Increasingly Familiar Apple Lust Objects for 2016 and onwards

mainly use/need a laptop for slsking and torrenting + occasional "smart playlist" on iTunes

I couldn't live with just a tablet or big phone - touchscreens are slower to use, the spongy mobile keyboard options I've tried suck, the iOS file system is too obscure (as in with music apps, where things are being saved and where I can go to open files for samplers, etc.)

But I also wouldn't be the market for a 11" MBA because the difference in portability between one and a 15" MBP isn't large enough to matter for me.

I had a couple of weeks to play with iPad Air 4th Gen + Apple Pencil 2nd Gen + Logitech Folio Touch earlier this year (bought off eBay for daughter); it was pretty impressive and I began to maybe imagine a future without a laptop... but, it really does get heavy with the proper keyboard, and I manage to corrupt an old HDD (not fatally, I rebuilt it) by plugging two drives into a USB-C hub without sufficient power into the hub (iPads don't really do a safe eject). Still not comfortable with cloud-based Lightroom vs desktop "Classic", either.

xp - Oh, v good point about file systems.

yeah i wouldnt want to live with just a tablet even besides the work™ things i use it for im too much of a power user and besides am just habituated to it, but for a lot of people even just a big phone is fine, people live on those things theyre totally used to them, they dont need files or a keyboard etc

Slight derail re: the music discussion above--maybe someone here can help me out. My Apple Music library is a combination of streaming stuff and files I keep on a portable external SSD drive (stuff that isn't on the streaming service, like mono versions of some records or live bootlegs). I've gotten tired of having to get up and connect that drive to my MacBook and want to just put those files on my Windows gaming desktop so my MacBook is purely streaming using the iCloud match feature. How can I do that so that Music doesn't give me the "can't locate the local file" message every time I try to play them without the SSD? (It does stream if I hit cancel, but obviously halts playback on each subsequent track unless I hit cancel for each one). Do I have to just delete the albums from my MacBook copy of Music, and re-add it from the desktop computer?

The black MacBooks are really ugly. I'm currently using a 13" 2020 MacBook Pro, so I'm hoping I won't need to replace it for a while (my previous MB was a 2013 model).

blatherskite, how would you play those songs if they're on a windows machine? the match won't work if they're bootlegs or whatever. i think i'm missing something though.

Do I have to just delete the albums from my MacBook copy of Music, and re-add it from the desktop computer?

For the paid version, at least, it can match files in my library even if they are not in Apple's streaming service. I think Music uploads it, per this: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204146. For instance, I downloaded a mono rip of Leonard Cohen's first LP weeks ago, added it to my library, and can now play that mono version on my iPhone or desktop.

stet's idea sounds good

fwiw iTunes Match lets you download anything you matched if you want to grab your library again at some point, or if you don't feel like paying for it anymore

the fun trick is that if it successfully matches up your crappy 128kbps mp3 from eons ago to something in Apple's catalog, it'll let you download a DRM-free copy in 256 Kbps AAC. not lossless, but not shabby

ooh, it looks like it might let you download ALACs now. might be time to resubscribe to Match to use it exactly once

I've heard so many iTunes Match horror stories. Wonder if they've fixed those bugs.

My library got unwieldy enough that I'm pretty sure some of my songs that were supposedly iTunes matched have disappeared into the twilight zone over the years

yeah I avoided match for ever but recently said sure why not in the hopes that I could at least have my apple music playlists (filled w/ cloud material) on my home computer and in trying to scan/upload from my home computer it kept crapping out and I kept retrying and then gave up, and only then realized I now have like 12 copies of each playlist. Like it got as far as uploading the existance of the playlist but failed on all or some of the music.

Apple will only ever get my local files over my cold dead hard drives

this is why i am rolling my own (via navidrome on synology)

Bought myself a base model Mac Studio, I’m bringing back going on the computer as a discrete activity that happens in a specific place

revolutionary that

the united app shows your gate and a little countdown to when boarding starts on the “dynamic island” - genuinely useful

It’s just another reason to look at your phone instead of just going to your gate and relaxing

United app also gives you a flight tracker of your flight. And remembers your info.

I say this because the AA app didn't do shit.

well you’re already looking at your phone, the little indicator just means you don’t have to keep maniacally switching to the united app to make sure you haven’t disastrously misunderstood the boarding time

Just going to your gate and relaxing

I wish I had your mindset at bus stops too.

https://apps.apple.com/app/id1358823008

This is dece

Doesn't work when you're on the flight and not paying for United wifi.

But it does work on the United app!

you can connect to united wifi for free.. you can’t do much much but it will update eta, gate etc. and weirdly i got a few updates on various apps like messages and a sports team app that my kids’ coaches uses to inform parents about practices?? very odd to get that sort of notification way up in the air

yeah iirc the free united wifi still allows for push notifications and messaging apps. i think flighty takes advantage of that by updating the app thru what are essentially push notifications

anyone else get that sweet $92.17 class action payment from "Apple Inc Payouts" today. don't ever knock this country to me.

thanks for the Flighty recommendation calstars! v nice.

yw

I treated myself to an Apple Studio Display - attainable price through Apple’s refurb store. There’s a lot of tech fetishism going on in /r/macsetups and apparently I’m no longer a voyeur. However, in terms of basic quality of life improvement omg. The demo ones in the store are too aspirational “here’s how great Final Cut Pro looks editing vacation movies of your Dwell family” If you just allowed folks to dock their MBPs and see their shit and whatever it is they do in 5K, they’d sell 5x more.

My first Mac was a Iix, dead square in time when owning a Mac automatically made you a graphic designer and I kept on with it enough to hassle through endless permutations of Radius boards, backbreaking CRTs, fucked up colors, someone unhelpfully saying “have you degaussed it? maybe you should degauss it” and the madness of color matching. All of that b.s. is mercifully GONE. I actually had to do some color matching web work and being able to dock to this and immediately switch off feels like real world science fiction.

As a print first guy, I'm still very satisfied with my Eizo. Talk about color matching...pro displays that have hardware calibration (basically Eizo and the nicer BenQs) I can have multiple calibrations and switch through them on the fly. The other day for the first time I used my spectro to measure the paper I'm printing on and calibrated the monitor that. So not just calibrating to a standard display condition, but calibrating to the specific paper I'm printing on within a specific lighting condition.

The monitor on my G3 used to do this extremely loud degauss every time it was powered on; nearly drowned out the chime

RIP https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-02-27/apple-cancels-work-on-electric-car-shifts-team-to-generative-ai

we'd rather embarrass ourselves with VR goggles than kill people outright with self-driving cars.

mentioned it elsewhere but I don’t think they were that serious about it, I think they just had CarPlay betas and custom dashes installed and if a car people think
is AI is driving erratically they think that’s cool. it was just CarPlay testers poking at the dashboard while trying to drive normal

yeah, there's probably dozens of Apple R&D projects that fizzle out before we even hear about them

Man I am curious how it would have turned out though.

I guess it would’ve turned out poorly hence the cancellation

cars are a low-margin business. with next-gen carplay it’s possible that any/every car becomes an “apple car” as far as the dash is concerned. they are doing deals to integrate the speedometer, the a/c etc into the interface. and if your phone can automatically reconnect every time you step into the car.. that’s total lock-in to the apple ecosystem without apple having to go through the frankly thankless business of actually producing automobiles

Dyson also cancelled their electric vehicle programme after 2 years - citing the huge sustained investment needed and uncertainty of commercial viability.

i rode in a waymo in SF, it was pretty impressive. i can see why it appealed to apple - presumably they have tons of data from apple maps. but man have you ever seen a waymo? no way that would fly with apple.

Apple's been slowly letting practicality win over aesthetics since Ive left. I'm glad they stopped making broken flat keyboards but supposedly the VR glasses were meant to be just cool-looking glasses instead of the gross torture helmet we got.

They should make a ring like Samsung. Would buy

I love the flat keyboards but I might just be divergent in that way

oh wait, you mean the mbp ones that were genuinely broken. never mind, carry on

the bluetooth keyboards where the AA batteries go into the knurled riser on the back are a really excellent example of where apple's obsession with braun-style bauhaus minimalism totally worked. they are just the platonic ideal imo.

three of those have broken on me for unexplained reasons. the bluetooth just goes berzerk

I have to repair mine with my MacBook most mornings

Re-pair, that is