Increasingly Familiar Apple Lust Objects for 2016 and onwards

How does she currently listen to music on her desktop pc? Is it by streaming or through mp3 files, or even by putting a CD in the cd drive?

Listens to Spotify occasionally, that's it!

My mom was in a similar boat a few years ago and bought herself an iMac. She’s loved it. Easy to use, malware less of a worry, can FaceTime without hassle, etc. Has bad eyesight and doesn’t really care as much about portability, so a MacBook wasn’t a consideration, but I agree that could have been another good option.

Ah yeah if you got a Mini then you'd need to get an external webcam for Facetime which can be faffy

Yeah, they had a home computer guy who made me really angry, kept their desktop locked in 2006 with obsessive malware and CC cleaner settings. I kept trying to tell them, "no one is ever trying to hack you and no one will!" and that maybe keeping Windows Mail locked in a mid-2000s version ultimately was probably worse for security? Anyway. Hoping she'll find the iMac nice and simple and self-contained to usee, and have less hassle. Thanks for yr (reassuring) thoughts!

Now I just have to migrate all her emails since 2001

it's about time to buy a new macbook, but honestly beyond a large screen I don't need anything special

trying to decide between buying new and riding it into the ground vs buying used every few years, ebay seems to have good refurbished stuff with warranty

Chuck it puts me in mind of my own process - my folks wanted a computer circa 2000, I was about to move interstate so I said OK, you need to get the least expensive Mac so that I will be able to support it over the phone while I'm interstate, my dad comes back from Harvey Norman all aglow with the killer deal he got on some IBM Aptiva running Windows ME. My blood pressure spiked but whatever, I said. Five years of weird glitches, several email-borne viruses, inadvertently-installed crapware, horrible "support" software for cheap gadgets like universal remotes and car satnav, janky system software, cheap programs from the bargain bin, clutter, and all of it supported by me trying to figure out an unfamiliar OS over the phone with who knows what had been installed randomly. Every Christmas was a day plus of uninstalls, rebuilds, etc. Anyway it had slowed to a crawl and was crippled by multiple layers of antivirus this and defender that. Dad asked about upgrading the RAM again or something and I just snapped and told him to bin the computer and buy a Mac Mini (G4 at that stage). In the intervening 17 years he has had 2 computer upgrades, both iMacs, and I've had one serious callout (although living back in the same state now) in that entire time. I had a series of escalating pleas to help with massive onslaughts of spam after their travel agent was hacked and their address ended up on a list, it took 2 years of persuading them that filters don't work, but I eventually convinced them to change email addresses and providers, and give their new address to friends. Since then ... nothing. They have an M1 iMac (replacing the previous i5 because it was ten years old, my brother is still using it to type reports!) and everything just works.
I'm sorry ... once I got started I had to keep going.

lukas, they aren’t super cheap but apple will have returns on their site eventually and those are good. just marginally cheaper than the deals (corp, student, membership club) on new though

You could also maybe hold out until the M2 MacBook Pros come out, there might be deals on used M1s and then you'd be on the current processor platform for longevity's sake.

Both good ideas, thanks.

Folks with a M1/M2 Mac who are Chromium/Chrome users might want to check out the M1-optimized version of Thorium. Noticeably faster in all respects: https://thorium.rocks

I've long been a PC person, although I've always had a soft spot for Macs. My high school installed a room full of Mac Classics to teach us about networking and desktop publishing and I remember being mesmerised by the tiny black and a white screen and the fact you could play samples from Who Framed Roger Rabbit. I have a bunch of Apple gear but it's all second-hand, but the M1s have sorely tempted me. For the first time since the 12" G4 PowerBooks the M1 MacBook Air is simultaneously a legitimately good laptop and not extravagantly overpriced. In fact it's cheaper than almost all ThinkPads.

Although it's a shame post-El Capitan versions of MacOS dropped 32-bit support entirely (I suppose games would be a non-starter anyway because the M1 has a completely different architecture). I still have a 2009 Mac Mini with Mojave purely so I can use PhotoShop CS4.

But the MacBook Air doesn't have any ports, and would I really carry it around with me? Owning a modern laptop would just make me miserable, because it would remind me constantly that despite being a fascinating writer, a world-class wit, immensely talented and competent etc, I work in a field where owning a laptop is a complete irrelevance. I will not, and will never, prepare a report while on a first-class train to Carlyle, or a business-class flight to Hong Kong. I will never deliver a presentation to a room of people in Tokyo. I will never need a laptop. But what if I want to write messages to Ilxor while on the bus to Bournemouth to pick up some heroin? Or on the way back from Bournemouth, with the hills and the twisty-turny streets. What then.

I have a pair of old Mac Minis, and it's nice having a silent little desktop computer. But something like an iPad Pro would be a useful mobile device except that iPads aren't optimised for connecting to a monitor. But if I bought an iPad Pro I could mount it on a stand and use my noise to select things. I wouldn't have to use my hands. I could... do the thing with both hands while using my nose to turn the volume control down.

I remember many years ago visiting the Tate Modern and noticing that the monitors had Mac Minis taped to the back of them. I remember thinking "this is how the middle class live". I have the impression that Apple's true goal, it's gesamtkunstwerk, isn't the hardware, it's the creation of a dilemma. And wither the Apple Watch? Imagine having little shapes on your wrist.

Appple Watch.... ULTRA

why not just like... make this the new normal apple watch?

"dynamic island"

lol

“We call it…mashed potatoes”

Posted from the Dynamic Island

Posted from the Dynamic Island

damn, new phone must make zing post twice

I like this phone, it’s purple and nice

Same

anybody rolling with an external GPU for their intel mac? i am kinda thinking about it to boost x-plane flight sim (and as kind the only way to upgrade my 2018 mini)

I had an external GPU for a couple of years, not really for gaming but just to power a 4k monitor from a 13" macbook… I was never really pleased with the experience, but perhaps for gaming it would be better?

what did you not like about it?

I think, unless you’re getting a great deal on something used, the best performance/dollar ratio solution would be to swap out the mini. At best, the external solutions are good for adding a really beefy GPU to an already powerful system, but ymmv

yeah i’m starting to think the same thing. the new M1s are so good that they accomplish everything an external gpu would - probably more, actually, because i’d be getting a CPU upgrade as well, for not that much more money.

egpu sounds like a nightmare when there's a better option.

It was just very clunky, and didn’t even seem to give me the buttery-smooth app performance I was hoping for.

okay i’m on team fuck an egpu. they aren’t supported on M1s anyway so who cares about buying an upgradeable enclosure etc

fwiw on my late model SE, ios 16 feels “snappy” af. maybe it’s just psychosomatic who knows but i like it

it’s probably just the way the homescreen slides into view on unlock now. i’m such a mark

This seems like very good news. Internals of iPhone 14 redesigned to make it much more repairable:

https://www.ifixit.com/News/64865/iphone-14-teardown

That is pretty interesting. Also funny they didn't do it with the higher tier 14s, only the low end one.

the theories on ifixit (A team, B team or being risk adverse on newer hardware tweaks) seem good

easier repairability on the mainline phone is good

i think i'll try the new airpods as a requested xmas gift

Got the new Airpod Pros. Transparency mode has an unsettling, uncanny quality to it. I keep taking an earbud out to check what I'm hearing against real life.

Also, the recreated ambient noise seems louder than real life to me. You can change this, deep in settings, by turning on partial noise cancellation. Not sure why you can't just turn down the volume on the recreated ambient noise.

I’m about to throw every Apple device I own in the garbage because one of them keeps muting notifications across all of my devices

I have not encountered that, but lol

gotta force sign-out from icloud on all of them maybe and add them back one by one?

reminds me of the hilarious windows auth glitch where I’d have a remote desktop session or something still active on one of many servers, have to change my password, and somehow that session would keep locking me out. when I tested a windows service by running it under my credentials…. boy, it was a real bitch figuring that one out

I lost my AirPods Pro case and am annoyed they don't sell replacements. Having to choose between buying a new third-party one with all the varying reports from people about whether they're any good or not, and a secondhand one on eBay that might itself be a third-party one for all I know.

v strange they don’t sell those.

on the other hand the new lock screen customisations have made my phone look fucking lush.

I can't figure them out. I wanted the existing photo I have with the weather on top, but it seems to be one or the other

It refused to allow me to keep my current photo, I had to create fresh wallpaper to use the new design.

When I couldn’t find (scowling diptych of surly teens 2021) in my roll, I just grabbed (adorable poppets on rail adventure 2013) and threw the widgets and graphics over that and it’s like I have a new phone, albeit one which is deeply nostalgic.

Yeah I’ve had this problem before with iOS - you can’t seem to retrieve the wallpaper photo from anywhere if it’s not in your Photos library any more. I’ve definitely got this photo on a hard drive but pain to have to find it again. Good to know you can combine photos and widgets though

Not feeling the lockscreen excitement.

Checked out a youtube on 'coolest os 16 lock screens '. I wonder if half the excitement is in techie-style tweaking of lock screens itself - as I'm not getting much out of looking at them.

I set up two different lock screens with work / not work focus modes, which has been a nice life upgrade.

goddamn this is going to improve my life right now about 1000x

macOS Ventura - Image Capture app enables OCR for PDF creation

Here is a small, well-hidden novelty from Ventura: an OCR option in Image Transfer, Apple’s application for importing photos to your Mac. This offers to transform the text of a scan into an exportable layer that can be more easily extracted on other platforms.

Image Transfer is not only used to recover photos from your iPhone: it also allows you to scan documents, for example using a scanner or a connected printer. By scanning a document via the app, it is now possible to check a new OCR option, which will extract its text in passing.

that’s great but i want it to automatically add the OCR text to the file metadata and make that available to spotlight and Photos search

I think you can do most of that with Shortcuts? I haven't gotten involved with Ventura yet to see what's changed in shortcuts or how addressable OCR / Live Text is. I use a shortcut to remove all metadata from files - I think you can write into those attributes also?

I'm an old man here because I still think in AppleScript/shell script combos. i never found Automator helpful (prob that robot icon)