iOS
- 🍿 Watched Raymond & Ray (2022) - ★★★★☆ and enjoyed it.
- 🎙️ Listend to a bunch of different Podcasts:
- Accidental Tech Podcast: 518: Deconstructed iMac,
- Core Intuition: Episode 545: Lawful Evil,
- MeTacheles Tonspur: Return of the Mac - Ode an den Apple Macintosh,
- Playdate Podcast: Flipper Lifter,
- Playdate Podcast: Echoic Memory,
- Techmeme Ride Home: Tue 01/24 – ALL The Details On Apple’s Headset,
- AppStories: Imagining Apps for an Apple VR Headset,
- Launched: 54: Sofa - Shawn Hickman,
- Upgrade: 443: Core Variations, and
- Hemispheric Views: 076: Find Jason a House!.
- 🎙️ This was my first episode of Launched. It was a rather intimate podcast. And both the developers of the Darknoise app and Sofa seem to be very nice people. After what they said about software subscriptions, I’m afraid that sooner or later all apps will have to switch to the subscription model. I personally don’t like that, but if there’s no other way for indie developers, you probably have to think about what you’re willing to spend per year and then keep an eye on your subscriptions, e.g. with Bobby, and limit them accordingly.
- 🛋️ Speaking of Sofa. I really like the app, but I think I’ll try to stay away from software and services where it’s not possible to get your data out again with open standards, an API or at least an RSS feed.
- 🫰 Speaking of subscriptions, after all this back and forth, I cancelled my Strava subscription. I’ll see if I can enjoy cycling without all their pro features.
- 🚴♂️ Speaking of (I know, I know …) cycling, once again I have felt annoyed, no, threatened by SUV drivers. I really don’t know where all this is going. Fittingly, the post about the size of cars.
- 🐘 I had a look at Tusker, a new iOS Mastodon client. It’s still fun to see all these many ideas for Mastodon clients. There hasn’t been so much dynamism in the scene for a long time. Even though IceCube gets a lot of praise, I keep coming back to Ivory, which was finally released in the App Store this week. You can only have missed it, though, if you’ve been living under a rock. Even though I find the development speed of IceCube absolutely remarkable and the app is certainly one of the most impressive in terms of features, I am still bothered by the many small bugs and especially the bad scrolling performance. (I think SwiftUI might be the one to blame here.) Ivory, on the other hand, is really fast and performant. The great thing is that you can change at any time.
- 🕹️ I’ve played the two new playdate games that were released for me this week: Flipper Lifter and Echoic Memory. I am really bad at audio and don’t know if I enjoy Echoic Memory and I haven’t found any access to Flipper Lifter yet. In general, with some playdate games, I sometimes feel like I don’t really understand the mechanics of the game, and just do anything that will somehow get me to the goal. I sometimes wish the games would introduce you a little more and not leave you completely out in the cold.
- 🕹️ In the end, everything was overshadowed by the fact that my playdate probably has a faulty battery. I have, surprisingly unexpectedly, received an answer from Cabel, but unfortunately not yet from support. They seem to be quite overwhelmed by support requests right now.
- 📱 On iOS, I looked at Countdown to Anything! but I think I’ll stick with Countdowns.
- 📱 This screenshot of Jason’s homescreen inspired me to tinker a little bit with Widgy. I also bought Opener, don’t know why 😇
- 💻 On the Mac, I’ve been looking at the new Arc browser, which is kind of hyped right now. I really don’t know why though. I have a bit of a suspicion that it might just be the invite system. To me, the browser seems extremely sluggish. My password management and Apple Pay don’t work, which is probably not the browser’s fault. It’s too early to judge, but so far I always go back to Safari after a short time.
- 💻 It came to my mind, that you can use Markdown links of hooked items together with One Thing, an App that I really enjoy. It gives you one click menu bar item to the one file you are just working on.
- 💻 I had a look at HiDock, for Mac and Lasso - Window Manager for macOS.
- 💻 Thanks to Matthew I became aware of Menubar X (Setapp). This works pretty well together with DeepL / DeepL Write and elk.zone.
- ✅ I’ve moved all my todo item for work from OmniFocus to Apple’s Reminders app. I want to see if I can separate them enough thanks to smart lists and tags. The only thing I miss so far is the ability to filter by focus modes, like it is possible with Calendars, etc. Only Apple knows why this is not possible yet, I guess.
- ❤️ Thanks to Faisal Misle, I now also know that you can publish to the omg.lol weblog via github. I have no idea about all these things, but thanks to the many great tutorials, even I managed to do it. Speaking of omg.lol and how clueless I am about all this internet stuff, I managed to change my status.log via the API, again thanks to the awesome docs. I control this with a Shortcuts shortcut and can trigger it from my Stream Deck and Keyboard Maestro. You can do so many funny things with this 🥰
- Ice Cubes for Mastodon (beta) by @dimillian (@icecubesapp),
- Mammoth: for Mastodon (beta) by @JPEGuin@mastodon.social,
- Wolly for Mastodon (beta) by Matteo,
- Mastoot,
- Mastodon (official app),
- Toot! (on Mastodon),
- Komondor (beta) by @343max@chaos.social 1, and
- Ivory (beta; officially alpha ;-)
-
Update 22.01.2023: It seems like he is not actively developing it right now. ↩︎
What I was interested in during the fourth week of 2023 (teaser: podcasts, iOS, macOS playdate)
I still felt sickly, so I refrained from cycling. Hope that I get the curve then next week.
🙋♂️
PS: I’ve also posted my thoughts on the first, second and third weeks.
If I got 1 € for every bug, I would be ...
2023-02-17
Security Contacts (iOS 16.3.1)
I am quite sure, that I did not add my security contact on 01.01.1970.
Screen Time and Messages (macOS 13.2.1)
Screen Time for children is completely broken. And the feature to receive requests via Messages.app renders the app useless on macOS.
2023-02-08
Mail (macOS 13.2)
My smart folder with the rule to only show unread emails shows a couple of read emails.
2023-02-04
macOS Ventura 13.2
After a reboot my System decided to present an empty list of apps granted Accessibility access. Normally there are about 20 applications listed. I then immediately received countless warnings from various apps (Hookmark, CleanShot X, Typinator, etc.) that they would no longer work. Only after another restart the list was back, all apps were ticked, so they should have access - but they did not. I had to switch all the switches off and on again manually.
macOS Ventura 13.2
After each restart Ventura tells me again that background objects have been added - EVERY TIME.
2023-02-02
Find My / Wo ist? (iOS 16.3)
These mentioned AirPods, that are “moving with me” are my own! 🤦♂️
Messages (macOS 13.2)
It would be too easy if I could just approve the request. (Instead it loads forever).
2023-01-31
Shortcuts (iOS 16.3)
This is for sure not how a context click in shortcuts should behave.
2023-01-30
iPad Lockscreen (iPadOS 16.3)
This time it was my iPad that I had to reboot, because scrolling up to unlock it did not work.
Reminders (macOS 13.1)
Why is the text in the field shortened, there is so much free space.
2023-01-26
Apple Mail / Account Aliases stopped working (iCloud)
Okay, this is a bummer. I have just discovered that none of my Apple iCloud email aliases are working. Now the question: why and since when? I’d rather not know how many emails I’ve missed because of this. 🤯 At least, I think, I’ve resolved the issue: Under icloud.com / Mail / Settings / Accounts I’ve disabled the Alias addresses, filled in Fullname and Label, renabled the Account alias and now it’s working again.
2023-01-25
Apple Mail (macOS 13.1)
Of course, it would be nice if Apple Mail would also show me my emails.
Home Screen (iOS 16.2)
Ah, not only does the lock screen not want to show widgets all the time, the (Files.app) widget on the home screen can also be empty.
App Store (iOS 16.2)
Why not give us even more sorting options for subscriptions? Would be very easy to implement as they do nothing.
2023-01-19
Lockscreen (iOS 16.2)
There might be missing something, isn’t it? 🤔
Calendar deletion bug (iOS 16.2)
Deletion of an entry from the search entry does not clear the deleted item from the list.
2023-01-18
App Store (iOS 16.2)
Going back from the detail screen of a subscription and swiping up or down does not scroll the subscriptions in the list but the modal view.
Springboard (iOS 16.2)
Not able to go back to the springboard. Swiping upwards is refused.
2023-01-17
Xcode CLI tools
So, I wanted to install an App via brew. It told me that I don’t have Xcode CLI tools installed and asked me to do so. I already had but, yeah, anyhow, I did it via the given shell command … A few minutes later macOS tells me that there a two updates available.
WTF? Why two versions? And why an update anyways, I just downloaded them directly from Apple?
Shortcuts
The Apple Shortcuts App constantly gets out of sync between my MacBook and my iPhone. Thanks!
Reminders
Why does adding reminders via Siri work without any problems under iOS and exactly the same request via Siri under macOS leads to absolutely pointless queries and error messages (at least when set to GER)? WTF?
What I have done in the first week of 2023 (teaser: mastodon, omg.lol, playdate, ankermake)
I was motivated by muhh’s blog entry to write down what was on my mind in the first week of January. I’m not sure yet if this will become something more regular, but I wanted to start putting something online more often anyway - more on that below.
I’ve had the last two weeks off. The weather was bad, I had a cold 🤧 and therefore a lot of cycling wasn’t an option either (at least that’s what I told myself). So, I used the time to hang out at the computer a little more than usally. There was a lot of exciting things to discover there. Somehow Elon started this with the downfall of twitter, which he initiated. I had only been there reading for years anyway, and then after the takeover I decided to download my data, delete the clients on my end devices and no longer use the account.
As an alternative, I was of course interested in Mastodon and clicked an account on the standard instance mastodon.social. Thanks to tools like movetodon and fedifinder my timeline has also filled up pretty quickly, and I actually “met” pretty quickly some real people with whom you could exchange ideas in a friendly manner. All in all a very positive experience.
One great thing about the fediverse is the extreme dynamics of the tools and clients that are currently being built around it. It feels like back in the early days of Twitter where, for example, a single programmer, Loren Brichter, with Tweetie could turn the whole twitter landscape upside down. (BTW he only has an inactive account on Mastodon 😢)
I tried countless clients over a few days. Among others (unsorted)
The official app is okay, but IMHO not great; toot! I liked the range of functions very much, but you also have to cope with the strange design somehow. Because I follow some accounts that post a lot, and since the timeline on Mastodon is not orchestrated by any algorithms, posts from other people are in danger of being lost. Thats why a good list function is very important to me personally. There, Mammoth also makes a very good impression, but in the end I was lucky and was able to test Ivory via Testflight. The app by Paul Haddad and Mark Jardine has an button design that is a bit too playful for my taste, but otherwise it is extremely stable and really great at everything it does. The recently added list features are awesome, as they allow certain accounts to be hidden from the home view. So, atm I stick to Ivory and am looking forward to even better builds.
Then, sometime last week, I came across a post from @otaviocc@social.lol on omg.lol. And then, coincidentally, I signed up for the service with thousands of other people (who must have read a post on Hacker News and not otaviocc’s post 😎). On omg.lol you ultimately get a “funny” address on the web that contains a wide variety of small services. A single page website (to use as a business card), a statuslog, an omg.lol-email address (forwarder), different DNS services, pastebin, PURL service, a weblog (beta), etc. And while I was at it anyways, I also have my Mastodon account moved from mastodon.social to social.lol. Luckily that went really smoothly. It was a lot of fun getting involved, configuring everything and thinking about what it’s even good for 🤦♂️.
In the meantime, I continued to work with the AnkerMake M5, which also arrived after a very long wait at the beginning of December. All in all I’m very happy with the 3D printer, but still don’t really know what got into me back in early 2022 when I backed it on Kickstarter. But that is definitely going too far at this point and maybe I’ll go into more detail elsewhere.
Well, micro.blog is kind of a universe in itself too. In addition to choosing a theme, there is of course the client question. I got some for iOS (the official app, Gluon for Micro.blog and MacOS (MarsEdit 5, which I use via Setapp) looked at various editors (iA Writer, Drafts and Runestone. In addition, there are useful tools as Mimi Uploader (iOS) to upload images and Epilogue for Micro.blog to track books, but I’m just starting out here, there are just too many apps and I have to see which ones “click” for me.
There are of course all sorts of little helpers for publishing interesting links and posts on Mastodon or blog entries. Among others Linky and Re: Toot by Simon B. Støvring (who, by the way, is also responsible for Runestone) I would like to mention at this point.
As if all that wasn’t enough, at the beginning of last week, after a 1.5 year wait, I received my long-awaited playdate game console. (In the meantime I had actually already forgotten that I had even ordered it and I was all the happier that it suddenly arrived.) It’s a lot of fun to deal with the little yellow box and I wanted to jot down some impressions I got. I rented a domain with Wordpress installed last year already and tried a few things with micro.blog but didn’t really publish anything on either platform. This year I wanted to change that and thus started with a post about the playdate.
All in all, it was an exciting time in terms of IT. Now all of a sudden I somehow have three blogs and will soon have to concentrate on one of them and see when everyday work starts again tomorrow, whether I still have the time and, above all, the desire to continue writing down my thoughts, or these escapades were again one of my “manic” excursions into something new and I would lose interest again the day after tomorrow - which would be a pity.
So, maybe cu next week 🙋♂️
PS: initally, I wanted to talk a little bit about the music and podcasts I’ve listened to, too but this post is already way too long.
Anybox - Manage bookmarks like a pro (iOS / macOS)
One app that I’ve been using a lot for a while now is Anybox. Both the Mac app and the iOS app are very functional and the developer is friendly. It has completely replaced pinboard.in as my bookmark manager, although there is also a very nice iOS / macOS third party companion app called Pins, which is currently no longer being developed as rapidly as it was in the beginning, but is still great.