Linked List: March 22, 2020

Sunday, 22 March 2020

Yes Plz Coffee 

My thanks to Yes Plz for sponsoring this past week at DF. Yes Plz sends outstanding coffee beans right to your door, along with a delightfully eclectic print zine — that’s right, a printed zine — covering topics like food, culture, and music.

As I wrote in my thank-you post last week, I love Yes Plz coffee. I’d recommend it wholeheartedly even if they weren’t sponsoring the site. It’s delicious. Last week, I wrote that I was drinking Yes Plz coffee while I posted. I can’t say that this week, because I drank it all. I’m out — waiting for a delivery of new beans that was sent yesterday. (You get a notice when a new batch is on its way.) Luckily, Yes Plz just added a new option for a larger bag of beans — I upgraded immediately. I make a lot of coffee at home in normal times; for the foreseeable future, I’ll be making all my coffee at home.

To that point — I checked with my old pal and Yes Plz honcho Tonx Konecny regarding how they’re holding up right now, and if it was OK to keep sending them new subscribers. Tonx’s reply:

Yes! We’re well stocked on raw materials, our small team and all of our production is isolated, and USPS is still going strong so we’re confident we’ll be able to stay fully operational.

World-class coffee delivered right to your door, on a schedule you control. That’s Yes Plz. Just what the doctor ordered in these stay-at-home times. Try it now — no hassle, no commitment, and you can pause or cancel anytime. They even have a special deal for DF readers: $5 off your first bag using promo code FIREBALL5 at checkout.

Anker’s $10 USB‑C to USB‑A Adapter 

If you do need a USB‑C to USB‑A adapter, my favorite is this one from Anker. It’s small and comes pretty close to color-matching Apple’s space gray aluminum. When you plug it in it has a nice snap. I bought a few a while back — I keep two at my desk and two in my travel bag. The only thing I don’t like about it is the prominent Anker logo, but because it’s USB‑C, I just plug it in logo side down to hide it. (Disclosure: I’m back on the Amazon affiliate gravy train; buying through this link will send a small percentage my way.)

USB‑A on the MacBook Air Wishlist? 

Jason Cross, in his MacBook Air review for Macworld:

Apple is still determined to make every USB port feature a USB‑C connector. We’ve been told that the ubiquity of USB‑C devices is just around the corner for years now, and it’s still not happening. Accessory makers keep cranking out mice, keyboards, storage devices, microphones, audio interfaces, and loads of other things with USB‑A connectors on them. Putting a single USB‑A port on MacBooks would not be a step backwards, it would be recognition that in the wide world of USB devices, that interface is still widespread, and we shouldn’t need a dongle or dock to use them.

It’s undeniable that the USB‑C revolution has been very slow in coming, but slowly but surely, it is coming along. I wrote in my first-look review of the new Air that I wish the MacBook Air had at least one more USB‑C port, on the right side of the machine, but I don’t think a built-in USB‑A port would be appropriate. Is USB‑A still in widespread use? Sure, but at this point USB‑A ports are backward-looking. SD cards remain in widespread use too, and they don’t belong built into the Air either. (MacBook Pros — there I can see the argument for built-in SD slots.)

Just like with the 1998 iMac going all-in on USB‑A, and the iPhone 7 dropping the headphone jack, Apple is helping drive the adoption of USB‑C by dropping USB‑A ports. Adding them back now would set back the whole industry.

Watch Gary Hustwit’s Design Documentaries for Free 

Oh You Pretty Things:

Filmmaker Gary Hustwit is streaming his documentaries free worldwide during the global COVID crisis. Each week we’ll be posting another film here. We hope you enjoy them, and please stay strong.

March 17 to 24: Helvetica — a feature-length documentary about typography, graphic design and global visual culture. It looks at the proliferation of one typeface as part of a larger conversation about the way type affects our lives.

If you haven’t seen Helvetica, or haven’t seen it in a while, it’s just so good.