It is joining iTunes Ping in the great beyond.
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Apple Building New Campus in Austin, Texas⇢
Apple today announced a major expansion of its operations in Austin, including an investment of $1 billion to build a new campus in North Austin. The company also announced plans to establish new sites in Seattle, San Diego and Culver City and expand in cities across the United States including Pittsburgh, New York and Boulder, Colorado over the next three years, with the potential for additional expansion elsewhere in the US over time.
Connected #222: Green Monday, Yellow Wednesday, Purple Thursday⇢
Myke struggles to use Amazon’s website, Stephen checks his heartbeat and Federico tinkers with keyboards for the iPad Pro.
I also make a confession about the number of HomePods in my house and Federico pines for the return of the Smart Battery Case.
My thanks to our sponsors for this episode:
- Luna Display: The only hardware solution that turns your iPad into a wireless display for your Mac. Use promo code CONNECTED at checkout for 10% off.
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My Backup Strategy (2018 Update)
I last wrote about my backup strategy in July 2015, and a lot has changed, so I thought it was time to update things.
This is the part where I copy and paste from that 2015 blog post:
I shouldn’t have to preach the importance of a good backup system, but there are some key tenants that should be part of any approach:
- Be redundant. Having a single backup is good, but what happens if it gets killed by the same power outage that cooks your computer.
- Be easy to manage. Time Machine is popular because it’s easy to setup and doesn’t need on-going care. Anything past the built-in backup will take more work, but it’s good to minimize it.
- Be testable. Every once in a while, restore data from a backup to make sure everything’s going well. This doesn’t have to be some big, drawn out thing. For me, a small recovery can put my mind at ease every quarter or so.
My hardware setup is radically different from what it was in 2015. While I still have a Mac mini, it is now the server, hosting a Drobo 5D stuffed with 4 TB hard drives for a total of 17 TB or so of storage. Moving away from the Synology isn’t that juicy of a story. It had a hardware failure and I moved on.
Review: Nik’s Minimalist Wallet by Tom Bihn
I’ll just come out and say it. I’ve always wanted to carry a more minimal wallet than the Costanza-inspired beast I’ve used for years. When you’re a dad and own two companies, there’s no end to the cards you end up carrying around.
I’ve tried a couple of slim wallets over the years, but I couldn’t whittle my life down to three or four cards, no matter how hard I tried.
Voyager 2 in Interstellar Space⇢
Dwayne Brown and Karen Fox at NASA:
Comparing data from different instruments aboard the trailblazing spacecraft, mission scientists determined the probe crossed the outer edge of the heliosphere on Nov. 5. This boundary, called the heliopause, is where the tenuous, hot solar wind meets the cold, dense interstellar medium. Its twin, Voyager 1, crossed this boundary in 2012, but Voyager 2 carries a working instrument that will provide first-of-its-kind observations of the nature of this gateway into interstellar space.
Checking Into the iBook Hospital⇢
Busy night in my studio.
The Mother of All Demos
Fifty years ago, Doug Engelbart held what is now known as the “Mother of All Demos,” at the Fall Joint Computer Conference in San Francisco. In his talk, Engelbart, quite frankly, showed off the future:
This weekend, several people noted the anniversary. Here is Cyrus Farivar at Ars Technica:
Kbase Article of the Week: Magnets in Devices Might Cause Your Mac Notebook Computer To Sleep⇢
Placing a device that contains a magnet under your Mac notebook computer or on its palm rest might cause your computer to sleep.
Build Your OmniFocus Workflow⇢
A new book from Rosemary Orchard and Ryan Dotson all about one of the most powerful task managers on the market. I’m looking forward to diving into it.
Beddit Launches New Sleep Monitor⇢
When Apple bought Beddit, I figured they were done for, but as Zac Hall reports, the company is very much alive:
The first revision to the Beddit Sleep Monitor since Apple bought the sleep tracking company includes a slight design change to the actual hardware, and the iOS app for managing the sleep monitor has a new version as well. All mentions of Android support are also removed from the Beddit website as far as we can tell.
watchOS 5.1.2⇢
Great release number; even better features.