Technology
- quarters,
- halves,
- and wholes (not fullscreen mode).
š± Apple Is Not the Reason Iām 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, theyāre 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 isnāt the main reason I keep buying Apple products. Itās all the fantastic third-party developers, mostly indie, who make great software for the Apple platforms.
If Apple was a food company:
Government: Ā«You gotta stop using plastic wrapping around one-time utensils.Ā»
Apple: āwraps it in barbed wire insteadā
Apple: Ā«See what the government made us do!Ā» šš»
Why I Think Appleās Fine is Fine
Today, Apple got hit with a ā¬1.84 billion fine ā for anticompetitive behaviour in the music streaming market.
Iāve seen people saying this doesnāt make sense, as Spotify has a larger market share than Apple Music ā but thatās 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 wouldāve gotten if they had to compete fairly. Apple is about 80 times the size of Spotify. To put that into perspective, thatās about the same ratio as a rhino compared to a golden retriever. 1
Here are some of the smaller things Apple are doing:
š± A Good Way to Get Home Row Mods on a Mac
As part of my ergonomics voyage, Iāve 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: Theyāre the letters if you tap them, but modifiers if you hold them.
Tapping vs holding
But whatās constitutes a tap and what constitutes a hold? Thatās the central question hereā¦
Via Kottke:
Studies have shown that people who ride e-bikes get more exercise than those who ride pedal bikes. Ā«Researchers have discovered that when riders find it less grueling, they tend to go on longer rides.Ā»
I totally believe this! I want an e-bike š² in my future. š
Iām trying to get comfortable with home row modsā¦ āØļø
Itās a constant struggle between minimising lag/unintended modifiers and how hard it is to actually use the modifiers when I want.
Anyone out there with experience on this?
Doing it with QMK worked well, but I hated the lag. And doing it with software is preferable, as I then can have the same on the internal Mac keyboard. Using simlayers in Karabiner-Elements atm.
#MechanicalKeyboards #Allheimen
SƄ heldig Ƅ fƄ lƄne et slik av den bestete Glenn.
š± 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 Iām talking about, hereās 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, theyāre all iOS apps, because thatās what I have. Would be interested to hear about the situation on Android!
OK, here are some more offenders:
Todayās 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 Iāve made it so tapping
a s d f works as normal ā but if I hold them, they act as
Ctrl Opt Shift Cmd .
And then Iāve mirrored it on the other side, to j k l Ćø .
Failed at software
š± 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 šø
ā Wherever the appear, I donāt know
ā Centered (think Apple marketing shot)
ā Fullscreen (as big as you can make them)
ā Tiled (in a grid, like taking up half the screen)
I, as many others, have strong feelings about this. And Iād love for this to become the next Ā«Default appsĀ»! So Iāll start.
Iām a big tiler.
I switch between my MacBooks 14 inch screen, and my Studio Displayās 27-inch screen. But no matter which Iām on, I move my apps around quite a lot, and almost always in
Here are some examples:
Good stuff collected by @mjtsai@mastodon.social, about #Appleās decision to kill PWAs.
š± My Tech Setup
Iāll make separate posts for my software and bass guitar setups, but hereās my current tech hardware setup.
š± The Ethics and Principles Behind My Blog
I donāt really use read-it-later apps. But if you do, check out Omnivore! I agree with this review.
Open-source, great text-to-speech, iOS, Android, Mac and Web.
Great day! Spent literally 11 hours intensely not getting #KMonad to work on my #Mac. š
This is as far as I got. šš»
(Or, previously I got one step further, and got Ā«Encountered error in KeySource: [Cannot translate from mac keycode: (0,0)]Ā» instead)
Oof, the Boardsource Lulu looks pretty sweet! (And the Lily58 doesnāt look too bad either.)
Does anyone have any experience with either of these? āØļø
#Allheimen #MechanicalKeyboards
My Ergonomics Voyage: Part 1
Prologue, and the first steps
Iāve been a nerd my entire 34-year-long life. So naturally, much of it has been spent in front of computers using keyboards, and Iāve never experienced any discomfort related to this.1
I donāt know if itās due to my age, or just the fact that Iāve worked even more than usual on keyboards, but lately, Iāve started to notice discomfort. Especially in my left hand, but a bit in my right as well. Luckily, thereās nothing anywhere else, and itās not that bad. But I want to take action to try to stay ahead of it.
A bit about my current situation
The last couple of years, Iāve been working mostly in my small home office, which was OK, but not great. Just a couple of weeks ago, I finally got my own (external) office, so the situation has improved. However, Iāve been stupid, and also worked quite a bit on my laptop on our kitchen table lately.
Hereās my current office setup:
Good things about my setup
š± Wallpapers for Home.app
Here’s a remake of backgrounds from this thread that I made since the links were dead. These were inspired by u/rzalexander and made with free illustrations from illustrations.co. I’ve tried to adapt the illustrations to iOS 16’s new home app, so that the text and icons are visible.
I’ve also made companion backgrounds for use with iPad and Mac. Since those windows resize all the time, using two tone and illustrations was a no-go. So they are just one colour backgrounds (I have one using the dark colour and one using the light one. I’ve used the latter).
Machines, AI, and the Most Important Question in the World
Message from 2024: I wrote this post in the spring of 2023, as AI tools were pretty new. Iāve since landed on the principle of not using AI generated images on my blog. This post has two images like this, but as itās critical of the models (and explains a bit of why I currently donāt want to use them), Iāve let them be.
First, a very simplified history lesson:
For a large portion of the human existence, technology (often in the shape of machines or tools) has replaced manual labour, and led to increased productivity. The printing press replaced monks writing books by hand, looms evolved to include less and less manual laber per unit of fabric, the telegraph reduced the need for mail carriers, and photography really hurt Big Portrait Painting. Usually, the technology doesnāt completely replace the professions it affects. For instance, you can still get a tailored suit ā but itās a minor part of the clothing industry, and mostly reserved for the wealthy. The old turns into niches, hobbies, crafts and/or art.
