iOS 26.1 added in a “Swipe to Stop” gesture for alarms, reminiscent of the “Slide to Unlock” Apple used up until the iOS 7 redesign. I think this is a great idea, but I wish they made the snooze the one that needs the slide. This makes it *much* easier to just keep on snoozing.
Gruber dutifully notes that this can be disabled in settings.
Stephen Hackett, writing at 512 Pixels, with a wonderful retort to the conventional wisdom that the M5 Macs released last week were “boring”. Good! The Mac regularly getting attention and regularly building ~10-15% improvements year over year means that any time you need to upgrade a Mac (whether by choice or not), you’re going to get something better than you last had.
Unsaid in his post is how impressive this collaboration between Apple and TMSC is. It’s not *just* Apple that are squeezing regular YoY upgrades. TMSC is similarly executing.
Theres something very appealing about van lifers. Perhaps it’s how well organized everything is? Or how aware folks become of their energy use? This video from The Verge is a great overview of one of their reviewers vans.
Another item shared by Jason Kottke in the last few weeks: Royal Family. A fun logic game wherein you must place chess pieces so ( a ) they cannot attack one another while ( b ) you’re restricted to placing a single piece per zone.
Theres a lot to be said about how generative AI will affect art and artists, but this is a really neat project.
The objects in the Apocryphal Inventions series are technical chimeras, intentional misdirections coaxed from the generative AI platform Midjourney. Instead of iterating on the system’s early drafts to create ever more accurate renderings of real-world objects, creator Jonathan Hoefler subverted the system to refine and intensify its most intriguing misunderstandings, pushing the software to create beguiling, aestheticized nonsense. Some images have been retouched to make them more plausible; others have been left intact, appearing exactly as generated by the software. The accompanying descriptions, written by the author, offer fictitious backstories rooted in historical fact, which suggest how each of these inventions might have come to be.
These images represent some of AI’s most intriguing answers to confounding questions — an inversion of the more urgent debate, in which it is humanity that must confront the difficult and existential questions posed by artificial intelligence.
Calling it now: Apple’s version of this for some upcoming Vision product will be the “Magic Wand”
I had been kicking around the idea of a “Family” Mac for a few reasons:
( 1 ) I’ve wanted some central Mac that could house my entire photo library and back it up to my NAS
( 2 ) A family member has a Windows laptop is that is nearly dead, and is Mac-curious. There is a high likelihood that I will be the tech support for their new laptop, so I have a vested interested in ensuring they move to a Mac
(3) My wife really loves her M4 iPad Pro, so much so that she hardly uses her MacBook anymore. She does need a Mac from time to time, but it is very infrequent.
This provided an interesting opportunity: give my wife’s MacBook Pro to the Mac-curious family member, and buy us a Mac mini for the family. This way, I could set up my wife’s iPad to access the Mac mini, so that she would have access to a Mac when she needs it. I would also have a desktop Mac I could use when at my desk, or for any automations, and still have my M1 Pro MacBook Pro for while I’m around the house or on the go.
The introductory model for the Mac mini has 256 GB storage, 16 GB RAM, and an M4, and while it’s a bargain for its $599 price, it is insufficient for my needs:
( 1 ) I wanted a new Mac that was clearly an upgrade relative to my existing M1 pro MacBook Pro (otherwise, why would I use it?)
( 2 ) I needed enough internal storage to house all my data and photos.
( 3 ) I wanted enough RAM that I wouldn’t ever push the device into using swap memory.
Processor
The Mac mini can be configured with either an M4 or an M4 Pro chip. To decide between the two, I compared GeekBench 6 scores back to my M1 Pro MacBook Pro:
M4 Pro it would be.
Storage:
I have about 1.1 TB of data in iCloud between my documents, back-ups, and photos. Upgrading to a 2 TB internal drive was a no-brainer, especially when the price gap between 2 TB and 4 TB is an additional $600.
RAM:
This is where I splurged. I was, and am, tired of being RAM limited on my laptop. I usually only hit a clear slow-down when I’m editing photos on my MacBook Pro, but I regularly see it using swap. With an M4 Pro, you have choices between 24, 48, and 64 GBs of RAM. I wanted to at least double the RAM on my laptop, but ideally this machine will last us 5+ years and not start moving to swap memory. 64 GB – no regrets.
Accessories:
I wanted a new monitor to go with the new desktop. At work, I have three monitors: one positioned centrally in landscape, flanked by two portrait monitors on either side. I already had two 27” HP Z27n monitors, and woot.com had a great sale on a Samsung M80 32” monitor. I’ve just re-created my set-up at work at home. This monitor technically falls into “The Bad Zone” for Mac monitors, but it’s fine.
Lastly, I set up Screens Connect and bought a subscription to Screens 5 for the family. This way both my wife and I can access the Mac mini remotely from our preferred devices.
I did hunt for a refurbished model on Apples site for the better part of a month, and I bought the configuration described above: M4 Pro, 2 TB SSD, 64 GB of RAM. The thing is so fast. I’ve seldom seen my memory usage above 20% so far, with the lone exception being when I selected every application in my application folder and hit enter.
Paul Kafasis has a nice run down of some of the worst icons in macOS Tahoe.
For my money, the single worst change is the photos app icon, shared across the OSs. The old icon did a great job of using transparency to mix the colors. The ovals are nice and sharp with high contrast to the white background. I constantly think something hasn’t loaded correctly with the new icon. The roundedness and specular highlights around the edges of the ovals lose the contrast with the background and suddenly the whole thing feels blurry.
Sony annouced earlier this month that their cloud streaming feature on the PlayStation Portal will ve moving from beta to a full-release. I have somehow become an avid Gran Tourismo 7 fan, and 95% of my playing is on my Playstation Portal. While GT7 isn’t one of the release titles, I do hope it makes the leap in the coming months.
Boy, does this tickle a very specific itch. A fun font to boot!
At Ken 