking for an Apple IIe:

I set a few auctions to my watch-list, and then laced on my sneakers for our morning run. Not one block away from our house did I spot something: a yellowed plastic box amid a pile of trash. No. It couldn’t be. I stopped, and went back to the trash.

It was an Apple IIe. With its CRT monitor. And a dual floppy drive.

Just. SITTING. THERE.

This time on Connected:

Stephen’s iPhone screen is turning green. Myke turns down the opportunity to host a Round Robin of weird WWDC predictions, then Federico tries to answer a Zoom call. Then, a discussion of the rumored AirPods Studio and file formats within DEVONthink.

My thanks to our sponsors:

• 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 CONNECTED to get 30% off. Offer expires on January 31, 2021.
• Hover: Make a name for yourself. Get 10% off any domain name.

On her blog:

As of today, Apple’s first-ever online-only version of WWDC is 40(!) days away. As always, I’m incredibly excited to see what Apple has in store for us (although I must say, I’m really disappointed we don’t all get the chance to own a WWDC 2020 jacket and pin set…).

I’m not a developer, but that SwiftUI list looks like it has some pretty basic things in it I would have assumed the system already had present. I bet we hear a lot more about SwiftUI this year.

I really enjoyed this interview by John Gruber of Adam Engst. It was fascinating to hear how TidBITS got started and has evolved over the years.

It’s been a few years since I did one of these, and I was surprised at how much has changed.

Apple Support, in an ancient article:

After initializing a hard disk with a 4096 byte block size using FWB Hard Disk Took kit, I could not initialize the volume with Apple RAID 1.5 because the block size was greater than 512 bytes.

Apple RAID does not support these drives, as 512 is the standard maximum for block sizes. It will allow you to format them, but that’s all. No volumes, no mounts, no driver support. This is as designed.

Happy 5/12 day, if you put the month in front of the date when you write it. If not, we can celebrate again in December.

Apple has a new site up touting its Books store and a bunch of apps that make writing and designing a book easier for do-it-yourself types.

I used iBooks Author for Aqua and Bondi, and it was a bit of a nightmare, so I’m glad to see Pages and other apps highlighted here as well.

Magic Lasso Adblock is an efficient and high performance ad blocker for the iPhone, iPad and Mac.

It allows you to experience a cleaner, faster web – without ads. As a native Safari content blocking extension, Magic Lasso blocks intrusive ads, pop ups and trackers when browsing the web.

Magic Lasso Adblock provides a 2.0x speed increase on common websites, improves your privacy and security by removing ad trackers and works with Safari across all Apple devices. It’s as if Apple themselves had designed an ad blocker.

And unlike some other ad blockers, Magic Lasso Adblock respects your privacy, doesn’t accept payment from advertisers and is 100% supported by it’s community of over 150,000 users.

Download for free today via the Magic Lasso website, the iOS App Store and Mac App Store.

This week on MPU:

From iCloud to Apple TV+, Apple’s range of services is broader then ever, but how do they all stack up? Is this shift to services changed how users should view the company?

It’s amazing just how many services Apple offers these days. It was fun to go through them with David.

My thanks to our sponsors:

• 1Password: Have you ever forgotten a password? You don’t have to worry about that anymore.
• The Uptake, from Microsoft: A new show on all things tech and community from Microsoft