I wasn’t going to say anything about Apple’s traditional holiday short, but after reading Andy Ihnatko’s dissection of it on Six Colors, I realized I wasn’t the only one put off by it. They’re usually heartwarming, heartfelt, and sweet, but this year’s short fell, well, short for me this year. Andy did a great job summing up the myriad of things that felt off about it. You should go read his whole post, but I’ll call out a few points that stuck out to me as well.

The protagonist’s revenge stop-motion film seemed over the top for the grievances her boss performed against her:

How many weeks did it take her to complete just one of those humiliating scenes? She designed and constructed dolls, props, and sets; she invested lots of money and ingenuity in doing the lighting and rigging; she animated each shot one painsaking frame at a time; and then did all of the editing.

You must agree with me that this is an utterly psychopathic amount of work. It’s very correct to witness this behavior and then fear for that man’s safety out in the real world.

One of those “grievances”:

I’ll also point out that one of the little things the boss did that annoyed and angered her was that he noticed that she was very late for work. He communicated his disappointment in a quick, low-key way that drew no attention from the rest of the office. Close examination of the previous scene reveals why she was late that morning: she’d gotten so wrapped up in her whole Torture My Boss By Wooly Proxy project that she’d lost all track of time.

And then, her empathy was far too forthcoming for the supposedly deep-seated dislike she held for him, just because he (wishy-washingly) handed her a handmade gift (that he also gave to the rest of the office), and then she saw him eating alone.

It just felt like too little for her to completely change her mind about the man, after she had clearly spent weeks (months?) imagining his painful humiliation. Andy seems to have felt the same way:

So when the lady in the “Fuzzy Feelings” video exercises her empathy only conditionally, after she comes to pity her boss (itself a form of dehumanization), it comes across as… well, not wrong, but definitely odd.

A real gem in Andy’s piece is this declaration about human empathy:

Well, whatever. Empathy is the point of today’s sermon. Empathy requires each of us to never ever forget that we should treat fellow humans like human beings and not human-shaped objects. No exceptions and no excuses.

Simple? Oh, sure. But holy cats, it’s hard to get a consistent grip on the thing, isn’t it? It’s easier to know that we’ve misplaced our empathy than it is to be sure of what we should do with it.

So good that I copied it to my quote journal!

But I don’t really buy Andy’s theory that the protagonist’s capacity for empathy is influenced by the fact she she uses Windows at work and Apple products at home:

So maybe the lady’s capacity for empathy is intact… but her ability to access it is influenced by her environments. When she’s in the office and her boss gives her a gentle rebuke for a legit HR infraction, her proximity to a Microsoft operating system influences her to choose a path of (needle-felted stop-motion) violence.

That’s a little too “grasping at straws” for me, but the manufacturer of her work tools was an interesting detail that I hadn’t noticed.

Apple’s had a good run of theses warm and fuzzy holiday shorts. I’m not faulting them too hard for one flop out of many years. I guess I’m just a little surprised that literally the fuzziest one of all didn’t land so well.

Linked

This post has been sitting in my drafts folder for months. Nobody was asking for it, but I feel like I need to end the two-part saga.

All my worries yesterday in July were for naught. The “nuke and pave” went very smoothly, certainly as well as anyone could have hoped.

Erasing the Mac was quick, thanks to the encrypted data technology in modern Macs. Getting booted back up into a fresh install of macOS Ventura had but one small hiccup: I needed to do an extra restart for the Mac mini to kick its Wi-fi chip into gear and notice my network. Signing into iCloud to get it to start downloading all of my files and photos was seamless. But the star of the show, for sure, was my ‘Setup a New Mac’ checklist.

Between all the apps I use on a daily basis, the keyboard shortcuts I’ve built into muscle memory, and long-standing preferences I’ve fine-tuned in System Settings, there were just too many things to trust them to my feeble human memory.

So I’ve been curating a list (Apple Note link) of things to set up first when doing a fresh install of macOS. It’s got screenshots of preference panes, links to little hacks, and everything I need to do to make my Mac feel like my Mac.

Since starting fresh, I can say that I’ve noticed an increase in general speediness, and a decrease in app hang-ups, bugs, and general weirdness. It’s not been a dramatic difference, but enough to have one fewer thing nagging at the back of my mind. So…thumbs up, I guess?

Oh, and I haven’t once had to go back for a file in Time Machine. Knocks on wood.

Tips

Heyo, it’s so good to be back for my third episode of Clockwise in a row! Has any other guest ever had such an honor?

I’m getting pretty used to the idea that you all just ignore my answers, and you know what? I can just roll with it! Let’s hop to it.

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Mikah Sargent: If you had to choose between noise cancellation or excellent audio quality — you can’t have both! — which would you choose and why?

This is an easy one. My hearing is so poor that high-fidelity audio is lost on me. Don’t get me wrong, I do appreciate good audio, and I love how my AirPods Max sound, but when we start talking about lossless audio, I don’t think it would make a difference to my ears.

But noise cancellation is something that makes a big difference for me. I use it when vacuuming or doing other loud chores, or just when I need to block everything else and concentrate. Our house doesn’t offer much in the way of noise isolation — at this very moment I can hear my wife’s phone conversation while she’s down in the living room and I’m upstairs in the study — so having the ability to shrink down my world for concentration is key.

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Doc Rock: If you could have an unlimited supply of one thing for the rest of your life, what would it be and how would it change the world or your life? Money and time are off the table.

I’m going to go with a potentially boring answer here: clean, fresh water at any temperature of my choosing. I’m cheating a little bit here. This was a similar ice-breaker question that I was asked at my run club earlier this fall, except, in that scenario, the unlimited supply of whatever we chose would shoot out of our fingers. I spend a lot of my time as a mountain guide thinking about when, where, and how I’ll next get clean water for drinking and cooking. And water is heavy to carry. If I could have an unlimited supply of water that appeared on demand, I could save mental energy, ache on my back, and all the time it takes to filter it in the backcountry.

Honorable mention (but potentially disqualified) answers:

1️⃣ Cash. Have you ever realized that you could get each denomination of US dollars to shoot out of each one of your fingers to make exact change every time?

1. Hundreds
2. Fifties
3. Twenties
4. Tens
5. Fives
6. Ones
7. Quarters
8. Dimes
9. Nickels
10. Pennies

Coincidence? I think not!

2️⃣ Silly String. Come on, that would just be fun!

3️⃣ Spaghetti and sauce. I could eat that for breakfast, lunch, and dinner and always be happy.

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Dan Moren: Will Apple’s adoption of RCS change anything in the world of cross-platform messaging, or is this just lip service to avoid litigation from large governments?

I do think that RCS on iPhones will improve the quality of inter-platform chats. People flee to other services when they don’t get the features they want. If RCS delivers on its promise of better group chats, higher-quality media messages, read receipts, and the assurance that messages do get delivered, I think that there will be less need for a fractured chatting environment. Maybe more people will be able to rely on the default Messages app.

Or maybe folks have already been trained to go to other messaging apps to meet those needs and nothing will change. But I can’t imagine that RCS will make anything worse, there’s only upside.

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James Thomson: Have you bought anything or seen any particularly good deals (from Capitalist Hellscape Week) that you would recommend to our fine, discerning listeners?

I haven’t been much of a Black Friday shopper the last few years, and I haven’t kept up with any major deals so far this year. What I have done, though, is save a couple of shopping carts on Amazon and elsewhere online to check for discounts tomorrow on items I was already going to buy. I had been ready to pull the trigger on some Lutron Caseta switches for our home earlier this week. But I remembered, just in the nick of time, that there might be some deals to be had on Friday. 🤞

Oh! I almost forgot, there’s an amazing site cataloging indie apps (over 300!) that have huge discounts this week: app.indieappsales.com

⏲️⏲️⏲️

Bonus Question: You have been chosen to represent your country in a global competition. What sport, talent, or activity are you doing?

Hard to say. I might place well in the ‘most side tangents and distractions explored while trying to complete a simple task’ event.

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My Question: What’s your go-to discovery method for new music?

I don’t typically go to the Music app itself for new music discovery. I know there are some great genre playlists and radio stations there, all lovingly organized by the Apple Music human curation team. But most of my discovery comes from recommendations I find from friends and acquaintances. If someone recommends a new album, it gets saved to MusicBox for me to check out later. But I also get good usage out of my automatically-generated Friends Mix playlist for songs that are out of my usual jurisdiction. It’s refreshed with songs that people I follow on Apple Music are listening to each week.

If I do find an artist that piques my interest, I’ll seek out their Essentials playlist on Apple Music to get a better look at their discography. Those are pretty great.

⏰⏰⏰

These topics are always such brain ticklers. It’s so much fun to explore new ideas with you all. Thanks for having me on, and I’ll see you next week!

Crashing Clockwise Podcasts

I went into the Taylor Swift Eras Tour movie expecting something along the lines of Hamilton. A well-produced video capture of a live event. And, I suppose, that is what I got. But what I hadn’t anticipated was the awe-inspiring, mind-boggling creative production that was this concert — if you can even call it a concert.

Taylor Swift is at the top of her game. It was quite the thing to be reminded of the breadth of her discography. Her mastery of songwriting has only grown over time, and she’s an intricate wordsmith. These are things that I already knew, but re-appreciated during the film.

I hadn’t realized what a commanding performer she is. That stage was all hers from the very first beat. Every movement was measured, rehearsed, and then executed with extreme precision. It was almost uncomfortable at first being confronted with something so obviously calculated. It felt somewhat antithetical to the idea of seeing a creative artist live. But then I realized that this is just what Taylor Swift does. She sets a goal and then pursues it relentlessly until it is perfect. Why would her self-funded, self-distributed show be any different?

In the end, I came to enjoy watching and being amazed by such a precise performance. The details of its production were astonishing. The seamless costume changes and transitions. The elegantly-styled microphones that matched each Era’s theme. What I wouldn’t give to see a rundown of the logistics behind this show.

What I think I enjoyed most, even beyond the absolutely top-tier and cutting edge production, was that it was so obvious that Taylor was having fun from beginning to end.

She’s set a new bar with the Eras Tour. And I can’t even imagine who could top it.

Music Movies

Kev Quirk and I did our latest exchange with for the PenPals project this month. You can follow along with our conversation here, but you owe it to yourself to see the awesome email styling that he’s done over on his site.

Here’s a peek into our second exchange, as summarized by ChatGPT:

In this exchange, Kev and Jarrod cover a range of topics. Kev shares insights on his blog hosting choices, preference for Blot and Kirby, and his diverse interests like watches, animals, and blog writing. Jarrod discusses his experience as a Mountain Guide and Scout Camp Director, revealing aspirations for owning and operating a climbing gym and doggy daycare. They delve into the challenges of managing a Scout group and the joy of parenting. The conversation extends to the addictive nature of smartwatches, syncing multiple watches, and blogs and podcasts they follow. It’s a rich dialogue spanning personal experiences, hobbies, and future goals.

If you’d like to be a penpal for this project, please reach out! I’d love to get you on the schedule.

PenPals

You know how sometimes you stumble across bits of information that feel like they were packaged up just for you? That’s what happened to me yesterday when listening to AppStories and Federico Viticci solved an internet problem I didn’t even realize I was looking for a solution to.

Yup, that’s me. Over three years ago, I plugged my wife’s PS5 into Ethernet and ignorantly assumed that it would swap over to the hardwired connection. Our Wi-Fi speeds were pretty fast, so when she downloaded games and I could see the progress bar visibly moving, I assumed all was working correctly. But there were times that I noticed lag (like when using PS Remote Play), or was surprised by the time it took to download even smaller updates to the device. But I thought it was already using Ethernet, so what could I do?

Enter this new age thought technology: actually check the goddamn settings. 😅 Less than a minute of futzing through the network settings, and now the PlayStation is getting 6x — that’s right, six times — the download speed. Probably the most valuable seconds per Mbps increase I’ve ever invested.

Here’s how you can futz through the settings yourself and hopefully get a massive increase in speed to your console as well.

Settings → Network → Connection Status

Look-ey here. Even though it’s got an Ethernet cable plugged into its butt, the PS5 thinks the Wi-Fi is the way to go. Nuh-uh. Next stop, ‘Network → Settings → Set Up Internet Connection’ to initiate the Ethernet connection.

But before you fire up that Ethernet connection, go ahead and do a speed test on Wi-Fi so you know what kinds of gains you get afterward.

80 Mbps?! Yeah, something’s not right here when I’m paying for a 500 Mbps pipeline to the modem it’s hooked directly into.

Start up a LAN

Over in ‘Set Up Internet Connection’, you’re going to make a new connection and select the Wired LAN option. This threw me off for a second. I wasn’t trying to set up a LAN Party where my buddies could bring over their consoles and we could string them all together for a Halo showdown. Would this LAN setting know to actually connect with the broader internet? Did I need to name it the same as my Wi-Fi network?

I needn’t have worried. It just worked. I did end up naming it ‘JandJ Ethernet’ just so I’d know exactly what the connection was, but I don’t think it matters what you name the network at all.

Speed Test

Okay, back over in the ‘Connection Status’ pane, we can see that the Ethernet connection has now taken precedence. It retains the Wi-Fi network in its memory, which is good I guess, but hopefully, we never have to use it again.

Let’s do a new speed test to make sure things are hooked up right.

There’s that 500+ Mbps I was looking (and paying) for!

That’s it!

The PS5 should be feeling better now that it’s not trying to sip data through a kiddie straw. Now it’s punching a hole in the side of those data beers, cracking open the top, and shotgunning megabytes down its gullet at warp speed. Wow, that analogy about an Ethernet cable in its butt really doesn’t work now, does it? 😂

I did a real-world test and a large game update zipped through its download faster than ever before on this console. Success.

Hopefully, you see those same massive gains in connection speed. And, Sony, if you’re reading along, maybe consider prioritizing the wired connection automatically when one is plugged in. I can guarantee that’s what your users expect.

Tips

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

1️⃣ I might have to get me one of these classic Mac “hello” signs. It’s so diminutive and cute! [🔗 @camiel // schoonens.social]

2️⃣ In Review is a gorgeous new movie, TV, and book review blog written by Alexandra. Excellent design choices made here. [🔗 Alexandra // inreview.ca]

3️⃣ You can totally see space tools left behind by astronauts with just binoculars, which is wild! [🔗 Robert Lea // livescience.com] (Via Jason Kottke)

4️⃣ You’re not gonna want to miss this example of a program that uses AI vision and speech generation to have David Attenborough narrate a live webcam view. [🔗 Benj Edwards // arstechnica.com]

5️⃣ Gav and Dan with a very relatable slow-mo scene. 😂 [🔗 The Slow Mo Guys // youtube.com]

6️⃣ If you’re a Mastodon (or Micro.blog or ActivityPub…I should just say “social web”) user, you should follow the (unofficial) @merlinwisdom@botsin.space. It’s an account that spits out a random entry from Merlin Mann’s Wisdom Project (which I’ve mentioned before) every six hours. I’ve used Shortcuts and widgets to surface these in the past, but there’s something to be said for them just popping up in a feed I’m already reading. [🔗 @merlinwisdom // botsin.space]

7️⃣ Count me in for Todd Vaziri’s Apple TV remote redesign proposal. I haven’t been particularly annoyed at my remote lately, but can’t deny that this would be an improvement. [🔗 Todd Vaziri // fxrant.blogspot.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

Hey guys, thanks for having me back on this 529th episode of Clockwise! I didn’t hear my audio get into the podcast last time; maybe my track was muted? Anyway, I’m happy to be part of the conversation here on these four five tech topics.

⏱️⏱️⏱️

Dan Moren: Do you have any plans to start capturing spatial video even if a Vision Pro may not be in your immediate future?

I would love to capture spatial videos for viewing on a Vision Pro whenever I get one. I think having that extra data will be useful in the long run, and I think it’ll be a worthwhile trade-off for those videos to be 1080p rather than 4K for the time being. Surely Apple is working on upping those specs and having a vertical video mode.

The only problem is that I’m currently rocking an iPhone 13 mini, and don’t have any plans to replace it. Spatial video capture could push me towards upgrading, but certainly not before there’s a Vision Pro in my possession.

Maybe next September’s iPhones will be the ones to finally tempt me away from the mini form factor. (Or Apple could bring it back and include spatial video capture on that device too. That sure would be great.)

⏱️⏱️⏱️

Joe Rosensteel: Does anyone have strong opinions about the fonts that they use for work or note-taking in their lives?

I’m typing out this very blog post in Drafts, where I changed the default font to whatever monospace version it has built-in (it’s Menlo). For text and Markdown files, I prefer a (read: any) monospace font. Otherwise, I’m a big fan of the San Francisco typeface and its variants, so I will typically choose them if given the option.

I’m pretty basic in that regard. But I do appreciate good fonts, expertly used.

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Mikah Sargent: Have you ever used or do you currently use a journaling app or service? And how long have/did you stick with it if you do/did?

I’ve tried the journalling thing several times, but it’s never stuck. I’ve primarily tried Day One, but I’ve also done a few stints with the Theme System Journal. I still haven’t filled the first one that I started years ago, and although I like Day One’s prompts, I’ve not been able to make journalling a habit.

I’ll certainly give Apple’s Journal app a shot, but I’m not expecting a miracle here.

(I’m not counting the automatic import of my Instagram posts, blog posts, and New York Times newspaper covers as journaling, even though those do all make it into Day One. It would be hard to give that automatic archive up if I were to make the switch over to Apple’s app.)

⏱️⏱️⏱️

Kathy Campbell: When do you tell your non-tech people in your life to update the software of their devices and do you make different recommendations for different devices?

I used to be so bad about this. And by “bad” I mean that I was a monster about pushing people to update to the latest OS. I would let my wife that a new update was available pretty much as soon as it came out in September (I was probably already on the beta). Then, if she didn’t update on her own within a few days, I would do it for her. Cringe. There were a couple of times that something moved, was removed, or just generally different enough that it disrupted her day, and she was not pleased.

I’ve stopped doing that.

Now, I’ll generally not say a word and let the news reach her organically. Or, if there’s a particularly handy feature in the new version, I’ll show her on my phone, and then if, and only if, she asks about how to do it, I’ll let her know that she’d have to update to get it. This sometimes happens throughout the beta period, giving her a stack of reasons to update in the fall.

My parents, on the other hand, routinely ask me to audit their devices when I’m home to make sure that they’re up-to-date. They’re getting better about doing it on their own, but I think they appreciate having someone on hand to help them figure out the new stuff, or fix the broken stuff if needed.

In general, I now try to practice the art of not interfering with other people’s lives when they haven’t asked for it and it doesn’t affect me. Folks can choose for themselves if they want to update their stuff, and choosing not to do so is totally fine too.

To come completely clean, though, I will say that if my wife has already updated to a major OS version and then a security patch comes out later, I’ll make sure that her devices get that patch. I feel like that’s just good looking out, and is rarely disruptive.

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Bonus Question: What was your favorite playground structure to play on as a kid?

I was always a big fan of the monkey bars. The classic ones, and the ones that formed a sort of dome structure, were always so fun to swing around on. I was also known to push my luck from time to time by getting on top of the monkey bars to crawl or walk across.

I suppose it’s no wonder that I still love to climb and swing around on things.

⏱️⏱️⏱️

My Question: It’s getting to be wintertime here in the Northeast, and I’ve been scheming about what I’m going to do to fill the short days and long nights. What are your winter objectives this year?

This summer, my objective was to rock climb the intimidating and remote Wallface big wall, located in the heart of the Adirondacks. Which I did! 🎉

But I don’t have one big, overarching goal that I’m set on yet for the winter. There are a couple of fuzzy goals that I’ll aim toward: do my first ice climbing lead and maybe complete the arduous Johannsen’s Last Call backcountry ski by the end of the season. But both of those things will depend on how confident I feel in my abilities, and will take significant time investments to build up skills.

I think I can do them, and I’m going to try, but I’m still considering if there’s something else that I can really sink my teeth into and keep me motivated throughout the cold days.

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Another fun one in the can. Now I’m watching the clock say that it’s pushing past 2 AM and it’s time to go have a long visit with my pillow. Thanks again for having me on!

Crashing Clockwise Podcasts

All this talk about creating custom GPTs has gotten me brainstorming. Here’s an AI idea that I’d love to use:

Take all the unread items in my RSS feed and summarize the contents as if presented in a lively podcast. Include a ‘Follow-up’ section in which topics that have been recently covered in previous episodes are described even more briefly as simply updates rather than re-explaining the whole topic.

Take that text transcript and generate an audio version of it with voices, music, etc. Add that episode to my personal RSS feed for this ‘RSS Digest Podcast’ that I’m subscribed to in my podcast app. Tag the summarized RSS articles as ‘RSS-Digest’ and mark them as read.

Could also be great for catching up on social media feeds.

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

1️⃣ Matt Birchler used an AI tool to dub one of his videos into French and back into English. The results are surprisingly solid. [🔗 @matt // isfeeling.social]

2️⃣ Perhaps my favorite edition of the Default Apps craze sweeping this corner of the blogosphere. [🔗 Keenan Schneider // gkeenan.co]

3️⃣ Lickable Slack. [🔗 @gavinmnelson // threads.net]

4️⃣ Aqueux has some of my all-time favorite desktop wallpapers, and Hector recently updated it with Sonoma versions. [🔗 hector.me] (Via Josh Ginter)

5️⃣ Getting after it after becoming a parent isn’t impossible. Just fucking hard. [🔗 brendan // semi-rad.com]

6️⃣ This aspect of Spatial Computing is going to be very cool indeed. [🔗 @firtoz // threads.net]

7️⃣ This is the first I’ve seen of this testimonial.to web service, but it looks slick for gathering up goodwill for a thing in both text and video form. Kudos to MacSparky on all the love for his projects! [🔗 testimonial.to]

Thanks for reading 7 Things. If you enjoyed these links or have something neat to share, please let me know. And a reminder 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