Linked List: September 24, 2021

Friday, 24 September 2021

Daring Fireball Weekly Sponsorships for Q4 ★

Sponsorships have been selling briskly this year, but I’ve only just now opened spots for the October-December quarter. Plus, a last-minute change has opened up next week’s spot, starting this coming Monday.

One sponsor per week, with a sponsor-written entry in the RSS feed to start the week, a thank-you post right on the homepage from me at the end, and the one and only graphic ad on every page of the site all week long. No tracking or other privacy-invasive bullshit. Just plain honest ads. That’s not new — that’s the way the ads on DF have always been. My best argument that they work: the number of repeat companies in the sponsor archive list.

So if you’ve got a product or service you’d like to promote to DF’s discerning audience, I’d love to have you as a sponsor. ~~And if you’re ready to grab next week’s opening, let’s go — should be another good week.~~

‘Float’ ★

Aundre Larrow, announcing his directorial debut:

Shot on the new iPhone 13 Pro, Float is a short film about the journey that a father and daughter take together.

If this doesn’t move you, you’re not hooked up right. Good god, what a powerful, lovely, beautiful short film. Headphones and full screen — this deserves your attention. I take it back, Cinematic mode — which Larrow used to shoot this — is no gimmick at all.

This is just astonishing. Remember Aundre Larrow’s name.

iPhone Day Is Still a Thing ★

I shot this video while walking past the Philly Apple Store at 2 pm. The line went most of the way down the block. I’ll bet the line was longer than it would have been without COVID restrictions, but still — this is the 15th generation of iPhones and people are still lining up to buy them on the day they’re available. And how many more people had them delivered today, waking up early a week ago to preorder the moment the online store came online? People love the iPhone. If you look at it solely as a technology product you’re missing the biggest part of the iPhone story. iPhone Day is a de facto annual holiday for untold millions of people around the world.

That’s not true of any other product in the world.

Apple’s iOS Changes Are Hurting Facebook’s Ad Business ★

Alex Kantrowitz, writing for CNBC:

“Just completely running blind” is how Aaron Paul, a performance Facebook marketer, described it. Paul said his company, Carousel, moved from spending millions of dollars each day on Facebook to a few hundred thousand dollars. Before the iOS changes, Facebook generated 80% of the traffic Carousel sent to its product pages. Now it accounts for 20%.

Apple’s iOS changes may lead to irreparable harm to Facebook’s ad business. This moment has demonstrated to Paul and his fellow performance buyers that relying on one channel (albeit a very effective one) is risky. So they’re looking to diversify their ad spend. Paul said he’s moved his ad budget elsewhere, including “Snapchat and TikTok, but also silent killers like email.” On Twitter, Facebook marketers discussing Apple’s changes almost unanimously agreed they needed to follow suit.

🎻.

Another Sign of Microsoft Establishing ‘Surface’ as a Standalone Brand ★

To my point yesterday about Microsoft establishing “Surface” as a brand name, sans “Microsoft” as a prefix — the headline on the Surface homepage (which redirects from surface.com): “New laptops from Surface, now with Windows 11”.

App Store Release Notes of the Week: Poolsuite FM ★

This is the most joyful way of saying “We’re sorry our iOS 15 compatibility update was a few days late” I can imagine. What a fun app.

Monotype Acquires Hoefler&Co. ★

Jonathan Hoefler:

Nothing’s changing at typography.com, where you’ll still find all 1,113 fonts in the Hoefler&Co library, as well as the cloud.typography webfont service, and all the other resources we’ve created for designers and brands. The H&Co team is staying in place, too, and there are yet more typefaces from us that you can look forward to seeing soon. […]

In the meantime, I’ll be stepping down from my role in the company, to finally make the time to recharge, reflect, and explore some new ideas. In these past few years, participating in a documentary and using typography to help elect a president have been potent reminders of just how many ways there are for type to make a difference, and just how many people are moved by the splendor of typography.

I’d need 144-point type to express my surprise at this announcement.

iPhone 13 Pro Works, But Fits Poorly With MagSafe Duo Charger ★

Awkward.

(Remembers that the MagSafe Duo Charger costs $130.)

Really awkward.

My Advice on How to Set Up a New iPhone or iPad: Quick Start Device-to-Device Transfer ★

A bunch of you are probably getting new iPhones (and iPads) today. As someone who’s set up 5 new devices in the last week, my advice is to restore a new iPhone with the Quick Start device-to-device transfer, not iCloud backup. Don’t worry if it says it might take a little longer this way, it’s worth it. Get a cup of coffee or a bite to eat. A watched pot never boils; a watched transfer never finishes.

Device-to-device is better because it moves over all your login credentials. When you restore from an iCloud backup, you wind up logged out of a lot of apps on the new device. When you restore device-to-device, almost everything moves over. I know there are exceptions, but I don’t think I bounced into a single app that didn’t keep me fully logged in this week. If you tried device-to-device a few years ago and found it lacking, try it again now — Apple has improved this process every year since it debuted. Worst case scenario, you can always start over and use iCloud backup.

Also, you do not need to unpair your Apple Watch from your old iPhone using this method. You can just wear your watch the whole time. When the transfer is complete, the new iPhone will prompt you, asking if you want to move your watch to the new iPhone. Your mileage may vary but it just worked for me.

I posted this on Twitter tonight, and realized I should post about this here too. The Twitter thread has a bunch of Q&A’s about specific apps, like authentication tokens in Authy (they transfer fine).

Update, 25 September 2021: Lots of positive feedback from readers who took my advice. Perfect? No. But I’m more convinced than ever that device-to-device transfer is the way to go. Apple has done a lot of work, year after year, to keep making this migration experience better, faster, simpler, more complete, and more reliable. I see it firsthand, setting up multiple new iOS devices a year. The team behind this doesn’t get enough thanks, so let me say it: thank you.