Linked List: January 17, 2025

Friday, 17 January 2025

Parker Ortolani works near Grand Central and wrote a great post about the in-character Severance experience on Wednesday, replete with photos, both early in the day when the diorama was largely empty, and later in the day, when it was swarmed with fans and general onlookers because the actors and director Ben Stiller were there. Blogging at its best.

iOS 18.3 Beta 3 Has Several Changes to Apple Intelligence Notification Summaries ★

Chance Miller, reporting for 9to5Mac:

Here are the changes included in iOS 18.3 for Apple Intelligence notification summaries:

When you enable notification summaries, iOS 18.3 will make it clearer that the feature — like all Apple Intelligence features — is a beta.

You can now disable notification summaries for an app directly from the Lock Screen or Notification Center by swiping, tapping “Options,” then choosing the “Turn Off Summaries” option.

On the Lock Screen, notification summaries now use italicized text to better distinguish them from normal notifications.

In the Settings app, Apple now warns users that notification summaries “may contain errors.”

Additionally, notification summaries have been temporarily disabled entirely for the News & Entertainment category of apps. Notification summaries will be re-enabled for this category with a future software update as Apple continues to refine the experience.

Using italics for summarized notifications is a really clever design. It feels literary. Italics sounds like a different voice to me, which is exactly what these Apple-generated summaries are. Seems so obvious now that I’m seeing it in use, I’m kicking myself for not having suggested it.

And while I can’t blame Apple for temporarily disabling notification summaries for news apps, after just one full day on beta 3, I already miss them. The mistakes were embarrassing, no question, but overall the summaries were useful for me.

Nintendo Switch 2 Joy-Con Might Double as a Mouse ★

Maddy Myers, writing for Polygon:

But the weirdest part of the reveal video, in my opinion, is the implication that the Joy-Cons can be used as a mouse.

This was already rumored, and if I hadn’t seen those rumors, then I might not have understood what I was looking at during the portion of the teaser that depicts the Joy-Cons sliding around on a hard surface like a cute lil’ mouse. Because of those rumors, though, I’m now convinced that this is a thing and the Switch 2 will include this feature. The video specifically shows the Joy-Con mouse position as perpendicular to the surface its on. The new Joy-Con mechanic is further cemented by the part of the video that shows a Joy-Con on its side with a section that really looks like an optical mouse light. [...]

But this is Nintendo, and Nintendo consoles almost always have a gimmick. The gimmick isn’t always good. Although there were a couple of games that made excellent use of the Wii’s motion controls, I can think of plenty more that were deeply un-fun. Then again, the Wii U’s gimmick — its tablet — paced the way to the first Nintendo Switch, the super-adaptable console we all know and love. So you really never know.

I’ll just say that Nintendo’s controller gimmicks are usually good, so if the new joy-cons can be used like mice, I’ll bet it’s in an unexpected way.

‘He Was Not Interested in Answers Because He Understood That Questions Are the Drive That Make Us Who We Are’ ★

Kyle Maclachlan, remembering his friend and longtime collaborator David Lynch, on Instagram:

What I saw in him was an enigmatic and intuitive man with a creative ocean bursting forth inside of him. He was in touch with something the rest of us wish we could get to.

Our friendship blossomed on Blue Velvet and then Twin Peaks and I always found him to be the most authentically alive person I’d ever met.

David was in tune with the universe and his own imagination on a level that seemed to be the best version of human. He was not interested in answers because he understood that questions are the drive that make us who we are. They are our breath.