I Just Want a Nice Browser!
Two sad browser stories
I’ve followed the Spicy Takes™️ surrounding the Arc Browser recently, that started in the Ruminate podcast and went on to the MacStories Weekly Issue 408.
And I agree with most of what John Voorhees is saying, and also Matt Birchler, who said: «The Browser Company feels gross to me right now».
Much of it is about ethics and AI. In general I agree with them, but this subject won’t be the focus of this post. (I’ve written more about AI here and here.)
Instead I’ll tell my browser story, and explain why both Arc and Firefox makes me sad.
AI Is Just Different
The discussion around the ethics and legality surrounding AI has been a constant the last year — and it’s culminating in some important trials that’s coming up.
I won’t go into the entire thing here — I just want to focus on a specific argument that I often hear when it comes to the way these large models are trained. It oftes goes something like: «But how is this different from how humans have always been learning and iterating on previous knowledge?» or «The information was available on the open web, so it can be used for anything!».
I think these are terrible arguments.
Humans are allowed into shopping malls.
However, that’s simply not an argument for that cars should be allowed there as well — whether they’re driven by a human or autonomous.
A Couple of Chill, Mostly New, Indie Games
An Idea For Better Music Streaming
I sadly don’t have the abilities to live out this idea — at least not alone. So everyone who finds this, is welcome to steal it or riff with me!
I’m currently trying to transfer from Spotify to Tidal. The main reason is that I want to use a service that pays artists better — and it’s a nice bonus that the sound quality is better. However, I prefer Spotify’s app and features. 1 And this inspired me to write out an idea I’ve been thinking about for a while.
Inspired by Mastodon, Apple’s MusicKit API, Podcasts and PeerTube
Third-party first
Apple Is Not the Reason I’m Buying Apple Products - These People Are
In the court cases against Epic, this round of regulatory scrutiny from the EU, and other more, Apple has made their sense of entitlement abundantly clear. Every piece of business that happens on their platforms, is to their credit. And developers are lucky to be able to pay them almost a third of their revenue for the privilege of being on their platforms. If Apple understands that their relationship with developers is reciprocal, they’re hiding it well.
I like all my Apple hardware. Heck, I even love some of it! I also like the operating systems, the general focus on privacy, and the way the different parts of the ecosystem work together. But I think I could enjoy a Framework laptop, Asus phone and some Sony earbuds as well! The things Apple makes and does isn’t the main reason I keep buying Apple products. It’s all the fantastic third-party developers, mostly indie, who make great software for the Apple platforms.
Why I Think Apple’s Fine is Fine
Today, Apple got hit with a €1.84 billion fine — for anticompetitive behaviour in the music streaming market.
I’ve seen people saying this doesn’t make sense, as Spotify has a larger market share than Apple Music — but that’s not what the complaint is about. The thing is, that Apple has used their size, ecosystem and general market position to give Apple Music a larger market share than they would’ve gotten if they had to compete fairly. Apple is about 80 times the size of Spotify. To put that into perspective, that’s about the same ratio as a rhino compared to a golden retriever. 1
Here are some of the smaller things Apple are doing:
A Good Way to Get Home Row Mods on a Mac
(If you already know about Home Row Mods, click here to go straight to my quick method for getting it on your Mac - even on the .internal laptop keyboard)
As part of my ergonomics voyage, I’ve been working on getting home row mods on my keyboard. This excellent guide provides tons of info on this, but the short version is this:
To contort your hands less when using modifiers (like shift and control), the letter keys on your home row serves double duty: They’re the letters if you tap them, but modifiers if you hold them.
Tapping vs holding
But what’s constitutes a tap and what constitutes a hold? That’s the central question here…
Why do so many apps have weird margins?
There are tons of services, apps and clients for text based social media. But why are almost all of them wrong about timeline margins?
To show what I’m talking about, here’s Threads as an example:
I get that you want to start the text quite close to the username, and that avatars are taller than usernames on some services. But I still think that left-margin is a sin! It wastes space, and makes the entire screen lopsided.
I went through many apps checking - and many of the apps are good and well-designed in general! Many of them are Mastodon clients, because that service has a fantastic 3rd party ecosystem. Also, they’re all iOS apps, because that’s what I have. Would be interested to hear about the situation on Android!
OK, here are some more offenders:
Today’s Keyboard Maintenance
Today, I finished the first step of my Ergonomics Voyage: Making some modifications to my keyboard.
Key layout
The most important change, was activating home row mods. So I’ve made it so tapping
a s d f works as normal — but if I hold them, they act as
Ctrl Opt Shift Cmd .
And then I’ve mirrored it on the other side, to j k l ø .
Failed at software
🌱 How I Manage Windows
Rafael Conde, posted on Mastodon today:
We’re sharing how we use the Desktop and how we size/position windows on our Macs on our work Slack and it’s absolute madness.
And, then followed it up with a poll:
Time to fess up, how do you primarily use windows “on your” Mac? Bonus points if you reply with a screenshot 📸
⋅ Wherever the appear, I don’t know
⋅ Centered (think Apple marketing shot)
⋅ Fullscreen (as big as you can make them)
⋅ Tiled (in a grid, like taking up half the screen)
I, as many others, have strong feelings about this. And I’d love for this to become the next «Default apps»! So I’ll start.
I’m a big tiler.
I switch between my MacBooks 14 inch screen, and my Studio Display’s 27-inch screen. But no matter which I’m on, I move my apps around quite a lot, and almost always in
- quarters,
- halves,
- and wholes (not fullscreen mode).