Get ready to meet the newest member of the family.
Wednesday, February 19. #AppleLaunch
Is this an M4 MacBook Air, or as John Gruber suggests, a total revamp of the iPhone SE? Something else?
Speaking of Gruber, don’t miss his post on Apple’s ads popping up on X after a year-long hiatus. I guess Apple wants to keep our new prime minister Elon Musk happy.
This week on the world’s greatest podcast:
Stephen thinks he deserves a new title for changing the world, Stephen has a new page on his blog, and Stephen ordered Merri some new headphones. Also: Federico has a theory and Myke is in a new group chat.
[On Connected Pro,] I uncover a mystery in Ticci’s garage.
Aisling Mäki, with some much-needed good news:
St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital has partnered with the World Health Organization to distribute life-saving cancer medicines to children in countries with lower pediatric cancer survival rates.
The partners first announced the Global Platform for Access to Childhood Cancer Medicines in 2021 to get lifesaving treatments to children around the world.
On Tuesday, Feb. 11, St. Jude and WHO said they’d begun delivering medicines to pilot countries Mongolia and Uzbekistan, with the next shipments planned for Ecuador, Jordan, Nepal and Zambia.
Countries in the pilot phase will receive an uninterrupted supply of quality-assured childhood cancer medicines at no cost.
At the urging of David Sparks, there’s a new page up on 512 Pixels. I intend to update it a couple of times a month.
Apple Support, in a new support article dated today:
If an Apple Account is only used for making purchases, those purchases can be migrated to a primary Apple Account to consolidate them.
Connected listeners will know I recently went through an ordeal with my setup because I was not using my primary Apple Account for purchases.1 There are a lot of steps to this process, but it’s great to see Apple have a tool for folks wanting leave a legacy Apple Account behind.
As for me, I moved “Legacy Stephen” into our iCloud Family for now, but could unwind that if I ever wanted to simply migrate purchases out of that old account entirely.
After months of rumors, Apple has released a new version of its Powerbeats Pro earbuds.
My wife Merri is a huge user of the original Powerbeats and when I told her new ones were coming, she did something very unusual — she asked me to order her a pair on launch day. So we’ve got a set of Hyper Purple heading our way. She’ll be on a future episode of Connected with her review, but for now, Chance Miller’s review is a great read. With the H2 and a suite of new features, I think there are going to be a big hit for folks who like this form factor.
I opened Logic earlier today to edit an interview for Relay members, and was presented with this ad for the iPad version of the app:
I have no problem with advertising to support content or even apps, but a pop-up in a professional tool like Logic feels like a step too far.
Online privacy isn’t just something you should be hoping for – it’s something you should expect. You should ensure your browsing history stays private and is not harvested by ad networks.
By blocking ad trackers, Magic Lasso Adblock stops you being followed by ads around the web.
As an efficient, high performance and native Safari ad blocker, Magic Lasso blocks all intrusive ads, trackers and annoyances on your iPhone, iPad and Mac. And it’s been designed from the ground up to protect your privacy.
Users rely on Magic Lasso Adblock to:
With over 5,000 five star reviews; it’s simply the best ad blocker for your iPhone, iPad and Mac.
And unlike some other ad blockers, Magic Lasso Adblock respects your privacy, doesn’t accept payment from advertisers and is 100% supported by its community of users.
So, join over 350,000 users and download Magic Lasso Adblock from the App Store, Mac App Store or via the Magic Lasso website.
🚨 Breaking News: On this episode, David and Stephen dive into Apple’s vast sea of notification settings. They also cover best practices and where Apple has gotten things wrong. Open this alert to hear more!
This blog post by Doug Brown blew my mind a little:
This is the story of how Apple made a mistake in the ROM of the Macintosh Classic II that probably should have prevented it from booting, but instead, miraculously, its Motorola MC68030 CPU accidentally prevented a crash and saved the day by executing an undefined instruction.
This was an article sent to 512 Pixels members last month. Learn more about membership here.
At the end of every year, I publish a photo on Instagram cataloging the Field Notes notebooks I used over the previous 12 months. Here is the most recent picture:
Every year, I get questions about this. I wrote a bit about the topic in 2014, but I thought I’d do it again here. So, uhhhh, here’s an FAQ:
I try to operate on the “Nothing Doesn’t Go in Here” principle. Flipping through the notebook that is on my desk right now, I see shopping lists, notes from conference calls, sermon notes, a little chart I made when working on some invoices for Relay, a doodle of the Widgetsmith icon I made for some reason, and a lot more. A receipt for a recent meal with a friend fell out of it onto my lap; I’ll probably tape that into the notebook for safekeeping.
Looking at the shelf, it’s a notebook every 4-6 weeks.
I am not, haha, but I’ve gotten to know some folks there over the years. In 2017, I helped record a live episode of The Pen Addict at the Chicago headquarters. It was awesome.
Beyond making cool Instagram posts, I scan every notebook and store them on Dropbox and in Apple Notes for future reference. I just scanned notebook number 129.
Here’s what that folder looks like in Finder:
I use a plain, old-fashioned flatbed scanner to do this. I used the same scanner for over a decade, but it died a while back, and I replaced it with this thing. I use the Mac’s built-in Image Capture application to make 300 DPI PDFs with OCR data. The OCR is pretty hit or miss with my handwriting, but I don’t often rely on it to search for old notes anyway.
Every few months, I need to refer to something I had written down in a previous notebook. I often do this by scrolling to when I think the information may have been captured, and then I skim through the notebook for that month. Has this ever radically changed the course of a project or saved my butt in some other way? No, but that’s not really the point. These notebooks are a trail of breadcrumbs dating back almost 15 years. If I flip through an old one, I get a glimpse of what was going on in my life at that time. I can go to the notebook I was using when we launched Relay, or when I quit my job. I like having them on hand; seeing them in my studio each day makes me happy.
In 2013, I started working at a web design firm and took a lot of notes there, so I switched to a Moleskine journal for a while. I have a scan of it but do not know where the notebook is. It’s been missing for a long time, and it bothers me.
I love Field Notes’ tagline:
“I’m not writing it down to remember it later, I’m writing it down to remember it now.”
There’s something about the act of writing that helps things stick.
For years, my go-to has been the Uni Jetstream Sport Ballpoint Pen. I like the 0.7 MM weight in blue. I also like the 0.5 MM Zebra Sarasa Clip in blue-black ink.
You shouldn’t be! Yes, they can get lost or damaged, but they shouldn’t be precious. I’ve torn them, gotten them wet, and misplaced them from time to time. They are tools; as long as they’re on my desk, in my pocket, or in my backpack, I know I’m ready for the day.
The guys reflect on the Vision Pro’s first year and then talk about things that matter more, like the recent resurgence of read-it-later apps and Apple’s new Invites app.