I welcome Meta/Instagram to the open social web (Fediverse). There’s a 0% chance I could get my parents, my sisters, or even my wife to sign up for Mastodon or Micro.blog, so they have a far more limited look into my life than when I was posting to Facebook. Even Instagram posts are a rarity from me these days. But I love writing for my blog and microblog, and I wish they could get updates from there alongside the rest of their social media.

If Instagram’s ActivityPub project (Threads?) comes to fruition, that reality would be one step closer. Part of the beauty of the social web is having more personal control over who you do and do not interact with online — control that I’m less than comfortable with the hosting platform using too heavy a hand on.

Preemptively blocking a Meta property from integrating with the open social web is over the line. And I think it would lead toward more of the status quo, rather than a more interoperable web.

So, yeah, I’m with Manton and Gruber on this one.

Update 2023-07-01: And here’s the chaser.

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

---

I hope you’ll allow me a moment of reflection on this hundredth issue of 7 Things This Week. It’s somewhat cliche to say “It doesn’t feel like it’s been that long”, but it’s also true. I’ve been putting out a 7 Things post every (read: most) Sundays for over two years now. It was one of the first project ideas that I had after starting HeyDingus. I was inspired by Kotkee.org, MacStories Weekly, and other link roundups. Sometimes I have tons to share while other times I’m scrambling to find cool stuff from my YouTube history and read-later archives. But I’ve loved the routine of putting something out each week and sharing little blurbs about what’s caught my interest.

My favorite 7 Things posts, as you can see below, are usually the themed ones and I’m hoping to do more of those this year. Occasionally, they provide me the structure I need to express emotional things that I otherwise struggle with.

Thanks for reading along each week. And thanks to the folks who have reached out after being featured here, or have just enjoyed the lists. It’s always a thrill to hear from y’all, including Martin Feld, Vincent Ritter, Jose Munoz, and more. 🧡

Here’s to the next 100! 🥳

---

1️⃣ 7 Things (Which Are My Most Played Songs) This Week [#7] // Music is so personal, so it took a little courage to put this out there.

2️⃣ 7 Things (Which Are My Most Used Emojis) This Week [#39] // I was stretching here but ended up really happy with this list!

3️⃣ 7 Things (Which Are Some Cool Shit From CES) This Week [#43] // I usually scoff at all the vaporware stuff at CES, but this time I got to look at it with fresh eyes as I searched for the truly weird gadgets.

4️⃣ 7 Things (Which Are Pics From My ADK Trip) This Week [#29] // This was a photoblog of the trip that ended up sealing the deal for my wife and I moving to the Adirondacks. It was a great trip and moving here has been one of our very best decisions.

5️⃣ 7 Things (Shared by ChatGPT) This Week [#86] // This was when I saw more potential in ChatGPT for me personally. It nailed listing out cool sites that I could have actually linked to in 7 Things, and it did it in seconds.

6️⃣ 7 Things (I’m Exploring in Earnest) This Week [#64] 👀 // I don’t do a lot of teases but this was fun because Blot got me excited about writing again and learning some new coding skills. I liked spilling the beans that some big changes were coming to the site.

7️⃣ 7 (Nice) Things This Week [#69] // For the laughs.

---

Take a Chance

---

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

7 Things Favorites

I’m beginning to think I was wrong to applaud Ford’s decision to adopt Tesla’s EV charger (AKA the North American Charging Standard, or NACS). Here’s Tim Stevens with a compelling argument in his Substack newsletter:

Congrats, because now we get to do it again. Until today, the explanation was “If you have a Tesla, it’s this. If you don’t, it’s this.” No more.

Not only did I not realize that the US had standardized around one charger style (save for Tesla), but it sounds like the Combined Charging System (CCS) was well on its way to be the global go-to as well. Improvements could have been made to bring its usability and speed closer to Tesla’s. Plus, I’m more and more loathe to an Elon Musk company gaining more power and influence.

But now that GM, Rivian, and others have adopted the Tesla charger as well, I fear the toothpaste will be very difficult to coax back into the tube.

A few more worthwhile quotes:

Today, I get to dust it off for the rather disheartening news that Ford is, seemingly, abandoning the single biggest global charging standard for its EVs, the standard that already defeated another major charging standard, the standard that finally, after years of confusion, aligned every major global EV manufacturer — well, except for one.

[…]

Ford went through great, great lengths to explain how the F-150 Lightning’s bidirectional Charge Station Pro could not only power your house in an outage, but could even offset your power usage, recharging at night then running your AC unit during the day.

Now, it’s moving to a standard that has no support for bidirectional charging.

Musk did make a vague promise that it’s coming “in the next two years, let’s say,” but I don’t need to tell you how reliable these sorts of timelines tend to be.

And now individual states are weighing in, too. Here’s Wes Davis for The Verge on the news that the states of Washington and Texas will require NACS plugs at new charging stations to get grant money:

It’s been a good week for Tesla’s NACS standard — Texas made a similar announcement on Tuesday, saying it would also start requiring electric vehicle charging companies to use the standard in order to receive federal dollars. The state’s DOT told Reuters via email that “the decision by Ford, GM, and now Rivian to adopt NACS changed requirements for Phase 1” of Texas’ rollout of a federally-funded electrification program.

Also on Tuesday, electric automaker and Tesla competitor Rivian announced its intention to adopt NACS for its future vehicles, which would give those cars access to the already-robust network of Tesla Supercharger stations throughout the country. Hyundai is also considering the standard, though it said it depends on customer interest, as Tesla’s chargers don’t charge at the higher rate supported by its own EV platform. Electric charging company BTC Power, which supplies DC and AC vehicle chargers to convenience stores and fleet operations, also announced its intention to support NACS.

The train has left the station and is gaining speed.

Linked

Here’s a look my our second exchange with Chris, as summarized by ChatGPT:

Chris appreciates Jarrod’s letter project for its writing challenges and language practice. He shares mixed emotions about leaving a long-term job for a new role in AR, emphasizing the perks of being the third employee and working remotely. Chris discusses his limited interest in computer games, his morning writing habits, and reflections on app subscriptions. He touches on his prolific fiction writing week and thoughts on WWDC, expressing anticipation for changes with a new work Mac. Jarrod, in response, apologizes for the delay due to personal events, discusses Chris’s language background, and shares excitement about Chris’s new venture. Jarrod praises Chris’s writing habits, inquires about his fiction preferences, and reflects on app pricing complexities. The letter concludes with Jarrod sharing their house-buying journey and expressing enthusiasm for the move.

Read the entire conversation →

---

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

PenPals

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

I totally mixed up my days and thought today was Sunday. Whoops!

---

1️⃣ I got a good chuckle out of these eight rules for loving a fulfilling life. Now I want nothing more than to become a Mirror-Person. [🔗 thoughtsbyaashiq.bearblog.dev]

2️⃣ Whoa, I did not expect to get so emotional watching this student pilot land her plane after the front wheel fell off. The professionalism and calm of the team that talked her through it got my eyes a little wet. 🥲 [⏯️ VASAviation - // youtube.com]

3️⃣ A Russian family survived in the Siberian wilderness for over 40 years without seeing another human. [🔗 Mike Dash // smithsonianmag.com]

4️⃣ Looks like we’ll be able to recreate the Home Screen widget column of old when iPadOS 17 drops! [🔗 Chance Miller // 9to5mac.com]

5️⃣ I very much enjoyed this long-winded yet spot-on metaphor of steaming services as wineries by Joe Steel. [🔗 Joe Steel // joe-steel.com]

6️⃣ This story of how Mick Jagger’s daughter got a pre-release original Macintosh has a couple of fun twists and turns. [🔗 folklore.org]

7️⃣ John Gruber hosted a great interview and chat with Christian Selig covering the Reddit fiasco and history of his Apollo app. [🔗 The Talk Show // overcast.fm]

---

Take a Chance

---

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

7 Things

I’ve gotta say, the ease and simplicity of VIP contacts in Apple Mail are working exactly as intended for me. And I don’t even use Apple Mail full-time!

My day-to-day mail client is Spark. Their feature set and design are exactly up my alley, and it’s — dare I say? — a perfect email client. Or at least it was until Spark started introducing features, philosophy, and design that doesn’t jive with me. But — and I commend Sparky highly for this — I can still use their previous macOS client and the latest iOS App Store version without issue. But that’s a story for another time. Today I’m very grateful for Apple Mail’s VIPs.

My wife and I are in the midst of purchasing our first house.¹ And, if I have my druthers, our last house. At this point, time efficiency is of the essence.² We want to be on top of when we need to sign a document or answer a question, which means enabling notifications for emails. But I do not want notifications for every email I receive over the next few weeks. I’ve had email notifications turned off for years, and it’s perhaps the single best piece-of-mind tip I could offer someone. To the rescue comes Apple Mail VIPs.

Enough fodder: VIP contacts give me what I want and need, which is notifications for specific contacts and no one else. Because I remain logged into my email accounts via the system email settings, all my messages are available in Apple Mail despite Spark being my default client on all platforms. With a few taps from Mail into someone’s contact card, I can add them as a VIP which gives them special privileges.

Any email received by a VIP — which, at this point, includes our realtor, loan officer, and lawyer — pops up a notification on my phone. I stay in the loop of everything going on and can keep my wife up-to-date as well. It has significantly cut down on the stress of staying in the know during this email-heavy phase. And once this process is complete (🤞), I can remove those folks from being VIPs just as easily.

So, if you’re in the midst of something time-sensitive and want to stay on top of important messages flying about, I can highly recommend using Mail VIPs even if you don’t use Apple Mail regularly.³

---

1. As in, our house inspection starts in a few hours, and contract versions are being bandied around like foam fingers at a baseball game.↩︎

2. And yet, here I am using valuable time to tell you about this killer feature. I think it’s that good.↩︎

3. It’s entirely possible that Spark offers similar functionality for per-contact notifications. But I knew Apple Mail did, and haven’t even looked elsewhere.↩︎

Tips

I could not have backed Stephen Hackett’s third annual Apple history-themed calendar any faster. Didn’t watch the video, didn’t need to read the details. I just scrolled to find the reward tier that includes the physical calendar and sticker packet and clicked purchase.¹

I think that speaks to the quality, value, and trust that Stephen has built over the past three years on Kickstarter (and many years as a good guy on the internet). I’ve loved my last two calendars — the first was hardware-themed, the second was software, and this third one will center on Apple services and retail — and I’m so happy to see them continue.

---

1. And I wasn’t the only one. It’s a couple of hours after launch and Stephen has already doubled his project goal of $5,000.↩︎

Linked

This isn’t terribly interesting, but perhaps noteworthy all the same: the @HeyDingus account on Mastodon now has more followers than the (inactive) @HeyDingusNet one does on Twitter. It took me two years to amass that many followers on Twitter, but only seven months for the Mastodon account to surpass it.

As far as engagement goes, I’d say they’re about the same. I never got many retweets or replies on that account on Twitter, and I still don’t now on Mastodon. That’s okay, since the Mastodon account exists mostly as a way for people to know when new stuff gets posted without having to check the site or subscribe via email or RSS.

Folks have been much more likely to engage with me about posts through my personal @jarrod account, where I do have way more interactions than I did on Twitter. But since that account is through Micro.blog rather than a typical Mastodon instance, I don’t know how many followers I’ve picked up there.

Blogging

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

---

1️⃣ JamesG made a neat little tool that analyzes the words used on a given webpage. 🔗 JamesG // linguist.link

2️⃣ Gui Rambo had his own desktop widget solution up his sleeve, and it looks incredible. macOS 14 might have gotten there first, but it sounds like he’s still shipping it for previous OS versions. Honestly, his custom ones look way cooler. [🔗 Guilherme Rambo // micro.blog]

3️⃣ I actually know about some of the winners of the Apple Design Awards this year! I’ve seen Universe, Duolingo, Flighty, Headspace, and MARVEL SNAP. There are really special apps here. [🔗 apple.com]

4️⃣ Zach Gage used ChatGPT to create a little script that reads his apps’ reviews, forwards on the good ones, tones down the negative ones to actionable bug fixes, and emails them to him. I’m so impressed at the creativity here, and he said it only took 10 minutes. [🔗 @helvetica // mastodon.gamedev.place]

5️⃣ Quinn Nelson’s entertaining recap of WWDC has been my favorite so far. He’s so good at weaving in his opinion and expert commentary alongside listing all the new features. (It’s long, so I recommend setting it to 1.5x if you can stand it.) [⏯️ Snazzy Labs // youtube.com]

6️⃣ I figured Apple’s intro video for the Vision Pro would just be a replay of what they showed in the keynote. It’s so much more! If you want a better sense of what it’ll be like to actually use the headset (sound design, interaction, UI elements) set aside nine minutes to watch this. [⏯️ Apple // youtube.com]

7️⃣ If you like The Beths, you’ve gotta check out their NPR Tiny Desk Concert. Even if you don’t like The Beths, you should still give it a watch. 😝 [🎵 NPR Music // youtube.com]

---

Take a Chance

---

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

7 Things

Okay, let’s do this one last time.

9to5Mac put out this iPadOS 17 overview video a couple of days ago, but I just got around to watching it today. Too many little changes and improvements to note here, so I recommend you throw it into 1.25x mode and watch all the way through:

Love how you can do this iOS 7 style super-thin font in iOS 17. Sometimes it looks good :)

1st Shot:

Got the new Object Capture APIs working and decided to clone my Ollie figurine 😃

Here’s a sped up version of a scan of the figurine. #WWDC #WWDC23

2nd Shot:

And here I’m showing the captured object in AR. Object Capture produces better results after scanning the object multiple times. I have scanned the figurine twice and the result seems pretty good to me 😃 #WWDC #WWDC23

Chaser:

Y’all I used the new Object Capture API to clone my girlfriend 😂 #WWDC #WWDC23

I’m fascinated to see what file format/approach we will need to use for our app icons in visionOS. Based on the visuals we can see in the promo material, it looks like we might be providing a segmented stack of images which the OS then magically makes “3D”. Though I suppose a custom 3D format could also be possible but seems like that would lead to less consistency between apps.

I’m convinced that App Shortcuts in Spotlight are the sleeper killer feature this year. This is basically spotlight extensions for third parties. I really hope to see third party apps take advantage of these.

Quoting @supercgeek: https://mas.to/@supercgeek/110515172202480143 #retoot

While the battery pack will need a charging indicator, it’s notable that there are two round holes of different sizes. One will be an LED, but it does raise the question of the purpose of the other.

One possibility is, as Rui suggests, that you could use a SIM removal tool to pop out the connector — and then plug it into a spare battery pack.

If you’re an iOS or macOS user, you may be familiar with VPN apps, which easily help you connect to a VPN on your devices. However, Apple TV lacks this feature, forcing users to set up a VPN directly in their router. But starting with tvOS 17, Apple will finally allow developers to release VPN apps in the Apple TV App Store.

wow, copying text from images got even better. now it can maintain the formatting of tables.
This, together with clipboard continuity, are one of the best features of the Apple ecosystem. I used them multiple times a day!

#WWDC23

I second this sentiment. Serenity Caldwell’s roundups were super nice. As a non-developer, it made the sessions feel more inviting and gave me hints at what kinds of features might be coming in third-party apps.

Seems like there’s a new app in Utilities in macOS Sonoma: Print Center, version 1.0.

I wonder if the previous Print Jobs view was written in some old archaic framework and they just decided to modernize it.

Nothing special, just shows your print job queue.

#WWDC #macOSSonoma

They didn’t talk about it much in sessions, but it seems like visionOS is going to be doing vector rendering on text and UI so that you can get up close with app windows and still see sharp detail. This is going to prove slightly problematic for apps with rendering that bakes text or symbols into images, as they’ll only get bitmap scaling and blur when blown up. Very curious to see what issues that might highlight in my own apps

#WWDC23

Congratulations and thank you to all the teams at Apple that not only made this week possible, but exciting from start to finish.

WWDC