Unite 4 for macOS allows you to turn any website into an app on your Mac. Using a lightweight, WebKit powered browser as a backend, you can easily create isolated, customizable apps from any site.
Unite 4 includes dozens of new features, including support for native notifications, new customization options, and much more. Unite apps also serve as a great alternative for resource hogging Electron apps or half-baked Catalyst apps.
With David settling in at his new studio, the guys take some time to talk about their desk setups, what’s in their bags and what they carry with them daily.
William Shatner, in his new book, writing about his trip with Blue Origin:
I had thought that going into space would be the ultimate catharsis of that connection I had been looking for between all living things—that being up there would be the next beautiful step to understanding the harmony of the universe. In the film “Contact,” when Jodie Foster’s character goes to space and looks out into the heavens, she lets out an astonished whisper, “They should’ve sent a poet.” I had a different experience, because I discovered that the beauty isn’t out there, it’s down here, with all of us. Leaving that behind made my connection to our tiny planet even more profound.
Benj Edwards, writing at Ars:
In the early 2000s, Americans who wanted to catch the local weather forecast at any time might turn on their TV and switch over to Weatherscan, a 24-hour computer-controlled weather forecast channel with a relaxing smooth jazz soundtrack. After 23 years, The Weather Channel announced that Weatherscan will be shutting down permanently on or before December 9. But a group of die-hard fans will not let it go quietly into the night.
Alex Heath, in the best lede I’ve read all week:
Meta’s VR social network Horizon Worlds — the company’s flagship “metaverse” app — is suffering from too many quality issues and even the team building it isn’t using it very much, according to internal memos obtained by The Verge.
David Pierce, writing at The Verge, has a great interview with Pixel hardware boss Rick Osterloh about the new watch, Google’s purchase of Fitbit and why anyone should trust Google to keep supporting this thing in the long run.
On this episode, we discuss what academic honors they would like to receive, what happened at the beach house and the new update to Spark. Then, David Smith drops by to talk about the Apple Watch Ultra.
On Connected Pro, AI recreates a crime scene.
Tim Bajarin, writing at Forbes:
In 1988, the father of the ThinkPad, Arimasa Naitoh, a Lenovo Fellow located in Japan, received a call about the need to spearhead a new portable computing venture in IBM’s research center in Yokohama, Japan. At the time, he was based in White Plains, NY but moved back to Japan to develop what has become the iconic ThinkPad line of portable computers.
I got to watch the development of the ThinkPad from the beginning. Mr Naitoh’s leadership, assisted by David Hill, who was instrumental in creating the unique ThinkPad design, made IBM at that time one of the most important portable computer companies in the market.
Today, we have a bit of a history lesson via Apple Support:
The earliest seeds of modern electronic synthesizers began in the twilight years of the 19th century. In 1897, an American inventor named Thaddeus Cahill was issued a patent to protect the principle behind an instrument known as the Telharmonium, or Dynamophone. Weighing in at 200 tons, this mammoth electronic instrument was driven by 12 steam-powered electromagnetic generators. It was played in real time using velocity-sensitive keys and, amazingly, was able to generate several different sounds simultaneously. The Telharmonium was presented to the public in a series of “concerts” held in 1906. Christened “Telharmony,” this music was piped into the public telephone network, because no public address systems were available at the time.
We just closed Relay FM’s annual St. Jude campaign, raising $706,397.10 for the life-saving work of St. Jude. This is an all-time high for our campaign, topping last year’s total of $701,220.26.
Thank you all. This means the world to me, my family and all of Relay FM.
Everyone knows that they should be backing up their computer, and Backblaze is an easy and secure way to back up docs, music, photos, videos, drawings, projects — all of your data. Files can be accessed via the mobile Backblaze app on iOS and Android, as we as Backblaze’s excellent website. If you experience a drive failure, Backblaze lets you download your files, or you can restore via mail, with a hard drive full of your data gets shipped to your door.
This week on Mac Power Users, David and I share some of the treats we’ve found as apps are getting updated for iOS 16. Then, we talk through their first impressions of the Apple Watch Ultra.