By John Gruber

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Artifact Is Shutting Down After One Year ★

Kevin Systrom:

We’ve made the decision to wind down operations of the Artifact app. We launched a year ago and since then we’ve been working tirelessly to build a great product. We have built something that a core group of users love, but we have concluded that the market opportunity isn’t big enough to warrant continued investment in this way. It’s easy for startups to ignore this reality, but often making the tough call earlier is better for everyone involved. The biggest opportunity cost is time working on newer, bigger and better things that have the ability to reach many millions of people. I am personally excited to continue building new things, though only time will tell what that might be. We live in an exciting time where artificial intelligence is changing just about everything we touch, and the opportunities for new ideas seem limitless.

I am particularly proud of all the work our small team of 8 has accomplished. For instance, our app was recently named the everyday essential app of the year by the Google Play Store.

Winning an award on Android is a little like winning the Canadian Football League title. Artifact had great potential — no surprise given its pedigree: Systrom and Mike Krieger are hall of famers for Instagram — but never became a top-tier iOS app.

When it debuted a year ago, I called it a disappointment:

It’s just ads ads ads, interrupting seemingly every single article, every couple of paragraphs. This same “man, I miss ad blockers” feeling strikes me when I use Apple News too, but Apple News articles have way fewer ads, and better ads, than what I’m seeing so far in articles I read in Artifact. “Like Apple News but worse” is not a good elevator pitch. [...]

Instagram was an instant sensation because it was obviously such a premium experience. Great photos, with cool filters (which filters were necessary to make phone camera pictures look great a decade ago), a simple social concept, all wrapped in a great app. Artifact does feel like a nice app, but the reading experience, at least today, is anything but premium. It feels cheap. And the social aspect isn’t there yet.

I stuck with it all year, but have used it less than ever in recent months. In the first half of 2023, Artifact’s suggestions were improving steadily for me, but in recent months the quality of the suggestions dropped off a cliff for me. Lots of clickbait.

They added the social component, with the ability to post articles and add comments, but those features didn’t make the overall product any better. And while the core reading experience improved, it never improved to the point where it was as good as reading in Safari. Their refusal to focus on providing first and foremost a premium reading experience is exemplified by their own blog post announcing their shutdown. It looks like this on MacOS, and this on iOS. You literally can’t even read the first sentence of the article on the iPhone until you click the little box to dismiss Medium’s dickbox.

Friday, 12 January 2024

Lineup Changes on Apple’s Board of Directors: Al Gore and James Bell Retire; Wanda Austin Joins ★

Apple Newsroom:

Apple today announced Dr. Wanda Austin, former president and CEO of The Aerospace Corporation, has been nominated for election to Apple’s board of directors. Dr. Austin brings decades of science and technology experience to her role, and she has a significant track record of advancing innovation and shaping corporate strategy.

As president and CEO of The Aerospace Corporation, Dr. Austin led an organization dedicated to supporting the U.S. space program and expanding opportunities for future exploration. She was the first woman and the first African American to hold the position. [...]

The board has a longstanding policy that directors generally may not stand for reelection after reaching age 75. As a result, Al Gore, who has served since 2003, and James Bell, who joined in 2015, will both retire from Apple’s board this year.

“We’re deeply grateful to Al and James for their many years of service to Apple — their insights, energy, and values have made us a stronger company in so many ways,” said Cook. “For more than 20 years, Al has contributed an incredible amount to our work — from his unconditional support for protecting our users’ privacy, to his incomparable knowledge of environment and climate issues.”

I strongly suspect that even if Gore had never joined the board, Apple would be a staunchly environmentally-minded company today, but surely Gore pushed them hard in that direction. And I think he was instrumental in Apple’s hiring of Lisa Jackson.

Thursday, 11 January 2024

From the DF Archive: Are There Any Tetris Games for Mac? ★

My recent spate of Tetris-related links got me thinking again about this post from 2018:

So as far as I can tell, not only is there no official Tetris for Mac, there are no Tetris-like games either. Back in the 90s, there were several really good Tetris games for the Mac. Anyone remember Wesleyan Tetris? It was a goofy version in which the developer, Randall Cook, would rudely critique your gameplay.

If The Tetris Company wants to protect the name “Tetris”, fine, but I think it sucks that there’s no good way to play the game on a Mac today. Every computer should have a good version of Tetris.

Not much has changed from 2018. There is an officially licensed game in the Mac App Store now: Tetris Beat. It’s part of Apple Arcade, so most of you can probably download it and play it. It’s not just plain Tetris, and whatever is that it wants to be, it sucks. It doesn’t even let you customize the controls. It occupies 2.3 GB on disk after installation. For Tetris! Jiminy. Niklaus Wirth would be rolling over in his (fresh) grave if you told him a Tetris game took 2.3 GB on disk and made the fans get loud on an Apple silicon MacBook Pro when you play it.

The best options for just playing Tetris on a Mac are web games: Tetr.io and Jstris. (I presume both websites are hosted in countries outside the reach of litigious The Tetris Company.) Tetr.io offers “desktop” versions, but their Mac app is an Intel-only Electron app that instantly made the fans on my MacBook Pro veritably roar. It’s far better playing online in Safari, but Tetr.io is geared toward Tetris fanatics, not casual play. Jstris is simpler, but fundamentally exists as a platform for competitive online play. (Go to Play → Practice to just play single player.)

What a sad state of affairs. A hearty fuck you to The Tetris Company for ruthlessly shutting down hobbyist clones while refusing to license a decent official just-plain-Tetris Mac app.

Update: Hard to believe I didn’t come across this on my own, but it turns out The Tetris Company has a decent simple Tetris game on their own website.

Niklaus Wirth: ‘A Plea for Lean Software’ ★

From an essay Niklaus Wirth published in IEEE’s “Computer” magazine in 1995 (original PDF), some lessons learned in the development of Wirth’s Oberon system:

• The belief that complex systems require armies of designers and programmers is wrong. A system that is not understood in its entirety, or at least to significant degree of detail by a single individual, should probably not be built.

• Communication problems grow as the size of the design team grows. Whether they are obvious or not, when communication problems predominate, the team and the project are both in deep trouble.

• Reducing complexity and size must be the goal in every step — in system specification, design, and in detailed programming. A programmer’s competence should be judged by the ability to find simple solutions, certainly not by productivity measured in “number of lines ejected per day.” Prolific programmers contribute to certain disaster.

• Programs should be written and polished until they acquire publication quality. It is infinitely more demanding to design a publishable program than one that “runs.” Programs should be written for human readers as well as for computers. If this notion contradicts certain vested interests in the commercial world, it should at least find no resistance in academia.

Fruit Stripe Gum Discontinued ★

Emily Schmall, reporting for The New York Times:

Fruit Stripe, the striped chewing gum known for its short burst of flavor, has been discontinued after more than a half-century, inspiring nostalgic tributes across social media.

“Best two seconds of flavor you’ve ever had,” one Reddit user wrote on Wednesday. “R.I.P. to a legend.”

Rainbow-colored packs of Fruit Stripe gum first appeared in stores in the United States in the late 1960s. Ferrara, a confectioner based in Chicago, said this week that it had stopped making the product.

There were two kinds of Fruit Stripe: chewing gum and bubble gum. I could never decide which was better, so, of course, I always bought a pack of each. (Juicy Fruit, of course, is the superior fruit-flavored stick-shaped chewing gum.)

‘Trump Has Taken Presidential Immunity to Its Illogical Extreme’ ★

David A. Graham, writing at The Atlantic:

In a hearing before the D.C. Circuit Court, the former president’s lawyers argued that he should be immune from criminal prosecution for his role in the attempt to steal the 2020 presidential election. This argument has an obvious flaw: It implies that the president is above the law. Such a blunt rejection of the Constitution and the basic concept of American democracy is too much even for Trump to assert — publicly, at least — so his lawyers have proposed a theory. They say that he can’t be criminally prosecuted unless he is first impeached and convicted by Congress.

This argument is no less dangerous, as a hypothetical asked in court demonstrated in chilling terms. Judge Florence Pan asked Trump’s attorney, D. John Sauer, if “a president who ordered SEAL Team 6 to assassinate a political rival” could be criminally prosecuted. Sauer tried to hem and haw his way through an answer but ultimately stated that such a president couldn’t be prosecuted unless he was first impeached, convicted, and removed by Congress.

“But if he weren’t, there would be no criminal prosecution, no criminal liability for that?” Pan pressed. Sauer had no choice but to agree, because acknowledging any exceptions would have blown a hole in his argument.

The most forgiving take on this argument is that Trump’s legal team doesn’t mean it, and they’re merely stalling for time — throwing as much shit as possible up against the appeals court walls, hoping to delay his umpteen trials until after his possible reelection in a year. But Trump himself clearly means it. (Barry Blitt’s cover illustration for The New Yorker this week is sublime.)

The best refutation of Trump’s argument that presidents are above the law, and accountable only to Congressional impeachment, comes from Representative Jamie Raskin, who points to the glaring game theory hole in this absurd argument: if it were true, the president could order the assassination of any congressperson who threatened to impeach or convict him. As Raskin concluded, “This is the GOP 2024.”

NanoRaptor’s Apple Pascal Poster Recreation ★

NanoRaptor:

For Niklaus Wirth, 1934-2024.

Apple’s classic Pascal poster, remade as a nice clean vector image. Print at any size with the PDF link.

Just beautiful.

Niklaus Wirth, Titan of Computer Science and Creator of Pascal, Dies at 89 ★

Liam Proven, in a nice obituary in The Register:

Swiss computer scientist Professor Niklaus Wirth died on New Year’s Day, roughly six weeks before what would have been his 90th birthday.

Wirth is justly celebrated as the creator of the Pascal programming language, but that was only one step in a series of important languages and research projects. Both asteroid 21655 and a law of computer design are named after him. He won computer-science boffinry’s highest possible gong, the Turing Award, in 1984, and that page has some short English-language clips from a 2018 interview. [...]

As described in C H Lindsey’s History of ALGOL-68 [PDF], when the ALGOL-W proposal was rejected, Wirth resigned from the committee, contributing a strong “Closing Word” to the November 1968 Algol Bulletin 29, containing gems such as:

I pulled out my copy of the draft report on ALGOL-68 and showed it to her. She fainted.

Instead, Wirth took his proposal, changed it to be somewhat less compatible with ALGOL, and released it in 1970 under the name Pascal.

Wirth’s Law encapsulates Wirth’s philosophy: “The hope is that the progress in hardware will cure all software ills. However, a critical observer may observe that software manages to outgrow hardware in size and sluggishness.” Or, as he rephrased it in his paper describing Project Oberon: “In spite of great leaps forward, hardware is becoming faster more slowly than software is becoming slower.” In many ways, this remains the fundamental problem of our entire industry. It’s a truism, and can only be mitigated.

He endorsed simplicity and clarity, and his languages and system designs exemplified those ideals. Studying computer science in the early to mid-1990s, I was among the last to learn Pascal as a teaching language. After outgrowing BASIC, I had actually started learning Pascal my senior year in high school, in a class with just two other students — thanks, Mrs. Spatz — and it was that class that made me want to study computer science in college.

And Pascal was to the original Macintosh what Objective-C was to Mac OS X — the language Apple established as the default for writing application software. Most of the apps that established the Macintosh as the platform for people with good taste in the 1980s and early 1990s were written in Pascal. THINK Pascal was an IDE years — maybe over a decade — ahead of its time. (There were good Pascal systems on the PC side of the fence too.)

Wednesday, 10 January 2024

13-Year-Old Prodigy Willis ‘Blue Scuti’ Gibson Is First to Beat NES Tetris ★

Jason Koebler, writing for 404 Media:

A 13-year-old competitive Tetris player has become the first known human to beat the game on the original NES by forcing it into a kill screen. In doing so, the player, Blue Scuti, broke world records for overall score, level achieved, and total numbers of lines in the 34-year-old game. Previously, only an AI had broken Tetris.

The feat took Blue Scuti about 38 minutes, as shown in a video he posted to his YouTube. As he nears the feat, Blue Scuti says “Oh I missed it,” after misplacing a block. He recovers, then says “Oh my God,” as it seems like he’ll be able to do it. “Please crash,” he says as the blocks careen down the screen impossibly fast. He gets another line and the game freezes: “Oh my God! Yes! I’m going to pass out,” he says. “I can’t feel my hands.”

From Sopan Deb’s story about Gibson for The New York Times:

Ms. Cox bought her son a version of a Nintendo console called a RetroN, which used the same hardware as the original Nintendo console, from a pawnshop, as well as an old cathode-ray tube television to help him get started. In a given week, Willis said, he plays about 20 hours of Tetris.

“I’m actually OK with it,” Ms. Cox, a high school math teacher, said. “He does other things outside of playing Tetris, so it really wasn’t that terribly difficult to say OK. It was harder to find an old CRT TV than it was to say, ‘Yeah, we can do this for a little bit.’”

Koebler’s story ends with a sad note: “Blue Scuti dedicated the game to his dad, Adam Gibson, who died in December.” My mom’s mother died when my mom was just 16, so I’m familiar, second-hand, with how devastating such a loss is. Young Gibson seems utterly delightful — a gracious champion — so we’d all be rooting for him anyway, but this adds a note of poignancy.

Recommended viewing: This 17-minute video from aGameScout is a wonderful, fun explanation of Gibson’s feat — it explains why NES Tetris was, for decades, thought to end at level 29; the new advanced controller techniques that allow elite players to blow past level 29; and suggests future accomplishments that remain unachieved.

Paku Paku — Pac-Man in One Dimension ★

More fun to play than you’d think. Via Andy Baio, who’s achieved a high score of 2,689 (!). I thought I did pretty well with a 167 288.

Update: My pal Michael Simmons scored 4,911 playing on his iPhone. Bastard. And, of course, some idle hands on Hacker News wrote a bot to play — just copy the JavaScript and paste it into your browser’s web inspector console. The bot just rang up a 46,372 for me. I love the web.

Tuesday, 9 January 2024

Humane Lays Off 4 Percent of Employees Before Releasing Its AI Pin ★

Alex Heath, reporting for The Verge:

Humane laid off 4 percent of employees this week in a move that was described as a cost cutting measure to those who were impacted, according to sources familiar with the matter. Employees were recently told by leadership that budgets would be lowered this year, said one of the people, who requested anonymity to speak without the company’s permission.

The cuts, which numbered 10 people, come ahead of the five-year-old startup shipping its first device: a $699, screenless, AI-powered pin that is pitched as a smartphone replacement.

In a text message, Bongiorno told me that the cuts were “not communicated as a layoff” to those who were impacted, despite sources telling me that they were — both verbally and in writing. “It goes without saying that, like every company, we have a responsibility to remain prudent and proactive, ensuring we have the right roles, right people, and the right structure at every juncture,” she said.

Layoffs are never good — and layoffs before shipping the company’s first product are a particularly bad look — but 10/250 employees really does sound more like belt-tightening. But I do not think their AI Pin preorder numbers have set the world afire, nor do I think the company’s investors are interested in funding them further. (Sam Altman, Humane’s largest shareholder, is reportedly working with Jony Ive and LoveFrom on “AI hardware”. To me, that’s far more of a warning sign about Humane than their laying off 10 employees.)

Hey Calendar App Is Now in the App Store ★

David Heinemeier Hansson:

I’ll admit it was a bit cheeky to make our new HEY Calendar app “do something” by including Apple’s own history as a preview for people who don’t have an account. And I didn’t give the gambit better than 30% odds of succeeding, but lo and behold, it did! Apple has approved our app, and it’s now available in the App Store!

Sanity prevails — but at least I got a good headline out of the story.

Passenger’s iPhone Survived, Intact, 16,000-Foot Fall From Alaska Airlines Plane ★

Sean Bates, on Twitter/X:

Found an iPhone on the side of the road... Still in airplane mode with half a battery and open to a baggage claim for #AlaskaAirlines ASA1282 Survived a 16,000 foot drop perfectly in tact!

Not only was the phone still in working order — it was seemingly unscathed. It has a case and a screen protector, but landing on grass was surely a huge factor. Just amazing.

When I first saw this story, I was skeptical, wondering how Bates got past the lock screen. But the phone had no passcode, as Bates described in a follow-up video. I find that almost as crazy as the phone surviving a 16,000-foot drop, but I’d probably be shocked to know how many people rock the no-passcode lifestyle. I just don’t get it, given how Face ID makes it feel like you don’t have a passcode.

(Judging by this thread, it’s also apparently quite common for people to turn off Auto-Lock in Settings → Display & Brightness.)

Alaska and United Airlines Report Loose Parts in Boeing 737 Max 9 Door Panels ★

PBS News Hour:

Federal investigators say a door panel slid up before flying off an Alaska Airlines jetliner last week, and they are looking at whether four bolts that were supposed to help hold the panel in place might have been missing when the plane took off. The comments Monday from the National Transportation Safety Board came shortly after Alaska and United Airlines reported separately that they found loose parts in the panels — or door plugs — of some other Boeing 737 Max 9 jets.

“Since we began preliminary inspections on Saturday, we have found instances that appear to relate to installation issues in the door plug — for example, bolts that needed additional tightening,” Chicago-based United said.

Alaska said that as it began examining its Max 9s, “Initial reports from our technicians indicate some loose hardware was visible on some aircraft.”

This tidbit seems nutty to me:

The jet involved in Friday’s blowout is brand-new, having been put in service in November. After a cabin-pressurization system warning light came on during three flights, the airline stopped flying it over the Pacific to Hawaii. Some aviation experts questioned why Alaska continued using the plane on overland routes until it figured out what was causing the pressurization warnings.

Homendy said Monday, however, that NTSB has seen no evidence to link the warnings with the blowout of the door plug.

There may be no evidence yet, but what are the odds that a door plug that blew off a brand-new jet mid-flight — in a fleet of planes they’ve now discovered have loose bolts holding those doors in place — wasn’t to blame for the cabin-pressurization warnings? And, even if it’s true that the pressurization warnings were unrelated to last week’s incident, that’s even worse for Boeing — that would mean they have a problem with these door plugs and an as-yet undetermined other problem. I’m surprised that Boeing’s stock is only down ~8 percent.

Monday, 8 January 2024

‘Get Ready’ ★

Apple’s first commercial for Vision Pro is (a) perfect, and (b) a splendid callback to the iPhone’s “Hello” ad. Not a bad list of movies to watch, either.

(I’d bet money that Joz — a Michigan nut — has it debuting during tonight’s college football championship.)

Fantastical ★

My thanks to Flexibits for sponsoring the previous two weeks at Daring Fireball. Fantastical isn’t just the best calendaring app for iOS and Mac; Cardhop isn’t just the best contacts app for iOS and Mac — these are two of the best apps in the world today, period.

And, lo, Fantastical is no longer just for Mac, iPhone, and iPad. From Apple’s Newsroom announcement about Vision Pro pre-orders and availability today:

An infinite canvas for productivity: With key productivity and collaboration apps like Fantastical, Freeform, JigSpace, apps from Microsoft 365, and Slack, Apple Vision Pro is an ideal productivity tool for everyday tasks.

I believe this means that Fantastical is the first third-party VisionOS app Apple has ever mentioned. Can’t wait to see it.

2023 was a huge year for Flexibits, and they have a terrific year-in-review blog post that runs down all the details. But the highlights are obvious: excellent support for widgets (on all platforms, including interactive widgets on the latest OSes) and Live Activities on iOS. They also added several improvements to their Openings feature that lets people find meeting times that work for everyone.

Flexibits has a killer offer for DF readers: 20 percent off for up to two full years, both for new and current Flexibits subscribers. I just used the code to renew my own annual subscription. Even if your subscription isn’t due for renewal yet, you can apply the code now. But act fast — the deal is only good through the end of day Tuesday.

The CEO of HyperVerse, a Collapsed Crypto Ponzi Scheme, Does Not Appear to Exist ★

Sarah Martin, reporting for The Guardian:

A man named Steven Reece Lewis was introduced as the chief executive officer of HyperVerse at an online global launch event in December 2021, with video messages of support from a clutch of celebrities released on Twitter the following month, including from the Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak and actor Chuck Norris. [...]

Guardian Australia has confirmed that neither the University of Leeds nor the University of Cambridge has any record of someone by the name Steven Reece Lewis on their databases. No records exist of Steven Reece Lewis on the UK companies register, Companies House, or on the US Securities and Exchange Commission. Adobe, a publicly listed company since 1986, has no record of any acquisition of a company owned by a Steven Reece Lewis in any of its public SEC filings. It is understood that Goldman Sachs could find no record of Reece Lewis having worked for the company. Guardian Australia was unable to find a LinkedIn profile for Reece Lewis or any internet presence other than HyperVerse promotional material.

A man who doesn’t actually exist sounds like the perfect CEO for any cryptocurrency company.

Also: Looks like the Woz and Norris “endorsements” were scripts they were paid to read through Cameo.

Finally, Our First ‘Finally’ of the Year Nominee for 2024 ★

Apple, back at WWDC, announcing Vision Pro (italics added):

Apple Vision Pro starts at $3,499 (U.S.), and will be available early next year on apple.com and at Apple Store locations in the U.S., with more countries coming later next year.

Subhead at The Verge, today:

After previewing the VR headset in June 2023, Apple’s $3,499 Vision Pro is finally scheduled to go on sale

BBC News, too: “Apple Vision Pro: $3,499 Headset Finally Gets Release Date”.

The announcement dropped at 9:00 am ET on the first non-holiday Monday of the year.

Vision Pro Pre-Orders Start January 19 (Next Friday), Available Starting February 2 ★

Apple Newsroom:

Apple today announced Apple Vision Pro will be available beginning Friday, February 2, at all U.S. Apple Store locations and the U.S. Apple Store online. [...] An all-new App Store provides users with access to more than 1 million compatible apps across iOS and iPadOS, as well as new experiences that take advantage of the unique capabilities of Vision Pro. Pre-orders for Apple Vision Pro begin Friday, January 19, at 5 a.m. PST.

A hearty thanks from we East Coasters.

Pricing and Availability:

• Apple Vision Pro will be available starting at $3,499 (U.S.) with 256GB of storage. Pre-orders for Apple Vision Pro will begin on Friday, January 19, at 5 a.m. PST, with availability beginning Friday, February 2.

During the Vision Pro segment of The Talk Show Live From WWDC 2023, I started describing Vision Pro as “a product coming next year, or early next year, I forget which...”, and Greg Joswiak and Mike Rockwell, in unison, interrupted me to say “Early next year.” I then asked for further clarification on the definition of “early”, and laughter ensued — but Apple wasn’t kidding. This is pretty much as early as early could be in 2024.

• ZEISS Optical Inserts — Readers will be available for $99 (U.S.), and ZEISS Optical Inserts — Prescription will be available for $149 (U.S.).

It’s new territory for a device to cost more if you require corrective lenses, but it’s the nature of Vision Pro that it will not fit over glasses, so there’s no way around this. People accustomed to $10 readers from the drug store may be surprised at these prices, but these $100–150 seems fair for high-quality lenses. I suspect, though, that there will spring a cottage industry for lower-priced third-party lens inserts.

I still have questions about how buyers will provide their prescriptions to Apple. In most countries, people can just buy corrective glasses and contacts lenses without a prescription, but the U.S. — ostensibly the land of freedom — requires a doctor’s prescription. (Ophthalmologists have a strong lobbying group.)

• Apple Vision Pro comes with a Solo Knit Band and Dual Loop Band — giving users two options for the fit that works best for them. Apple Vision Pro also includes a Light Seal, two Light Seal Cushions, an Apple Vision Pro Cover for the front of the device, Polishing Cloth, Battery, USB-C Charge Cable, and USB-C Power Adapter.

Also unclear at the moment: How many different Light Seals are available? What app will online buyers use to scan their faces for sizing? How much will extra Light Seals (for additional users) cost?

And how much will the storage tiers above 256 GB cost? Here are Apple’s current price deltas from 256 GB for iPad Pro and iPhone 15 Pro:

	iPad Pro	iPhone 15 Pro
512 GB	$200	$200
1 TB	$600	$400
2 TB	$1,000	—

Saturday, 6 January 2024

President Biden in Valley Forge: ‘Democracy Is Still a Sacred Cause, and There’s No Country in the World Better Positioned to Lead the World Than America’ ★

Remarkable speech by President Biden, on the eve of the third anniversary of Trump’s Capitol insurrection:

Let’s be clear about the 2020 election. Trump exhausted every legal avenue available to him to overturn the election. Every one, but the legal path just took Trump back to the truth, that I’d won the election and he was a loser.

Well, so knowing how his mind works now, he had one, he had one act left. One desperate act available to him, the violence of January the sixth.

Since that day, more than 1,200 people have been charged with assault in the Capitol. Nearly 900 of them have been convicted or pled guilty. Collectively to date, they have been sentenced to more than 840 years in prison.

What’s Trump done? Instead of calling them criminals, he’s called these insurrectionists patriots. They’re patriots. And he promised to pardon them if he returns to office. Trump said that there was a lot of love on January the sixth.

The rest of the nation, including law enforcement, saw a lot of hate and violence.

The AP has a transcript, but I suggest watching it. Biden gets it. Democracy is our sacred cause. It’s that simple. Trump lost, and he tried his ham-fisted best to stay in office anyway. Quoting Biden: “We all know who Donald Trump is. The question we have to answer is: Who are we?”

Nancy Pelosi: ‘Three Years After January 6’ ★

Nancy Pelosi, writing in The Atlantic:

The threat to our democracy is real, present, and urgent. The parable of January 6 reminds us that our precious democratic institutions are only as strong as the courage and commitment of those entrusted with their care. We all share a responsibility to preserve American democracy, which Lincoln called “the last best hope of earth.”

Thursday, 4 January 2024

From the DF Archive: Mobile Phone Keyboards, Circa 2009 ★

Yours truly, back when the iPhone 3GS was new:

I think the question boils down to whether Apple is making a mistake by not making an iPhone with a hardware keyboard. I’m convinced the answer is no — that (a) there will never be an iPhone with a built-in hardware keyboard; and (b) Apple will not suffer for it. [...]

Are software touchscreen keyboards good for everyone? Certainly not. But this is another aspect of the Apple Way. Apple tries to make things that many people love, not things that all people like. The key is that they’re not afraid of the staunch criticism, and often outright derision, that comes with breaking conventions.

Holds up. In 2023 it seems wild that Apple’s all-in bet on touchscreen keyboards for iPhones was controversial at all, let alone the subject of vociferous debate for years.

Ryan Seacrest Tried Making an iPhone Hardware Keyboard Case 10 Years Ago ★

If the aforelinked new Clicks keyboard case for iPhones rings a bell, here’s Jon Fingas reporting for Engadget 10 years ago:

The market for keyboard-equipped phones may be on the wane, but don’t tell that to Ryan Seacrest — the American Idol host is convinced that messaging mavens need real buttons. To that end, he’s jumping into hardware and launching the Typo Keyboard for the iPhone 5 and 5S. The Bluetooth case turns an Apple handset into a makeshift BlackBerry Q10, complete with backlit, sculpted keys that cover up the iPhone’s home button (there’s a small substitute key); we hope you don’t need multitasking, folks. The Typo Keyboard will make its formal debut at CES in early January, and it should ship that month for $99.

The Typo keyboard was doomed in more ways than one: it used unreliable battery-draining Bluetooth, not a wired connection; iOS didn’t have good hardware keyboard support at the time; and, as Fingas alludes in his description above, the Typo keyboard’s design covered the iPhone’s home button. That was pretty much a dealbreaker for the iPhone 5S, which introduced Touch ID.

Even worse, the shell of the company that was once the mighty BlackBerry sued Typo for patent infringement, won, and eventually drove Typo out of business. (Kudos to NBC News for that “Seacrest Out” headline.)

Clicks: New Hardware Keyboard for iPhone ★

I never even owned a smartphone with a hardware keyboard, but as soon as I saw this I wanted one: Clicks is a new $139 hardware keyboard case for the iPhone 14 Pro, 15 Pro, and 15 Pro Max (that one will cost $159 — Max phones have max prices). One of the creators of the project is Michael “MrMobile” Fisher, who, of course, created a YouTube video for the project. (One of his co-creators is CrackBerry Kevin — so there are some serious “hardware phone keyboard aficionado” bona fides on the team.)

I don’t know how much I’ll wind up using it but it looks fun, useful, and clever — and I’m just a sucker for upstart indie hardware projects. Clicks is even a great name. There’s no Bluetooth involved — it connects via Lightning or USB-C, just like any hardware keyboard can via a cable. If you’ve never connected a hardware keyboard to an iPhone before, you might be surprised how many keyboard shortcuts there are (Command-Space for Spotlight, Space and Shift-Space for paging down and up in Safari, Command-H to go to the Home screen, and more.)

You’ll never guess which color I pre-ordered.

The Talk Show: ‘Halos and Harps’ ★

Apple’s 2023 year in review, with Callsheet developer Casey Liss.

Sponsored by:

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‘Like I Said Many Years Ago, I Never Had a Problem With Drugs, Only With Cops.’ ★

I stumbled across an old note where I’d stashed some favorite quotes from Keith Richards; figured I’d append a few of them to my post from a few weeks ago on his 80th birthday.

Wednesday, 3 January 2024

Tip of the Day: Finding Unknown ‘Items’ in Your iCloud Photo Library ★

For at least a few years, I’ve been mildly annoyed by the fact that my iCloud Photo Library reported containing something like “50,783 Photos, 3,643 Videos, 2 Items”. The counts for photos and videos weren’t the problem — the problem was the “2 Items”. What were they?

Caleb Hailey had the same problem, and posted a super-simple solution to Mastodon: a custom smart album for Photos for Mac with a dozen or so criteria like this:

• Filename does not include “.jpeg”
• Filename does not include “.png”
• Filename does not include “.heic”

and so forth. A few minutes of busy work and I found my culprits: two AAC audio files that were each just a few seconds long, and seemingly empty. I have no idea how or when they got into my Photos library but I’m delighted to have them gone.

Worth pointing out: You don’t need to build up a list of every single filename extension that’s an image or video that you do want to keep in Photos. Once I built up a list of excluded filename extensions that whittled the list of matching items to 32, I just went through the items visually. The two AAC files stuck out like sore thumbs.

Also worth pointing out: You cannot create smart albums in Photos on iPadOS or iOS. Only MacOS. (Same thing goes for smart mailboxes in Apple Mail.) Apple still treats the iPad and iPhone as baby computers.

See also: A similar problem I had back in 2016, in which I had five unnamed items in my Photos library that could not be synced to iCloud. The solution to that one was also a smart album — and thus also a problem that could only be solved using a Mac.

Sunday, 31 December 2023

Fantastical ★

My thanks to Flexibits for sponsoring last week — and, spoiler, next week — at Daring Fireball. Fantastical isn’t just the best calendaring app for iOS and Mac; Cardhop isn’t just the best contacts app for iOS and Mac — these are two of the best apps in the world today, period.

2023 was a huge year for Flexibits, and they have a terrific year-in-review blog post that runs down all the details. But the highlights are obvious: excellent support for widgets (on all platforms, including interactive widgets on the latest OSes) and Live Activities on iOS. They also added several improvements to their Openings feature that lets people find meeting times that work for everyone.

Through the end of next week, Flexibits has a killer offer for DF readers: 20 percent off for up to two full years, both for new and current Flexibits subscribers.

Friday, 29 December 2023

‘Poor Charlie’s Almanack’ (and the Tragic State of E-Books) ★

When Charlie Munger — Warren Buffet’s longtime partner at Berkshire Hathaway — died last month at 99, I mentioned that a new edition of Poor Charlie’s Almanack was about to be published by Stripe Press (a subsidiary of the very same Stripe of e-payments renown).

The hardcover edition is out, but Stripe has also made the entire book available on this marvelous website. The site is beautiful, fun, and clever, and reminds me greatly of the web edition of The Steve Jobs Archive’s Make Something Wonderful. Both are damning condemnations of the state of e-books.

Regarding Make Something Wonderful, Sebastiaan de With wrote:

It’s hard to capture the delight of a real book, but this website does a fantastic job coming close. Lots of delightful, thoughtful little details.

I say “ebook” because it isn’t a word used anywhere on the website, likely for good reason: there are no good ebooks. The ePub file lacks all the delight of the beautiful website. Books on Apple Books are objectively worse than their written counterparts. This might be nicer.

Kindle editions are even more primitive, design-wise. Compare the Kindle preview of Poor Charlie’s Almanack to the website edition. It’s like comparing a matchbook to a blowtorch. With the e-book editions — Kindle, Kobo, Apple Books, whatever — you can merely read these books. With the web editions, you experience them.

iPhone 16 Models Rumored to Add Dedicated ‘Capture Button’ ★

Juli Clover, MacRumors:

MacRumors has shared multiple details on the iPhone 16’s design, including the unveiling of a new button that is planned for the devices, the Capture Button. While we’ve known the name and location of the button, the internal information that we’ve obtained does not detail what it will be used for.

According to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, the Capture Button will be able to record video. In this week’s Power On newsletter, Gurman says that the iPhone 16 models will include a “new dedicated button for taking video.” [...]

The Capture button will be a capacitive button with haptic feedback rather than a mechanical button, and it is expected to include a force sensor that can recognize pressure. The location of the button may make it easy to trigger, but if it is activated via pressure, it could be that holding it down will launch into the camera and allow video recording to start.

If this comes true — and I hope it does — the button might default to shooting video, but I’d bet the house it will be configurable, like this year’s Action button. When using an iPhone as a camera, the main thing I miss from dedicated cameras is a hardware shutter button. With dedicated cameras, the shutter button can be pressed halfway to set exposure and focus, and only captures on a full press. A force-sensitive Capture button could work similarly.

You can set the iPhone 15 Pro’s Action button to act as a shutter button for the Camera app, but it’s in the wrong location on the frame of the phone. I don’t want to press a shutter button with my left thumb, I want to press it with my right index finger. (You can orient the Action button to be on the top right by holding the iPhone horizontally with camera at the bottom, but that feels awkward to me.)

Thursday, 28 December 2023

Tommy Smothers as Johnny Carson ★

Great clip from a great comic. Rest in peace.

Apple’s Next Magic Trackpad Should Have a Touch ID Sensor (But Probably Won’t) ★

Jason Snell, in a post from August 2022:

I wanted to do a quick follow-up on my recent post about attaching an Apple Magic Keyboard with Touch to the underside of my desk, because I’ve now done what I threatened to do at the end of that piece: I’ve broken into the keyboard, removed the important bits, and then reassembled it into a little 3-D printed case that contains just the Touch ID button. [...]

Anyway: It works. But I would really love it if Apple would just make a Magic Trackpad with integrated Touch ID.

My desk setup: MacBook Pro with the lid closed, connected to a Studio Display, with my beloved Apple Extended Keyboard II, a mouse on the left (I’m right-handed for most things but taught myself to mouse left-handed all the way back in college, when I started getting RSI), and a Magic Trackpad on the right.

I’m happier with this setup than I’ve ever been with any Mac I’ve ever used. The downside though is that I don’t have Touch ID, because my MacBook’s lid is closed, and I don’t use Apple’s Magic Keyboard. So on workdays, I tend always to wear my Apple Watch, which gives me a lot of the same advantages as Touch ID: I can log into my sleeping Mac without typing my account password, and I can confirm many actions (like Apple Pay purchases, and moving protected files to the Trash) with a double-click of the side button on my watch.

But whenever I’m wearing one of my other watches, I really miss Touch ID. I don’t miss it enough to go through the DIY project of ripping apart a Magic Keyboard to move the Touch ID sensor into a standalone case, though. So I wish that either (a) Apple would add a Touch ID sensor to the Magic Trackpad; or (b) someone would start selling pre-assembled Touch ID sensors in a nice case, repurposed from Magic Keyboards. It’s a bit of a waste to destroy a Magic Keyboard just to repurpose the Touch ID button, but I’d happily pay for it. And while I wish Apple would add a Touch ID sensor to the Magic Trackpad, I doubt they will — that would sully the minimalist “no buttons” look of the Magic Trackpad, and, for people who use a Magic Trackpad alongside a Magic Keyboard, would give them two Touch ID buttons.

Update: Perhaps a hypothetical Magic Trackpad with Touch ID need not look that different at all. There are Android handsets with fingerprint sensors under the display; Apple could put one under the surface of the trackpad, perhaps with nothing more than a subtle dimple or divot to indicate it.

Update 2: Basic Apple Guy mocked up a standalone Touch ID “Magic Button” back in 2022, and Quinn Nelson made a video about making his own.

Wednesday, 27 December 2023

‘Triangulation’ — Complex Exploit Backdoored Unknown Number of iPhones Over 4 Years ★

Dan Goodin, reporting for Ars Technica:

Researchers on Wednesday presented intriguing new findings surrounding an attack that over four years backdoored dozens if not thousands of iPhones, many of which belonged to employees of Moscow-based security firm Kaspersky. Chief among the discoveries: the unknown attackers were able to achieve an unprecedented level of access by exploiting a vulnerability in an undocumented hardware feature that few if anyone outside of Apple and chip suppliers such as ARM Holdings knew of.

“The exploit’s sophistication and the feature’s obscurity suggest the attackers had advanced technical capabilities,” Kaspersky researcher Boris Larin wrote in an email. “Our analysis hasn’t revealed how they became aware of this feature, but we’re exploring all possibilities, including accidental disclosure in past firmware or source code releases. They may also have stumbled upon it through hardware reverse engineering.” [...]

The mass backdooring campaign, which according to Russian officials also infected the iPhones of thousands of people working inside diplomatic missions and embassies in Russia, according to Russian government officials, came to light in June. Over a span of at least four years, Kaspersky said, the infections were delivered in iMessage texts that installed malware through a complex exploit chain without requiring the receiver to take any action.

From the report by the Kaspersky researchers:

If we try to describe this feature and how the attackers took advantage of it, it all comes down to this: they are able to write data to a certain physical address while bypassing the hardware-based memory protection by writing the data, destination address, and data hash to unknown hardware registers of the chip unused by the firmware.

Our guess is that this unknown hardware feature was most likely intended to be used for debugging or testing purposes by Apple engineers or the factory, or that it was included by mistake. Because this feature is not used by the firmware, we have no idea how attackers would know how to use it.

Ivory 1.8 Introduces ‘Explore’ Tab ★

Tapbots:

Ivory v1.8 is now available to download on the App Store! It features the brand new Explore Tab (which replaces the Search Tab) with much improved search and a new Popular & Trending section. There’s also a few new app Icons and some bug fixes.

The new Explore tab is good: it surfaces both popular Mastodon posts and news stories being shared by many people.

Federal Appeals Court Pauses Import Ban on Apple Watch Series 9 and Ultra 2 ★

Hartley Charlton, reporting for MacRumors:

Apple filed an emergency request to the United States Court of Appeals following President Biden’s decision to decline a veto on the sales ban, allowing it to take effect earlier this week. The Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit today accepted an interim stay while the court reviews Apple’s request for a full stay for the length of the appeal, effectively pausing the ban on Apple Watch imports for a brief period.

Apple, in a statement to 9to5Mac’s Chance Miller:

“We are thrilled to return the full Apple Watch lineup to customers in time for the new year. Apple Watch Series 9 and Apple Watch Ultra 2, including the blood oxygen feature, will become available for purchase again in the United States at Apple Stores starting today and from apple.com tomorrow by 12pm PT.”

The Man wasn’t going to let Apple down.

Apple News+ Adds The Athletic, but NYT Articles Remain Unavailable ★

Todd Spangler, reporting last week for Variety:

The New York Times Co. inked a deal with Apple to add The Athletic’s full sports coverage to the Apple News+ subscription bundle. In addition, the Times’ Wirecutter product reviews will be available for free to all Apple News users beginning early next year.

However, articles from the New York Times Co.’s namesake newspaper remain unavailable in the tech giant’s popular Apple News app. The NYT Co. ended its partnership to provide articles from the Times to Apple News in 2020, saying at the time that the Apple News model did not fit with the company’s need for “a direct path” from digital platforms for sending “readers back into our environments, where we control the presentation of our report, the relationships with our readers and the nature of our business rules.” [...]

The Athletic has more than 450 full-time writers, editors and producers. The outlet covers hundreds of professional and college teams across sports leagues globally. That includes the NFL, NBA, WNBA, MLB, NHL, MLS, English Premier League, PGA, National Women’s Soccer League, NCAA Division I Football Bowl Subdivision, NCAA men’s college basketball, NCAA women’s college basketball, LaLiga and UEFA Champions League.

I’ve been subscribed to The Athletic for years, and now get it bundled with my Times subscription. It’s both good and, as the third paragraph quoted above indicates, broad — they have beat writers for all major teams. Adding it to News+ is a major upgrade to News+’s sports coverage. There’s nothing else quite like The Athletic.

It does seem curious, though, that the Times considers it worthwhile to bundle The Athletic (and also Wirecutter — which, unlike The Athletic, stinks) with News+ but not content from the Times itself. Also worth mentioning that the Times closed its own sports desk last year, and now relies upon The Athletic for all sports coverage.

Tuesday, 26 December 2023

Amazon Prime Video Will Start Showing Ads Next Month ★

Amazon, in an email to Prime subscribers:

We are writing to you today about an upcoming change to your Prime Video experience. Starting January 29, Prime Video movies and TV shows will include limited advertisements. This will allow us to continue investing in compelling content and keep increasing that investment over a long period of time. We aim to have meaningfully fewer ads than linear TV and other streaming TV providers. No action is required from you, and there is no change to the current price of your Prime membership. We will also offer a new ad-free option for an additional $2.99 per month that you can sign up for here.

Prime is a very compelling value.

“Meaningfully fewer ads” than Apple TV+ or Max is not possible, because they have no ads. Netflix has a lower-priced “with ads” tier, but Prime Video is no peer to Netflix. This is a rinky-dink move that solidifies Prime Video’s status as a second-rate streaming service. Maybe if they hadn’t blown $250 million on Citadel and nearly $500 million on Rings of Power — both of which shows were absolutely terrible — they wouldn’t be in this position.

Gurman: Tang Tan, Apple’s Departing VP of iPhone and Watch Design, to Join LoveFrom to Work on ‘AI Hardware’ With OpenAI ★

Mark Gurman, reporting for Bloomberg:

Legendary designer Jony Ive and OpenAI’s Sam Altman are enlisting an Apple Inc. veteran to work on a new artificial intelligence hardware project, aiming to create devices with the latest capabilities.

As part of the effort, outgoing Apple executive Tang Tan will join Ive’s design firm LoveFrom, which will shape the look and capabilities of the new products, according to people familiar with the matter. Altman, an executive who has become the face of modern AI, plans to provide the software underpinnings, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the endeavor isn’t public. [...]

Tan will lead hardware engineering at the project while working at LoveFrom, the people said. Bloomberg News previously reported that the executive was stepping down as Apple’s vice president of iPhone and watch product design. He isn’t slated to depart until February, though his responsibilities were already divided up this month.

“Aiming to create devices with the latest capabilities” is an empty description, but the overall dynamic is interesting nonetheless.

In all, more than 20 former Apple employees have joined the design firm. [...] Shota Aoyagi, another member of Ive’s storied industrial design team at Apple, has also exited. He just started at LoveFrom.

More designers from Ive’s team at Apple now work at LoveFrom than remain at Apple.

Update 27 Dec 2023: From a little birdie:

An important distinction on Tang Tan that Gurman doesn’t get, or is intentionally vague about: Tang ran mechanical engineering for iPhone (“product design”). He was never part of the industrial design group (“design team” or just “the studio”). Obviously, product design works very closely with the design team.

Bobby Kotick Is Out as Microsoft Takes Control of Activision ★

Tom Warren and Ash Parrish, reporting for The Verge last week:

Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick is stepping down officially December 29th. Microsoft has not appointed a direct replacement and instead has rolled the suite of Activision Blizzard executives — including Blizzard president Mike Ybarra, Activision publishing president Rob Kostich, and Activision Blizzard vice chair Thomas Tippl — under Microsoft’s game content and studios president Matt Booty.

That door finally did hit Kotick’s ass.

52 Interesting Things Jason Kottke Learned in 2023 ★

Two of my favorites:

34. Ernest Hemingway only used 59 exclamation points across his entire collection of works.

42. MLB broadcaster Vin Scully’s career lasted 67 seasons, during which he called a game managed by Connie Mack (born in 1862) and one Julio Urías (born in 1996) played in.

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