Software / Apps

Twitter vs. Reddit

February 20, 2019 · 09:34

Every day, in the morning, while drinking a tea, coffee, or Red Bull, I’d first launch Twitter and catch up on events. For the past two weeks, more or less unconsciously, I have been slowly transitioning to Reddit.

I think the problem is the people I follow — they’re just posting less. Perhaps I could change things up by following new people but Reddit is partly superior in this regard — I can just follow topics that interest me instead. This naturally leads to more disconnect with specific people but there’s so much more variety and content.

I can’t hide the fact that I’m extremely disappointed with how Twitter itself is being run and I’m sure these feelings influence my usage but it’s refreshing to know I have found an alternative of sorts, especially since Twitter will die for me the day they pull the plug on third-party clients, such as Tweetbot and Twitterrific.

My First Homebridge Problem — Logitech Harmony Was Unresponsive

December 17, 2018 · 09:10

I restarted my modem and router yesterday — something I do every month or so — and I couldn’t get Siri to turn on my TV almost immediately after that. This hasn’t happened before. Since I could still view the PiCamera and control my Air Purifier, I assume it was a problem with the Harmony portion of Homebridge. A quick status check displayed the following errors…

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How to Open a New Safari Tab Next to the Current Tab, Instead of at the End of the Lot

December 13, 2018 · 10:36

John Gruber, on Daring Fireball, detailing how he got to change Safari’s behaviour to open new tabs next to the active tab:

If I have, say, 10 tabs open in a window and I’m currently using, say, tab 2, when I type ⌘T to open a new tab it feels like the rightmost end of the row of tabs is “way over there”, but what I want is the new tab to open “right next to where I am” — like what happens when I ⌘-click a link.

A few months ago I asked on Twitter if there was a secret preference in Safari that would change this to what I want — which is for new tabs to always open right next to the current tab. There is no such preference. I set about trying trying to figure out if this could be done using AppleScript, but I couldn’t figure it out.
Jeff Johnson figured it out, though, and was kind enough to share the solution and explain the rather ungainly syntax required.

John used FastScripts for this but I decided to try my luck with Keyboard Maestro…

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iCloud Drive Still Has Sync Issues in 2018

December 11, 2018 · 11:31

I still rely on Resilio Sync (formerly BitTorrent Sync) to sync my files between Macs, an iPad, and an iPhone. It works perfectly but I have been considering switching to iCloud Drive ever since I upgraded to the 2 TB storage option (please give me a cheaper 500 GB and 1 TB option Apple — I don’t need 2 TB at this point in time).

I was trying to transfer an edited photo from my iPad to my MacBook Pro a few minutes ago. I saved it to iCloud Drive and went to look for it on my Mac. Not there. I checked my iPhone and verified it was synced. So I restarted my Mac. Nope, nothing.

Want to know what triggered the sync process? I created a new folder in Finder.

Seriously, Apple?

The Quality of Apple Software and Marzipan

December 9, 2018 · 07:15

iKyle:

The quality of software Apple ships shows what Apple considers good enough quality. Including the marzipan apps in the released OS signals the state they are in now is officially good enough quality for macOS software as far as Apple is concerned. That’s worrying.

Steve Troughton-Smith:

They are absolutely ‘good-enough’. Apps updated day and date with iOS? With the complete, up-to-date featureset? This is leagues beyond what we usually get from Apple’s work on macOS. I am not worried about macOS actually getting software on par with iOS, because that’s a step up.

Personally I’m horrified at what these apps look like and how they function. They appear to be foreign entities among all the software designed for MacOS. Despite understanding Apple’s reasoning behind shipping them now and not when their backbone is ready, I cannot quite fathom who said: ‘Yes, this is good enough.’ Not at Apple in any case.

Apple chose their own path. Two separate operating systems, with their own look and feel, with some points of overlap. We’re in the middle of an evolution of both OSes, waiting to see where they’ll both end up. Maybe it’ll be better but it sure as hell feels that it’ll get a lot worse in the short-term.

iPad Pro 10.5-inch vs. 11-inch On-Screen Keyboard

November 6, 2018 · 11:54

Since the iPad Pro reviews have started to trickle out yesterday, I was looking for a comparison between the on-screen keyboards. I own a 10.5-inch iPad and will be switching to the 11-inch model tomorrow (hopefully, if there are no delays!), but I couldn’t wait. Luckily Steve Troughton-Smith had the simulator handy and helped me out1.

Above is the 10.5-inch keyboard in portait orientation, while the new 11-inch edition is below. You can click the images to load them full-screen and use the arrow keys (or swipe on them) to navigate between the two.

Make of this what you will but I can’t say that those additional keys are useful for the way I use my iPad. I’ll find out soon enough, but I am curious if it will be more comfortable to thumb-type on than the older one.

  1. Thanks Steve! ↩

Export Your Messages and Texts to TXT Files With Image Attachments via Baskup

September 25, 2018 · 15:29

I have been having some issues with Messages in the Cloud on my Macs — both show less texts and iMessages than my iPhone and iPad. I guess I could go through Apple Support but their software solutions usually are to log out and log back in to iCloud or to start fresh (seriously). Instead, I spent a few hours pruning old conversations, which I didn’t need anymore. This still didn’t solve the issue of the multi-year threads that I have with my wife — I have three of those on my iOS devices and only one on my Macs. Since Messages only loads a page or two of messages at a time and requires the user to constantly scroll up to load older messages, its close to impossible to get to the beginning of the thread anyway (I don’t have the patience to scroll-wait-scroll for hours). This led me to the decision to just export our message history as a txt or PDF file and then clear Messages.

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Adobe Charged My PayPal Without My Permission

September 7, 2018 · 09:58

I pay an annual Adobe Creative Cloud subscription and I had my PayPal details on file with them but since receiving an email a month ago, asking me to verify and/or change my payment details before the charge goes through today, I removed all the PayPal details (Adobe is not authorized for recurring charges in PayPal’s settings either) and added my credit card instead. Since the charge was in Euros and I no longer had any Euros in my PayPal, I would save money on the conversion rate (around €10).

Adobe went ahead and charged my PayPal today anyway.

How is this even possible?

I have since been in contact with their phone support. They have cancelled my subscription and I should the amount in question charged back straight to my credit card1, but I assume this will trigger another currency conversion, which will mean that I’ll be paying for their mistake through no fault of my own.

Oh, and since my account is cancelled, and I refuse to pay for it until the chargeback comes through, my Creative Cloud apps don’t work.

Cool.

  1. In 5-7 days. It never ceases to amaze me that it takes seconds to take my money but days to return it. ↩

iCloud Photo Library Image Count Problems

August 30, 2018 · 11:19

iCloud Photo Library has been stellar since I started using it shortly after it launched. I have suffered no data loss or corruption so far (I have other backups of course) and it’s been a joy to use. Once I upgraded both my Macs to macOS High Sierra, I finally flipped the switch on both my iPhone and iPad, turning on the new High Efficiency formats for both video and stills. Shortly after doing that, Photos for Mac and iOS started showing different counts of all the images in my library — they fluctuate every few days:

  • iMac (Download Originals to this Mac) — 33701 photos, 70 videos
  • MacBook Pro (Optimize Mac Storage) — 33701 photos, 70 videos
  • iPhone X (Optimize Storage) — 33703 photos, 70 videos
  • iPad Pro 10,5″ (Optimize Storage) — 33704 photos, 70 videos
  • iCloud.com — 33771 photos and videos (which I assume means 33701 photos and 70 videos)

This worries me. I still have 5 or 6 gigs of free space on my 200 GB plan so everything should work correctly. New content is added properly and syncing still functions as it should but what the hell are those additional photos on my iPhone and iPad?

I spoke with Apple Support and before they are willing to continue diagnosing the issue, they asked me to first log out and log back in to iCloud on every device. Since that would require at least 1-2 days of syncing (realistically 2-4), I’ll need to wait for a more opportune moment.

Computers Are Supposed to Help Us Solve Our Problems

August 7, 2018 · 10:08

Sameer Samat details the new Android Pie on Google’s blog:

The latest release of Android is here! And it comes with a heaping helping of artificial intelligence baked in to make your phone smarter, simpler and more tailored to you. Today we’re officially introducing Android 9 Pie […]

I wanted to comment on two of the new features…

That’s why Android 9 comes with features like […] Adaptive Brightness, which learns how you like to set the brightness in different settings, and does it for you.

I have been using iPhones and iPads since 2008, and always relied on Automatic Brightness. I don’t know what Apple did, but I never had an Android phone which handled this function, as well as iOS does — I’ve always had stuttering or sudden brightness shifts, including flickering while it’s been adjusted. All this on many flagship phones, including older Nexus devices and more recent ones like the Galaxy S8.

At-a-Glance on Always-on-Display: See things like calendar events and weather on your Lock Screen and Always-on Display.

I have always found it curious that Apple chose not to use the Lock Screen in a more productive fashion (widgets do not count). Just weather information could be easily included and it’s something I miss every day. And since we have a OLED screen on the iPhone X, that could be taken advantage of even further. Burn-in could present a problem and perhaps that is why Apple isn’t in on this, but I can imagine a scenario where one tap on a screen shows upcoming calendar events and the weather, while two taps wake the screen.

Computers are (partly) supposed to help us solve our problems. This isn’t being pursued as I had hoped it would be. We’re 11 years in and iOS still can’t do things that my simple Nokia could, such as setting it to Do Not Disturb mode for a precisely set amount of time. iOS 12 will introduce a few new features that help in this regard but there’s so much more that could be done. My iPhone know’s my daily schedule and how I use it — it should adapt automatically. When I walk into the gym, it should suggest launching Overcast and Workouts (on my Apple Watch). When I leave, it should suggest that I text my wife, informing her that I am on my way and share my ETA. When I get into my car in the parking lot beneath the gym, it should launch Waze and guide me to where she is. I do this every single day and I should not have to manually repeat these steps every time — the OS should have learned by now. It has my location, it knows my routine; it should help automate repetitive tasks automatically.

How to Install Python3 via Homebrew on macOS

July 20, 2018 · 12:25

I just had to install Python 3 on both Macs and the whole process had some issues, so this is what I had to do to get everything running correctly:

  • I assume you already have Homebrew installed; if not then follow the instructions here and then run the following commands…
  • brew update
  • brew upgrade
  • sudo mkdir -p /usr/local/Frameworks
  • sudo chown -R $(whoami) /usr/local/* if using bash or sudo chown -R (whoami) /usr/local/* for fish
  • brew install python3
  • brew link python3
  • brew doctor

That’s it.

How to Create a macOS Mojave USB Drive Installer

June 27, 2018 · 13:43

The macOS 10.14 Mojave public beta dropped yesterday and while some of you will go crazy and install it as your main OS, it is preferable to install it on an external drive for testing purposes only. While you can just download the installer as a developer or public beta tester and proceed to install it directly, creating an installation drive (e.g. on a pendrive) has its benefits, especially if you foresee the need to install Mojave more than once.

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Locked Out of My FastMail Account (Sort Of)

June 9, 2018 · 19:43

I finally got around to setting up 2FA for my FastMail account on Wednesday, preferring to switch over to 1Password, to an authenticator instead of SMS. I forgot I would need to create an app password for my iPhone to continue receiving emails on it. FastMail was nice enough to notify me of this via email, as a reminder, but I did not receive this email, because I was locked out, because I didn’t create an app password, because I completely forgot about it.

Yeah, my bad.

The upside was that I was happy for two days because I barely got any email (a few slipped by on my other accounts). The downside? It’s the weekend and I am calling email bankruptcy.

2018 Apple Design Awards Winners

June 8, 2018 · 14:09

WWDC wouldn’t be the same without the Apple Design Awards and they’re back this year with some great finalists:

I especially recommend getting Alto’s Odyssey if you haven’t played it yet — it’s an aural and visual masterpiece.