We are writing to you today about an upcoming change to your Prime Video experience. Starting January 29, Prime Video movies and TV shows will include limited advertisements. This will allow us to continue investing in compelling content and keep increasing that investment over a long period of time. We aim to have meaningfully fewer ads than linear TV and other streaming TV providers. No action is required from you, and there is no change to the current price of your Prime membership. We will also offer a new ad-free option for an additional $2.99 per month that you can sign up for here.
Prime is a very compelling value. […]
A better PR decision would probably be to offer an ad-supported tier at a lower cost right now and leave the ad-free tier alone. Then, in six months or so, raise the price of the ad-free plan by the same $3. They’d probably get less blow-back that way.
But I appreciate that this feels more honest, somehow.
And, I suppose they’re getting ad money for brands to reach a very large customer base since I expect almost no one will cancel Prime because of this alone. It’ll take effort and more money to join the ad-free tier.
Related: I recently heard (can’t remember where) that apart from Netflix, Prime Video has the most content available of all the streaming platforms. Color me surprised at that. You — well, I — hardly ever hear about Amazon’s streaming service.
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.
I’m chatting with Austin for the PenPals project this month. Our second exchange, as summarized by ChatGPT, is below:
Austin reflects on his varied knowledge and potential consulting opportunities after meeting someone accidentally during a campus political debate. He discusses his broad interests, online platform experiences, and the challenges of “owning” everything on the internet. Austin shares insights from his visits to Japan, emphasizing cultural nuances and artistic freedom of expression. He highlights the concerning trend of online platforms evoking anger and discusses the issue of publicized IP addresses on Chinese platforms. Jarrod, in his reply, admires Austin’s confidence, apologizes for the delay, and inquires about his potential consulting firm. He explores Austin’s shifting interests, discusses the challenges of consistency, and comments on his choice of a fox tail. Jarrod also addresses the cease-and-desist situation, expressing agreement with Austin’s perspective on third-party clients for big platforms. He concludes by asking about Austin’s plans for the end of the
year.
If you’d like to be a penpal for this project, please reach out! I’d love to get you on the schedule.
Dan Moren: Do you use any additional security measures on top of the standard recommended practices?
I’ve got Advanced Data Protection turned on for my Apple devices, but that’s about it for where I go above and beyond. The general stuff I do is use a password manager, two-factor authentication where I can, and, increasingly, passkeys. Nothing too fancy over here!
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Anže Tomić: When you travel abroad, which websites/apps do you trust the most to sightsee or navigate?
I’ve been a Tripsy or TripIt user in the past to keep all the stuff for a trip together, but sometimes I’ll just resort to an Apple Note. To actually book stuff, though, I usually just end up looking through listicles after searching for “fun stuff to do in [destination]”. At times I’ve used Kayak and liked it, but I’ve yet to land on the One-True-App.
I do wonder if ChatGPT and the like will make a meaningful impact on this kind of planning.
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Jason Snell: Do you have any old stuff, tech or otherwise, that might be valuable to a collector?
Not that I can think of. I used to have a reasonable collection of Pokémon and Yu-Gi-Oh cards that might have had some value now since I got in so early to those games. But I’ve long since given all that away. Same with my old video game consoles, cartridges, and CDs.
But I’m not much of a collector of things.
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Brianna Wu: How do you feel about participating in open betas or crowdfunding?
I’ve become less likely to participate in software betas, potentially at the same rate that I’ve become more susceptible to plunking down money for crowdfunded physical products. I feel like I have less time for spelunking into beta software like I used to and less patience for things that break because of the unfinished software.
There are a handful of apps that I’m on the TestFlights for. But I’m pretty bad about actually offering feedback during the betas, so I should stop picking those up.
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Bonus Question: Do you have a favorite holiday song?
Hard to say because there are so many good ones, but the first that springs to mind is Pentatonix and Tori Kelly’s version of “Winter Wonderland / Don’t Worry Be Happy”.
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My Question: How do you tech-out the holidays?
The obvious answer is with smart outlets and light bulbs to set up a “Hey Dingus, turn on the Christmas Tree” automation. It’s not only the obvious answer but perhaps my only one. I guess you could count switching over to my Christmas and Yule playlists, but I wouldn’t.
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The holidays are drawing near, but I hope to be able to pop in for next week’s episode as usual.
A weekly list of interesting things I found on the internet, posted on Sundays. Sometimes themed, often not.
1️⃣ I was captivated by this tale of Cerro Torre, an iconic peak in Patagonia, that was plagued by controversy about who actually climbed it first, and by what means. It’s a four-part podcast series, but you can get the cliff notes on Wikipedia. [🎙️ Duct Tape Then Beer // climbinggold.com]
2️⃣ Another banger Decoder episode in which I learned of and about the United States Digital Service. It’s not often that I feel proud and content about “technology” in the hands of a government official, but I am in this case after this interview. [🎙️ Decoder // overcast.fm]
3️⃣ This “game” is actually an educational experience to show how far computer vision for self driving cars still has to go before it’s any good at detecting humans who don’t necessarily look like typical people crossing the street. In this case, if you win against the computer vision, well, you would’ve been hit by a car! (Also, I just lost The Game. 😒) [🔗 Jen Glennon // kotaku.com]
4️⃣ This new Alpine Suit from Patagonia looks wild, and wildly effective for the most demanding climbs. [🔗 MaiLee Hung // patagonia.com]
5️⃣ Also from Patagonia, but back in September, they penned a (beautifully narrated) investment update letter to their sole shareholder, Planet Earth, on the anniversary of their radical restructuring of where its profits go. [🔗 patagonia.com]
6️⃣ I don’t have Old Wavy as much as Grey, but he’s right about Tri-Color Polaris being the best potential new flag design for Minnesota. [▶️CGP Grey // youtube.com]
7️⃣ I’ve been very interested in getting a smart lock (I’m always coming in the door with my hands full) and The Bearded Teacher, AKA Stephen Robles has been doing the best reviews on them. He’s finished trying out the quartet of locks with Apple Home Key support, and this is the final roundup/ranking. [▶️ Stephen Robles // youtube.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.
A weekly list of interesting things I found on the internet, posted on Sundays (or occasionally on Mondays). Sometimes themed, often not.
1️⃣ An impressive demo of Google’s Gemini AI model. (Note that apparently this is pretty heavily sped up and edited, so watch with a grain of salt.) [🔗 Google // youtube.com]
2️⃣ Perhaps longer and more dramatic than strictly necessary, this is still an enjoyable read with good intentions about retuning to the principles of a more open and personal web. [🔗 Kev Quirk // thewebisfucked.com]
3️⃣ Taylor Swift is an absolute phenom. This article on her Person of the Year award is well-worth the read through her journey. (Oh, and the portraits are masterful too.) [🔗 Sam Lansky // time.com]
4️⃣ BasicAppleGuy released a do-it-yourself tier list for all the products that Apple released in 2023. I’m thinking about doing one myself, and would love to see how others rank everything up. [🔗 BasicAppleGuy // basicappleguy.com]
5️⃣ The MacStories Selects Awards has me revisiting some of the top-tier apps they’ve recognized this year. Excellent writing and choices. [🔗 MacStories Team // macstories.net]
6️⃣ As heard on ATP, this app helps you to digital save your kid’s art. It looks really slick, does everything on-device, and lets you tag it by kid, age, etc. [🔗 KidArt // apps.apple.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.
Mikah Sargent: What apps do you regularly use to take photos on your phone?
99.999% of the time (or higher), I use the stock Camera app on my iPhone to take photos. My go-to method to get to the camera is from the lock screen, or with a triple back-tap. I also have it set up as an icon from Control Center, conveniently placed exactly where it is on the lock screen so that there’s no fuss in getting that quick snap. With so many ways to open the camera, I don’t even have its icon on my home screen.
The only exception to my stock camera usage is when I remember that I pay for Halide’s pro plan so that I can take macro shots with my iPhone 13 mini. Although it has an ultra-wide lens, the 13 mini does not get the macro mode in the stock camera app. So I give the Lux developers $12 a year to use Halide’s macro mode instead if I ever want those up-close-and-personal shots with the micro world. Can I tell you when the last was that I used Halide instead of the Camera app? No, no I cannot. But I like having that tool available to me because I think those photos look so dang cool.
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Rosemary Orchard: What is your favorite recent, small (less than $75) tech purchase that you would recommend to others?
In some good timing, I wrote up a blog post with two-sentence reviews for a bunch of gadgets and gizmos that I’ve picked up just a few weeks ago. Not all the things on that list are under $75, but a fair few of them are.
If I were to choose a favorite off that list, I’d have to double up on Stephen’s recommendation of the Hoto Electric Screwdriver. I echo everything he said. The carrying case with all the bits is awesome. The USB-C charging is convenient. The light is nice. But the best thing is that it’s small and light, so it can be used in tight spaces where a more typical power drill just wouldn’t. And you can stick it in a pocket to carry it around the house.
But two more things deserve a mention.
First, Anker’s 733 Power Bank (or GaNPrime PowerCore 65W🤷♂️) at $70 on sale is pretty sweet. It’s both a battery bank and a wall charger, all in one! This is replacing the big battery pack and the older power brick that lived in my travel bag. Now I can just plug this one thing into the wall, and with its three charging ports, I should be able to power up everything I typically take on a trip. And if I need a little extra juice where there’s no place to plug into a wall, I can still just charge off the battery bank itself. And, I should never have to remember to charge it up because it’ll always be charging itself when plugged into the wall at night each trip. I’m pretty psyched about the features, and having one fewer thing to lug around.
Second, the Lutron Caséta switches. Granted, to get started with their required hub will probably cost a little more than $75. But the switches themselves are usually less than $75 a pop. Go for the Diva Switch for dimming lights, or the Claro Switch for simple on/off lights.
If you have members of your household who get frustrated with smart lights because Siri doesn’t like to listen to them, or they don’t want to go hunting through their phone to turn on a light, just get these. You’ll be a hero in the home because these gizmos will always work as a normal switch wired in the wall. But you can still control them via the Home app, activate them with Siri, and set up automations. They’ve been absolutely great.
I put off buying these for years because I thought they’d be tricky to install, but they’re totally not. I switched (heh) out a bunch of them in our new home all in an afternoon. The only downside? They don’t play well with smart lightbulbs. So if you have a light that you really like having RGB color-changing capabilities, maybe stick with the dumb switch for it.
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Dan Moren: What new features of iOS 17.2 are you looking forward to?
While I’d like to say the Journal app because it would spur more personal journalling, I’m too much of a realist to do so. I’ve had Day One on my home screen for years, and I still only occasionally open it up to jot down my thoughts there. I am excited for my wife to try the Journal app because she has expressed interest in starting a gratitude journal, and I think she’d appreciate a built-in app over digging through the App Store.
But since I know I probably won’t use the Journal app, I’m going to go with the Listening History Focus filter for Apple Music as well. When I need to get in the zone, nothing does it quite like orchestral music or the BEATstrumentals playlist. But I don’t need music recommendations or song counts tallying up based on those listening sessions. It’s been a long time coming, but I’m glad there will finally be a way to easily switch that history on and off.
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Stephen Robles: What new feature in macOS Sonoma has increased or impacted your workflows?
Perhaps my favorite new feature is the slow-motion screen savers/wallpapers. They bring me delight every time I turn on my Mac.
But the one that has impacted my workflows the most is probably the improved Passwords and Autofill experience. I’m slowly extricating myself from 1Password, and switching over to iCloud Keychain/Passwords has been nearly seamless. It’s great at detecting password fields, but when it needs a little help having them live behind the Autofill option in a right-click context menu is so handy.
Bonus Question:What is something that always makes you feel better when you’re sad?
Most of the time, I’ll retreat to my ‘Sad’ playlist for some good emotional music to help me get the feelings out. But if I want a pick-me-up, I’ll revisit the Instagram message chain that I have with my wife which consists of nothing but funny or heartwarming videos, usually of pets or cute animals. It’s just the best.
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My Question:For those of us in the Northern Hemisphere, winter is knocking at our door. What’s something that you’re looking forward to in the upcoming snowy season?
For me, it’s ice climbing. When the weather turns too chilly for rock climbing, it’s time to pull out the ice axes and crampons and start scaling the frozen waterfalls and features. I started ice climbing back in college at the Michigan Ice Festival for a few winters. And then didn’t get another opportunity until last winter after I moved to the Adirondacks. I fell in love with the sport and now like it nearly as much as rock climbing!
In fact, I got out for a handful of pitches just this morning, despite the warmer temps and retreating ice. It’s helpful to have something that has you wishing for cold temperatures when you live in a place with frigid winters like northern New York State.
My correspondent for the PenPals project this month is Austin Huang. Austin is a statistics and computer science student by day but is a public transit enthusiast in his free time. You can check out his home page at austinhuang.me.
Our first exchange, as summarized by ChatGPT, is below:
In Austin’s introductory letter, he expresses gratitude for being a part of the Letters Project and apologizes for potentially being perceived as boring due to his age and life circumstances. He shares his past experience with penpals, mentioning his childhood correspondence with a Japanese webmaster interested in rapid transit. Austin describes his recent interaction on Zhihu, a Chinese platform, where he engaged in discussions on student life, ambition, personality, and careers. He mentions his awareness of the project through Kev Quirk and introduces himself, highlighting his quirks, including a Cease & Desist from Facebook, an interest in alternative platforms, and his social experiences. Austin seeks advice on striking up conversations, particularly offline, and invites questions. In Jarrod’s response, he appreciates Austin’s unique story, expresses interest in his penpaling experiences, and discusses common interests in public transit and technology. Jarrod shares
advice on being nice in the workplace and offers unconventional ice-breaker questions for starting conversations. He also expresses curiosity about Austin’s cease-and-desist incident and looks forward to hearing more.
If you’d like to be a penpal for this project, please reach out! I’d love to get you on the schedule.
Another Wednesday Sunday, another crashing of Clockwise. Being the fly on the wall of these conversations with you guys and your guests is quickly becoming a highlight of my week. You know the drill, let’s get going.
Dan Moren:I’m curious about how you consume books these days. Are you a paper book person, an e-book person, audiobook? And where do you buy them, and read them?
Well, now, that’s an interesting question. At this very moment, one two three four five six seven paper books on my nightstand, all begging to be read. Also on that nightstand, I have a Kobo e-reader with a couple of digital titles queued up, and that’s definitely my preferred way to read. I’ll download e-books from my library via the Libby app, which the Kobo can do on-device, or I’ll purchase them directly from Kobo if it’s not available to check out and I’m itching to read it now (which rarely happens).
But the true answer is that I haven’t finished any books this year (well, except for one that I re-read in the spring) because I also have an iPad mini chock full of hundreds of web articles saved to read. Those probably equate to dozens of novels consumed in terms of the number of words — actually, I’d love to know that…hopefully Pocket will come out with a ‘wrapped’ feature soon — but little actual book reading gets done in any form lately.
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Florence Ion:What are you doing with your health data?
In a word, collecting. I wear an Apple Watch every day, which keeps track of all kinds of metrics for me, from heart rate to step count to goodness-only-knows-what. For a few years, I was also stepping on our smart scale every morning to log my weight (which I’m only just now realizing I’d stopped and should start that up again). I’ve had connected water bottles, apps, and shortcuts to keep a history of my water intake.
But what do I do with that data? Not much.
I do occasionally like to go diving through the trends and make that weird frown-like shape with my mouth while nodding up and down as I come across some interesting insight. But I don’t have a primary care physician (I know, I know, I will) so I don’t really have anyone to share it with. I guess I’m just tracking on the off chance that it will be useful someday, and I’m happy to keep doing so as long as it doesn’t add much extra hassle to my day.
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Mikah Sargent:How, if at all, have you used technology to help you with house chores?
The first thing that comes to mind is apps. I’ve piled reminders for chores into my task manager over the years, to varying levels of success. I particularly like when you can set a task to repeat X number of days after the last completion. So for things like changing out the cat litter, it’ll restart the clock for when I need to change it next, even if I didn’t get it down on the exact day that it was set to be due. Without those reminders, many fewer chores would get done around our house.
That said, I’m close to declaring task bankruptcy because of everything that’s gotten jammed up in there. Too many tasks are “due today” not because they need to get done today, but because I set a due date so that I wouldn’t lose track of them, but I’ve yet to complete them. With dozens of tasks cluttering up my ‘Today’ view, some chores have slipped through the cracks, which is no good at all.
That’s why, as of listening to the very discussion, I’ve moved a bunch of those chores and things that require nagging over to the Due app. Due’s claim to fame is that it will continually send notifications to remind you to get a task done until you actually check it off. I’m hoping that the combination of nagging, and having them separate and prominent, will help me to check them off.
The other bit of tech that has transformed a chore is our litter robot. This contraption “scoops” (really pushes) the cat’s business away into a contained area, and then the box only needs to be switched out every few weeks. I love that I don’t need to scoop the cat litter every day, which used to be my least favorite household task, but the machine leaves a bit to be desired. I’m considering picking up a different style of litter robot because I don’t think I can ever go back to doing it manually.
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Christopher Phin:What bit of old software, that you don’t use anymore, do you have a weirdly disproportionate crush on?
As a connoisseur of productivity apps, I still long for the days of Wunderlist and Mailbox. Both were best-in-class, offered delightful interactions and animations, and were each acquired and subsequently “sunset”.
Wunderlist by 6Wunderkinder — a fantastic name for a business, by the way — ran my life in the same way that Things does now. I’ve always had an affinity for task management apps, and it was Wunderlist that instilled in me a need for them to look and feel good. It pulled me away from Reminders, and I doubt I could go back now. It was acquired by Microsoft and its spirit now lives on somewhere in Microsoft To-Do.
Mailbox was everyone’s favorite email app, which is a surprising thing to say because nowadays no one can agree on a good email app. It pioneered things that we consider table stakes these days: swipe to archive, snooze, and push notifications for emails. It was also the first app that I can remember to launch with a massive waitlist. It was fairly minimal in its design to begin with, but Mailbox had one of the best redesigns to fit in with iOS 7’s “flat” interface. When you cleared out your inbox, it revealed a pleasant version of the mailbox logo and I aspired to see the new version each day. Dropbox eventually acquired Mailbox and killed it off a few years later without a replacement. The closest Mailbox experience I’ve found is Spark by Readdle, although I’d say that’s getting kind of bloated and losing the thread these days.
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Bonus Question:Do you have a favorite holiday tradition?
When I was young, it was waking up in the middle of the night on Christmas Eve, after Santa had arrived, and sleeping next to the Christmas Tree waiting for the rest of the family to wake up and begin the festivities.
Nowadays, I like stretching the day out with baking cookies, opening stockings, and then getting to the gift-giving. Giving gifts is my love language (along with email), so it’s always an enjoyable day.
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My Question:Which accessibility feature of your device(s) do you get the most use out of?
I’ve tried many features from the Accessibility pane of Settings over the years, and I actually just wrote up a big blog post about the Personal Voice feature this week. But the one I’m getting the most use out of is the ‘Speak Screen’ feature, which you can use to have your device read out what’s on the screen. It’s kind of like a less detailed version of VoiceOver, and I use it to read articles out loud from apps that lack their own text-to-speech feature. I’ll also use it to proofread this very article!
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This was fun, as always! But that first episode of December will be here before we know it! Until then, thanks for having me on yet again.
2️⃣ Want a quick pick-me-up? Scroll through this thread of some truly excellent kid-friendly jokes. 😂 [🔗 @mosseri // threads.net]
3️⃣ If you want to be in control of your space on the web, that starts with the domain name. Micro.blog has seriously souped up their domain registration and transfer capabilities this week. [🔗 Manton Reece // manton.org]
5️⃣ Based on this introduction video, the holy grail of AI-generated art is here: text-to-video. I’m on the waitlist, so I can’t tell you if it’s actually any good, but it sure does look impressive. [🤖 pika.art]
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.
