512 Pixels

The iPod mini marked a giant turning point in Apple’s music business. With its smaller size and colorful design, it turned the iPod from a tech product to a piece of fashion:

This week on the kbase: all the iPod mini specs, ever.

There’s a new Indiegogo page that looks right up my alley. Spigen is releasing iPhone X cases designed to remind people of the iMac G3.

I don’t even use a case on my iPhone X, but I’ve backed it. I can even forgive them for mispronouncing the name of the iPhone X in their video.

I’ve been checking out some cool iMac documentation this afternoon, via Brendan Shanks on Twitter:

The Apple iMac computer is a new consumer-oriented desktop computer. This developer note is a technical description of the iMac, with the emphasis on the features that are new or different from those of other Macintosh desktop computers.

Don’t miss the related USB page Apple had up on its website at the time.

Loren Grush, The Verge:

This afternoon, SpaceX landed the most powerful version yet of its Falcon 9 rocket, after launching the vehicle from Cape Canaveral, Florida. The so-named Block 5 upgrade took off from the company’s launchpad at Kennedy Space Center, sending a communications satellite into orbit for Bangladesh and then touched down on one of the company’s drone ships in the Atlantic. It was the 25th successful rocket landing for SpaceX, and the 14th on one of the company’s drone ships.

Jason Snell:

Now it’s somehow time for the 25th anniversary of the app—or, more accurately, the 25th anniversary of the first commercial release of BBEdit, version 2.5.

I don’t use BBEdit often, but when I do, it’s the only program that can get the job done.

This week on Connected, Federico is back to join Myke and I to talk about iOS 13, as well as news out of Microsoft Build and Google I/O.

My thanks to our sponsors:

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• Layers: A conference about design and technology. June 4-6, 2018 - San Jose, CA. Get $50 off with the code ‘relay’.

This week on Query:

Serenity remembers her Bondi Blue iMac before getting into the age-old debate of purchasing an iPad Pro or MacBook with Stephen. Then, message threading woes and more in the Speed Run.

My thanks to our sponsors this week:

• Pingdom: Start monitoring your websites and servers today. Use offer code QUERY to get 30% off.
• Simple Contacts: Contact lens prescriptions from home: Use offer code QUERY for $30 off your contact lenses

Jason Snell, writing at Macworld, about how the Mac community responded to the announcement of the iMac 20 years ago:

From the perspective of 2018, the iMac is history, and history is written by the victors. But in 1998, the iMac was controversial, especially among the sorts of dedicated Mac users who subscribed to Macworld. It ditched the floppy drive that had been on every single Mac to that date, as well as several ports—SCSI, serial, and ADB—that had been on basically every Mac since the Mac SE. Imagine Apple removing the headphone jack from the iPhone 7, multiplied by four. Literally every Mac accessory ever made was no longer compatible without an adapter.

I also dug out the issue of Macworld that featured letters responding to the release of the iMac, and that was really entertaining.

This week on Liftoff:

InSight is headed to Mars, the SLS Segment has a name, and Jason and Stephen read Into the Black, by Rowland White.

I really enjoyed this book.

My thanks to our sponsor for the episode:

• StoryWorth: A new way to bring the family together.

This week on Ungeniused:

When it comes to serial killers, terminology and classifications are important things to understand.

My thanks to our sponsor:

• Simple Contacts: Contact lens prescriptions from home: Use offer code UNGENIUSED for $30 off your contact lenses

I’ve been playing with Things 3 a good bit lately. It’s a beautiful app on the Mac and iOS, and the sync engine seems to be rock-solid.

When I first played with it, I was baffled by the app’s UI for creating repeating tasks. After some time, I’ve come to see what the app is doing. There is, however, one problem I can’t overcome.

You can’t check off a repeating task early.

Let’s say I have a task on the 8th of every month named “Update Monthly Income Spreadsheet.” Every other task manager on the planet would let me mark this task as complete if I do it on the 7th.

Except Things 3.

Here’s a little test project I whipped up:

You can see I have a task with no date,¹ one due today and one due on May 16. That middle one — which is due tomorrow — cannot be marked complete until tomorrow.

This is maddening to me. Two-thirds of my tasks are repeating, but most of them don’t have to be completed on the exact date I have entered. Very often, if I have some time, I will look a few days ahead and see what I can do in advance.

Things 3 breaks this workflow, making the app unusable for me. That’s a real bummer; I hope Cultured Code changes this soon. If they do, I’ll be back.

I have contacted Cultured Code about this shortcoming. If it bugs you too, let them know and maybe the app could become a lot more flexible.

Update: I guess we have a partial victory:

Thanks for the feedback, Stephen! This is something we’ll be adding, though we can’t offer a specific date yet.

— Things (@culturedcode) May 8, 2018