Apple

    macOS Sequoia Permission Madness

    9TO5Mac reports that Apple is apparently planning to present its Mac operating system users with a copy of Microsoft’s Vista disaster:

    With macOS Sequoia this fall, using apps that need access to screen recording permissions will become a little bit more tedious. Apple is rolling out a change that will require you to give explicit permission on a weekly basis to these types of apps, and every time you reboot your Mac.

    I really hope this gets sorted out during the beta phase; otherwise, I will try to stay on Sonoma as long as possible. For years now, I’ve been waiting to upgrade until at least the first .1 release because Apple’s software quality hasn’t exactly inspired confidence. Additionally, Sequoia only has one new feature that genuinely interests me: iPhone Mirroring. And this won’t be available for EU users initially anyway. (The integrated AI stuff doesn’t interest me on the Mac at all, so I’m not sad about not having it in my operating system for the foreseeable future. I think it will be several years before it’s useful for anything until then I just use third party app for ChatGPT.)

    But I currently use 15 apps that are allowed to record my screen:

    The idea of approving these weekly or after every restart is not very appealing to me. Additionally, Apple apparently plans to make running apps installed from outside the App Store more difficult. Thanks a lot for nothing.

    Well, let’s wait and see 🤞.

    Apple Vision Pro - a glimpse of the future?

    After reading and watching selected reports about the Apple Vision Pro, the consensus seems to be that the experience is absolutely unique. Although, it seems to be just the beginning of something really big to come due to its many existing shortcomings (weight, battery life, bulkiness, price etc.). Therefore, the device is more of a vision what Spatial Computing could be like in the future. Wouldn’t it be great if, in a few years, we could wear cheaper and especially much lighter and smaller glasses that discreetly answer all our questions anywhere or project a cinema screen in front of our faces, even though we’re sitting on a bench on the Times Square? Similar to how the iPhone initially had a number of shortcomings (price, EDGE, no copy and paste, no app store, no video recording, poor camera, etc.) that have now been almost completely eliminated, the next few years will also provide a far better Spatial Computing experience.

    However, I wonder whether this will really be the case with the Apple Vision Pro, or whether we will only see improved versions of the current hardware in the foreseeable future, but no radical shift or further development that the reviewers / YouTubers are dreaming of.1 Will it really be possible to project non-transparent objects into our eyes without completely shielding them from ambient light? But as long as this is not the case, we will have to continue walking around2 with far too large, bulky, ski goggles tailored exactly to the wearer’s face, and no, this is definitely not the future I want to experience.


    1. I mean, the iPhone and the Apple Watch have definitely improved a lot over the years, but fundamentally neither of these two devices has evolved from the first version into a new dimension. ↩︎

    2. I actually mean exactly that - walking around. I can already see the great potential of the Vision Pro when you’re more or less in one place (couch, workplace), but I wonder whether the vision of “everyone wearing one of these devices everywhere and at all times” can actually be realized with this concept. ↩︎