A weekly list of interesting things I found on the internet, posted on Sundays Wednesday this week. Sometimes themed, often not.

1️⃣ Parker Ortolani shared two music apps that you can still get today that showcase previous iOS designs in case you liked the old Music apps better. [🔗 @parkerortolani // threads.net]

2️⃣ Niléane is doing the thankless work of showing how Threads is failing marginalized communities. It sucks and Threads should do better. [🔗 Niléane // macstories.net]

3️⃣ Manton Reece shared a measured opinion on where he draws the line on mixing politics with business. It largely mirrors the way I feel about such things. (Sticker Mule crossed the line.) [🔗 Manton Reece // manton.org]

4️⃣ We’ve gone from an iPod nano with a strap to make it a watch to an Apple Watch sans strap to make it an iPod. Isn’t nature beautiful? [🔗 Allison Johnson // theverge.com]

5️⃣ I’d rather get DRM-free EPUBs for purchased books, but these new price drop alerts for Apple Books are pretty nice. [🔗 Ryan Christoffel // 9to5mac.com]

6️⃣ This Beeline cycling app looks super cool. Can’t wait to give it a try! [🔗 Ben Lovejoy // 9to5mac.com]

7️⃣ “Cate’s Brother” by Maisie Peters came out a couple of years ago, but I only just discovered it. It’s a real banger and my song of the summer. [🔗 Maisie Peters // song.link]

Thanks for reading 7 Things. If you enjoyed these links or have something neat to share, please let me know. And remember that you can get more links to internet nuggets that I’m finding every day by following me @jarrod on the social web.

7 Things

I’ve not been keeping up very well on noting here when there are new penpal entries, so I’m fixing that now! I’ve had the pleasure of writing back and forth with Justin Wong and Steve Ledlow over the past few months.

Justin and I wrapped up our extended month talking about summer plans and new things happening in our lives:

I landed a written job interview for technical writing. That’s been stressing me a bit, just because there’s a bit of pressure and there’s so many questions. I always overthink and overedit my writing. I’m overthinking this email!

Read our entire conversation →

And Steve, of Tangible Life, and I started talking about how life changes when school’s out when you have kids, vacation memories, and love languages:

My wife and I align on many things, but one of my favorite things has to be our feeling on almost every form of “holiday” other than birthdays.  They’re not really a big deal to us.  We don’t exchange gifts.  We don’t make Valentine’s, or Mother’s Day/Father’s Day or anniversaries a big deal.  Our anniversary just passed at the end of June and I was in St. Louis for one day for work.  We didn’t even remember that it was that day until someone reached out because it was a “memory” in their social media.  We just celebrate life every day, and attempt to celebrate one another the same.  It’s refreshing in a way that I can’t describe.  No obligation.  No expectations.  It only works because we both feel this way, otherwise it would be a complete fail.

Read our entire conversation →

I’ll probably be taking the rest of the summer off from PenPals once Steve and I wrap up our conversation, but if you’re interested in chatting with me later this year, please do let me know!

PenPals

Jeff Perry, writing for Clicked:

The attempted assassination of Donald Trump this weekend triggered a predictable firestorm online. As someone who’s spent over half my life in the broadcasting industry, I know firsthand how overwhelming these news cycles can be. From being a bystander online wanting to know what is happening, to being a news reporter trying to get the correct information as fast as possible, it is incredibly stressful during these times. But this time, something felt different for me. Scrolling through my feeds, I realized this wasn’t just another news event — it was a chance to rethink how we consume breaking news.

Jeff goes on to describe how he set an alarm for later in the day to catch up on what happened, rather than wade through everything spilling onto social media.

It made me realize that I treated this event differently too, but without conscious thought. I found out something was going on a couple of hours late (from Apple TV of all places), and almost opened Threads to “check the news”. Then I realized that I had no interest in heading down the algorithm mine shaft to seek out nuggets of truth and relevance there.

Instead, I opened Apple News, which had a helpful “latest” section on the shooting. I quickly caught up from reputable sources, and then closed the app. Later, when I checked again, I was pleased to see that the same section was still at the forefront and while there were a few new updates, the old ones were right where I left them. I felt no need to scroll and scroll.

I think I, too, will be sticking to this slower, more deliberate approach in the future. And it’d be helpful to have a similar experience available in other news and social apps.

Linked

A weekly list of interesting things I found on the internet, posted on Sundays (but maybe Mondays). Sometimes themed, often not.

1️⃣ These crowdsourced captions for the Eddy Cue/Sam Altman photo op are quite humorous. 🤭 [🔗 @gruber // mastodon.social]

2️⃣ Microsoft has done a great job making their Surface products more repairable. I’m impressed by the QR code to their repair guide and markings inside the device etched there specifically to aid in repairs. [🔗 Shahram Mokhtari // ifixit.com]

3️⃣ I’m with Tyler Stalman in thinking this new Tom Hanks movie would be ideal for watching as Immersive Video on the Vision Pro. [🔗 @stalman // threads.net]

4️⃣ Jason’s short post is a good reminder that the internet is simply a reflection of our greater humanity. Not inherently good, nor bad. It just is. But I choose to return to find the nuggets that make me feel good. [🔗 Jason Becker // json.blog]

5️⃣ I’m with Matt here in feeling some frustration when folks say that Apple is introducing “actually useful” features with Apple Intelligence. Yes, ChatGPT (and the like) are command line-like in that you type out your request, but millions of people are finding use in that text box. And while a command line requires specific commands to be useful, chatbots are way more accessible as they let you talk like a person to it and still get useful things back. Apple Intelligence will be awesome for the personal context, but I think it’s foolish to say that it’s the first useful AI. [🔗 Matt Birchler // birchtree.me]

6️⃣ Similarly, I bristle when people say “there’s less good music than there used to be”. Maybe the music you like isn’t being produced as much, but “good” and “bad” music is entirely in the ear of the beholder. Nick Heer describes very well how our access to music is so bountiful these days. And reminded me that album releases used to be on Tuesdays, which I’d completely forgotten! [🔗 Nick Heer // pxlnv.com]

7️⃣ Congrats to the Inside Out 2 team on such a successful film (over $1 billion at the box office). I saw it last night and can confirm that it’s something special. A perfect sequel? No. But I felt seen in watching it, and I’ll be thinking about it for years, I’m sure. [🔗 Pamela McClintock // hollywoodreporter.com]

Thanks for reading 7 Things. If you enjoyed these links or have something neat to share, please let me know. And remember that you can get more links to internet nuggets that I’m finding every day by following me @jarrod on the social web.

7 Things

Jumping into Clockwise, “the tech podcast that uses half an hourglass for timekeeping”, with my own answers and opinions that no one asked for.

Mikah Sargent: Assuming that you use a voice-based virtual assistant, what are the one or two features that you know you can rely on?

Despite having a site called “HeyDingus”, I don’t actually invoke Siri with its wake phrase all that often.

But keeping with the trend here, when I do use Siri, I’m also a big timer boy, particularly with our kitchen HomePod while cooking. My second most common use case is probably starting workouts on my watch. The list of options in the Workout app is extensive, so rather than find the app, scroll through to ‘Outdoor Run’ and then adjust its parameters for a distance or timed run, it’s so much faster to say “Hey Siri, start a 3-mile outdoor run”. CarPlay is the other place where Siri gets uses, but usually that’s just through the voice prompts it gives to respond to texts while I’m driving.

As a side note, my wife uses Siri quite often for adjusting smart lights in our house, while I tend to use the physical buttons I’ve set up, or Control Center, to turn things on and off. I had bet it would have been the opposite.

Lisa Schmeiser: If you had unilateral power to impose legislation regarding internet activity, what edict are we all now living under?

I’m surprised no one else brought this up, but my edict would be to bring about strict data privacy laws regarding the collection and sale of personal data online. With a large part of the TikTok ban being related to what kind of data can be harvested by that app and potentially be used for nefarious purposes, I think the general public would get behind such a law. It’s not just TikTok though, data brokering gives terrible incentives to apps and websites of all kinds to hoover up as much as they can about their users so that they can make a buck selling it to the highest bidder. Let’s get some protections going.

Dan Moren: Will Apple’s new Passwords app in their newest platforms change how you store, fill and manage, and use passwords?

Unfortunately, I don’t think so. In fact, I’ve been testing iCloud Passwords for most of the last year and, I have to say, it doesn’t work as smoothly as 1Password has for me in the past. In addition to filling passwords into log in fields across apps and the web, it turns out I look up a bunch of data that I’ve stored in 1Password, and doing that in iCloud Passwords has been a pain. Having a separate app is a major improvement (you can use it split-view now!), but it doesn’t yet cover all the use cases I have.

If I were starting from scratch without any habits formed around storing credentials, I think the Passwords app would be sufficient — and I’ll certainly recommend it to most folks — but I think I’m headed back to 1Password until Passwords gets a little more full-featured.

mb bischoff: How comfortable are you telling an LLM your most intimate thoughts, and will that change with Apple Intelligence when more on-device models are used?

See above for the data privacy laws that I’d like to see enacted, I’m not very comfortable putting any sort of personal or intimate stuff into an LLM chatbot text field. I do use them, but usually for coding help, assistance with rewording specific sentences, or Q&A. I’ve not yet uploaded my own documents or data (besides the occasional photo to get help with alt text, but I’m sharing those photos to the web anyway).

But if I want to use Apple Intelligence, that will necessarily change because it basically is only used for personal context situations. For it to be of any use, I’ll need to be okay with it churning through all the data on my device.

It all comes down to trust. Very few, if any, of the companies with LLM products have earned my trust when it comes to user privacy. But Apple has, and I know that they’ve gone to extraordinary lengths to make sure that they can’t end up with all that intimate knowledge about me on their servers. On-device (and Private Cloud Compute) help me rest easy in that regard.

Bonus Topic: Do you enjoy rollercoasters?

When I was young, I hated them. Then a switch flipped and I loved them. Now, though, I’m not as keen about them again. There are a number of theme park rides that I’d like to try, mostly because I’m interested in their “story” while riding, but I no longer seek out the biggest, fastest, loopiest rides anymore.

Overtime Topic: How many email accounts do you actively maintain?

Thankfully, just two*. My work one, which is though Microsoft 365, and my personal iCloud address. That had an asterisk because I do have a number of Custom Email Domains set up with iCloud, and they work great. I also created a family alias address that sends emails to both my wife and I that we use for shared streaming services or anything else that we should both get updates for. Luckily, my email app of choice, Spark, plays nicely with both those custom domains and aliases. I occasionally have to jump into Apple Mail when something doesn’t render right, but most of the time it’s just Spark and those “two” accounts that hold my email life together.

Crashing Clockwise

And now for something new! I’ve been on something of a… let’s call it a “summer break” from blogging, so Robert offered to pick up the slack for 7 Things this week. I don’t really do guest posts here on HeyDingus, but I love linking out to other sites. And since Robert has his own website, I encouraged him to post something there and that I’d quote and link to it for issue #146. He was game, so let’s see what Robert’s found in his internet spelunking for us.

Hijacking “7 Things This Week”

Jarrod over at HeyDingus has been a little busy lately. I’ve missed his “7 Things This week” segment lately. So, I’m doing what any good best friend would do, and I’ve asked to guest post. So here we are, as my first true post on USB, I’m giving it a whirl. For those who aren’t familiar,”7 Things” is a weekly collection of 7 things Jarrod finds interesting. Sometimes themed, sometimes not. Here’s what I found interesting in the past week:

1. I hate that this is a necessary thing in our society, but as an IT coordinator I am glad tools for school safety are within reach of even the smallest schools. The K-12 District I serve has been featured as a case study by Motorola. This project is ongoing and ever evolving! [🔗 Motorola Solutions Blog]

2. Ever think about your last meal? Meghan Trainor talks last meals with Josh on a segment of my favorite channel: [🔗 Mythical Kitchen // youtube.com]

3. Talking Tech and AI with Tim Cook. No summary needed. [🔗 Marques Brownlee // youtube.com]

4. I’m not much of a gaming guy, but it sure was neat to see some of my favorite old Mac systems running Minecraft in this video. [🔗 Action Retro // youtube.com]

5. This one will hit a small niche in this audience, but I love the community that has been built around the K12 Tech Talk podcast that has evolved into a forum for Technology Professionals working in K-12 Education to network and problem-solve together. [🔗 K12TechPro]

6. Just a shameless plug for the “10 Best Days of Summer” and an organization for which I volunteer - if you’re in Michigan July 11-20 come check it out! [🔗 Ionia Free Fair]

7. What will AI mean for HomePod? This article covers a lot of what I was thinking about it… [🔗 9to5Mac]

Thanks Robert!

Thanks for reading 7 Things. If you enjoyed these links or have something neat to share, please let me know. And remember that you can get more links to internet nuggets that I’m finding every day by following me @jarrod on the social web.

7 Things

A weekly list of interesting things I found on the internet, posted on Sundays. Sometimes themed, often not.

1️⃣ Such an elegantly made video. It doesn’t matter that I have no interest in coffee or how it tastes, but I appreciate great storytelling and this is excellent. (The behind-the-scenes is great too.) [🔗 James Hoffmann // youtube.com] (Via Matt Birchler)

2️⃣ I’m intrigued by this tinyPod, Apple Watch phone case thing. Pretty clever, but what I’m most curious about is how they’re converting the scroll wheel touches into watchOS interactions. [🔗 Ryan Christoffel // 9to5mac.com]

3️⃣ Anyone up for a game of Robot Or Not? (I won on my first try.) [🔗 app.humanornot.ai] (Via Kev Quirk)

4️⃣ I’m a sucker for a list of bits of advice, and this is a good one. [🔗 brendan // semi-rad.com]

5️⃣ AI text generation is coming for your personal conversations. How’s that gonna make you feel? [🔗 Neven Mrgan // mrgan.com]

6️⃣ AI generation is also coming for your intrapersonal conversations. And if I had a spare $200, this app that uses AI to ask you questions, transcribe your answers, do follow-ups, and format it all into an autobiography of sorts is probably what I’d spend it on. I’m very intrigued. [🔗 Autobiographer // apps.apple.com]

7️⃣ AI is also also coming for your playlists. This app generates a custom playlist for your road trip, taking into account the places you’ll pass through on the way. Very cool! [🔗 Trip Tunes // impresskit.net]

52 Albums Project

Tike Without Consequence by Alexi Murdoch (2000) — #20/52

I’ll be honest with you, I’m picking Time Without Consequence for one specific reason: it debuts with a perfect song, “All My Days”. I don’t even remember if the rest of the album is any good! We’ll find out together shortly as the rest of it plays through…

Turns out, quite good! Boy his voice is lovely.

The album title, ‘Time Without Consequence’, and that grayscale cover, so classic.

Follow along on the 52 Albums Project page where I’m making some playlists for you.

Thanks for reading 7 Things. If you enjoyed these links or have something neat to share, please let me know. And remember that you can get more links to internet nuggets that I’m finding every day by following me @jarrod on the social web.

7 Things 52 Albums

A Siri that doesn’t suck.®

(Lol, there’s actually a bunch more that I’d like to see Apple improve and introduce, but this would be a great start.)

P.S. Turns out this was my 600th post on HeyDingus! 🥳

WWDC

A weekly list of interesting things I found on the internet, posted on Sundays. Sometimes themed, often not.

1️⃣ You can do some wild stuff with scroll-based animations just with CSS. [🔗 scroll-driven-animations.style]

2️⃣ Robin Rendle has a new blog for sharing things about CSS and I’m already hooked. (And I approve this transition from newsletter to blog!) [🔗 Robin Rendle // csscade.com]

3️⃣ Annie Mueller spells out clearly that how her body is used is entirely up to her. That this needs to be said in the year 2024 is appalling, but here we are. [🔗 Annie Mueller // annie.micro.blog]

4️⃣ Tim Cook had sick custom six colors Nike shoes to wear during the latest Apple Event. [🔗 Sarah Kearns // hypebeast.com]

5️⃣ Incredible pen ad. [🔗 Montblanc // youtube.com]

6️⃣ Quinn Nelson shows off the new Apple Pencil’s shadow effect, which is just the coolest little feature. [🔗 @snazzyq // threads.net]

7️⃣ James made a site and RSS feed for a neat new idea: a blog of the day. [🔗 James G // blogofthe.day]

52 Albums Project

Little Voice: Season 1 (Apple TV+ Original Series Soundtrack) by Little Voice Cast (2020) — #18/52

Little Voice is a show from Apple TV+ that you probably never heard of, although you might know the album by Sara Bareilles upon which it’s built (Bareilles was a creator of the show, and her influence forms the musical foundation of this soundtrack). The show was solid, if not stellar, but the music certainly stands out. It’s an album I return to regularly. [I should really check if Brittany O’Grady, the lead singer and star, has any new music out.] I particularly enjoy their rendition of “Valerie” and the finale version of its titular “Little Voice”. The music is all simple and true (😉) in the best way.

Follow along on the 52 Albums Project page where I’m making some playlists for you.

Thanks for reading 7 Things. If you enjoyed these links or have something neat to share, please let me know. And remember that you can get more links to internet nuggets that I’m finding every day by following me @jarrod on the social web.

7 Things 52 Albums

I’m a bit delayed on my end, but I’ve started emailing with Justin Wong this month. Justin is a software developer who has an awesome website, wonger.dev., and is a Florida enthusiast (which you’ll see below 😉):

We have a lot of sprawling oak trees covered with hanging moss. And there’s a lot of palm trees. (fun fact - palm trees are actually a type of grass. The trunk of a palm tree is closer to celery than a woody tree trunk. It’s bendy enough to survive high winds, instead of snapping or uprooting) There’s short, stubby palm trees, crooked palm trees, palm tree nurseries, fun little ponytail palms, and tall, springy palm trees.

We got started with some introductions and discussed the pros of living in Florida or elsewhere with more distinct seasons, career changes, and eating habits.

I can tell this is going to be a fun month getting to know Justin.

Read the full conversation →

PenPals