Catalyst to the Rescue? →

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Watching from the sidelines the WWDC keynote was mind-glowingly awesome. I don’t have much time for development work in my day to day life but I did get that the biggest announcements were developer-oriented…Catalyst, SwiftUI, Combine, and more.

Still re-reading this article from MacStories’ John Voorhees, one specific sugget says it all, “So, if Catalyst isn't fully automatic and SwiftUI is the future of UI development across all Apple's platforms, why introduce Catalyst now? The answer lies in a product realignment of the Mac and iPad relative to each other and the rest of Apple's product line that's designed to address weaknesses in both platforms' software ecosystems.”

Lots to unpack here but the future looks bright for both iOS and MacOS.

MacStories read

Google and OEM-based attack vectors →

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On paper, Android conceptually seems like a grand, world-bettering idea. Common OS shared by a world full of hardware manufacturers, self-monitoring through it all. In execution, however, it seems to have been a nightmare. From the horrible slowness of new OS adoption to malware to “XYZ” skins to maintaining security….a nightmare.

From the Ars article, “"One of these security tests scans for pre-installed PHAs [potentially harmful applications] included in the system image," Google officials wrote in their Android Security & Privacy 2018 Year In Review report. "If we find a PHA on the build, we work with the OEM partner to remediate and remove the PHA from the build before it can be offered to users."“

This is indeed some complicated stuff but even a layman could see the challenge here.

Ars Technica Post

Tim Cook's Stanford Commencement Keynote →

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Tim Cook recently spoke at Stanford and it’s worth the time to watch. I wonder how often these graduates will go back and reconsider Tim’s comments. There’s some deep, tough talk here.

“Crisis has tempered optimism. Consequences have challenged idealism. And reality has shaken blind faith,” he said. “Our problems – in technology, in politics, wherever – are human problems. From the Garden of Eden to today, it’s our humanity that got us into this mess, and it’s our humanity that’s going to have to get us out.”

Direct link to Stanford’s story.

Silicon Valley's Unofficial Nerd Heritage Trail →

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Came across this article a while back and discovered again when I was clearing out some “saved for later reading”.

Rediscovering this article, I think about the risks and pure magic that you find on this trail. I long for the days where simple discovery was valued without immediately being squashed by VC-influenced metrics.

Maybe there is some glory is revisiting this trail and carving out some time in our lives to take chances!

Skift artcile

A taste of life with Google

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Spending most of your life outside of Google’s reach tends to lessen ones perception of the horror that is being a product, rather than a consumer. The “Apple way” attracts me not only because they sell high quality products but also because they are crystal clear that they’re selling me a product, and I am the consumer.

Google intrigues me for many reasons, chief among them is their ability to convince millions of people that they should enjoy free services while blindly ignoring what happens with their information or why they would be allowed to use all of these products for free. Deep in my soul is a nostalgic longing for “Alta Vista” or maybe even “Dog Pile” on a crazy day.

Back in 2005-2006 personal email was quite the challenge for many. Google’s search engine had already become the defacto synonym for the phrase “internet search” but email remained a challenge. Friends would change their email address on a regular basis as they switched ISP’s and existing solutions like Yahoo and Hotmail were subpar at best. Storage became a problem as was the ability to scale and provide these services at levels of exponential growth. Queue Google….all hail Gmail. Gmail came with the promise of large amounts of storage and free email. As a 1990’s part-time PC user who rode the Netscape train all the way to H-E double hockey sticks and refused to use IE I knew what was going to happen next.

Speeding up the story…I couldn’t sign up for MobileMe fast enough and even tolerated it’s failures (my personal email still ends in @me.com). iCloud has grown to do a wonderful job for me but internet search is the wildcard, pun intended, with Duck Duck Go as my default for several years. It’s not Google, but it does the job.

A recent curioristy-induced purchase of a cheap Chromebook brought me to terms with he current reality of consuming Google’s services. I dove head first into the Chromebook and all associated services. The Dell hardware was underpowered but not horrible, especially considering the price point.

Rather than bore you with an in-depth analysis of Google’s services and what it’s like to use them I found it more humorous to share three screenshots of my first attempted creation of a new email message, my first attempt to watch a youtube video, and the resulting first seconds of viewing a youtube video. How do people deal with this?

WWDC - still reeling in the years →

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We used to complain that WWDC keynotes had become victims of a successful formula - Tim’s opening with a stock market inspiring message about innovation and retail sales, some new products, vast majority of time to iOS along with a light mention of OS X (I’m still challenged by calling it MacOS). Thankfully 2019 was vastly different than recent experience.

As an Apple fan from the midwest these keynotes were something of an event for us. We would gather together 10 or more of us at a local restaurant with wi-fi for lunch, order our food, and get ready for the 12 PM CT broadcast. We would have multiple tables full of people watching a live blog of the event, this was pre-live video stream by Apple. Some would read twitter feeds while others did both. Throughout it all was deep passion and excitement for what was shared.

When Steve’s journey ended I admit that these events felt different. I vividly remember the Fall 2011 event and Steve’s absence where we later found out that the team was well aware of Steve’s health status. Having visited Apple’s campus and heard of the depth of Steve’s impact on Apple’s spirit I believe there was a years-long impact that continues to ripple out on these events.

This past June 3, 2019 event felt different, more alive, more proud than any event in recent memory. I saw a team running at full speed, executing at a high level, and revealing a masive amount of transformational technology that I’m still trying to wrap my head around. Will hold off on commenting on the individual reveals and only say that I was very, very proud to watch the hard work of so many awesome people be received so positively and know that I’ll have lots of awesomeness coming my way.

More soon!

MacWorld did a great job of summarizing everything from the keynote as it was released.

Stops and Starts

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Attempting to maintain a web presence with a family, church responsibilities and a stressful full-time job is intersting. Nevertheless I’ve excited about the possibilities to learn from others and grow both as a writer and fellow human on this brief journey from cradle to grave.

For those that come across the site and stay for a while, thank you! I hope to earn a return visit from time to time.

Cue Apple - please come home →

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Like Rene I continue to hope that Apple will step back in to the home wi-fi market to augment the strength of the HomeKit platform. I was a proud AirPort user for many users. While I’ve enjoyed my Eero it’s led to a crisis of sorts that I’m now using an Amazon product to connect and type this.

Check out Rene’s take on this, great as always!

Teaching Twitter to play nice →

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Nice read. I’ve long pondered the aging nature of Twitter and it’s continual lack of new feature innovation. The challenges with threads are one example. I opened my first twitter account in May 2008 with such joy and excitement for the platform. Looking back I can see the damage it has done.

While it’s good to see them consider options I wonder how close they’ll come to addressing the true “incentives” of the platform which encourage much of the bad behavior.

Buzzfeed article

Speaking of Apple...Disney announces Disney+ →

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The most mysterious release at Apple’s March 25 event was Apple TV+. While the endless parade of celebrities was moderately interesting, the complete lack of details regarding this service was certainly NOT interesting. This is in stark contrast to Disney’s announcement this week of their $7 a month service.

I think there’s a virtual line around the world already queued up for this, me included.

9to5 Mac has a good summary.

Magazines in Apple News+ - how/what/where? →

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News+ was the first product/service announcement from the Apple March 25 event and the only one that you can try out right now. I was and am excited about this as it helps meet some of my personal goals of lowering overall monthly expenses and being a better steward of our limited resources in this world.

Apple has some work to do on the UI and overall workflow. I can only guess that trying to shoehorn the offerings from the former Texture acquisition was hairy than they expected. Let’s hope they get this ironed out over time. It’s already a great value.

Good read from Mac Rumors on how to use the Magazine capability.

How Apple Card works →

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After Apple’s March 25 event there has been a lot of discussion regaring every moment of the presentation. I’ll save my overall thoughts for another day. As someone who grew up in financial services and used to have a day job associated with card processing I was intrigued by the Apple Card (especially daily cash).

Here’s a good read from Tech Crunch on specifics…

How Apple Card works

Facebook's Wonderful Week of Fun - March 22 →

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Continuing the saga of all that is Facebook. All kidding aside, I read this stuff and think “surely this can’t keep happening”, “surely it won't get any worse”. Hard to believe I’m still this naive.

In this week’s issue - it was revealed that Facebook stored user’s passwords in plain text for many years. Spoiler alert, this isn’t a good thing. Essentially this means that Facebook employees could know and use your own login credentials to login to your account.

In typical Facebook fashion they have admitted the issue but are stating it’s a limited set of users. This will inevitably be revised to some higher number on page 6 of a small town newspaper later this year when nobody is looking.

Krebs on Security

Facebook's Wonderful Week of Fun - March 15

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Each week when I make decisions about where to spend my time and what to post I become increasingly aware of the state of all things “facebook”. Maybe a weekly summary is good enough for now!

Here’s the highlights:

Facebook survived issues like this a decade ago when it was run by a group of fast moving people early in their career. We accepted those mistakes with an “awwww shucks” type of attitude. Those days are over. Facebook is a global technology powerhouse with the influence to change the course of human history.

Two words for you - wake up