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

1️⃣ MacRumors has a handy tip for turning off annoying alarms on a family member’s phone. [Link - Tim Hardwick // macrumors.com]

2️⃣ It’s hard to imagine algae powering our primary devices, but for the secondary gadgets doing simple things around the home, apparently, it could be a very sustainable power source! [Link - James Vincent // theverge.com]

3️⃣ What a neat idea to have a bunch of animators collaborate on a project where they all get to animate a ball in their own style. I found it to be mesmerizing. [Link - Nathan Boey // vimeo.com]

4️⃣ I’m all in favor of Parker’s idea of expanding the special edition Watch band designs to iPhone cases. Let more of Apple’s customers partake in the fun! [Link - Parker Ortolani // parkerortolani.substack.com]

5️⃣ This is a very cool project that removes a ton of friction from creating a website. It can be done from a paper notebook! Plus it appears to have some impressive customization options. [Link - Ben Stokes // daily.tinyprojects.dev]

6️⃣ Apple’s AR Easter eggs are getting more complex as time moves on. For tomorrow’s event, they’ve created a pack of trading cards that get randomly assigned on each load. [Link - Oliver Haslam // imore.com]

7️⃣ I didn’t expect to see anything official about the new Developer Center at Apple Park until the keynote tomorrow at the earliest. But it looks like tours kicked off today, which would explain why so many media and developers that I follow got out to California early. The space looks awesome, and I’m sure we’ll be seeing more from it this week and in the years to come. [Link - Joe Rossignol // macrumors.com]

Thanks for reading 7 Things! If you enjoyed these links or have something neat to share, please hit me up on Twitter or send me an email!

7 Things

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

1️⃣ Although she couldn’t show a lot, this behind-the-scenes of the Apple Fitness+ studio that iJustine did was pretty cool. It looks just as clean and impressive as I expected. [Link - iJustine // youtube.com]

2️⃣ Here’s a super interesting video about Coltrane’s Giant Steps. This way of thinking about musical keys as different languages is pretty apt and explains why I was so bad at mastering them. [Link - Vox // youtube.com]

3️⃣ Some truly impressive shortcuts here from participants in the latest MacStories event. I’d say Automation April was a resounding success. I can’t wait for next year! [Link - John Voorhees // macstories.net]

4️⃣ Some people might find these pop-up booths for Apple TV+ shows corny, but I think they’re pretty neat! Definitely a little treat for fans of the shows, and being located in LA doesn’t hurt. [Link - Filipe Espósito // 9to5mac.com]

5️⃣ For such an important electric vehicle, I’m glad to see the overwhelmingly positive reception for the Ford F-150 Lightning. [Link - Andrew J. Hawkins // theverge.com]

6️⃣ “In addition to all of that, Sgr A is in our own galaxy, which makes it harder to see from Earth. Observing this black hole means peering through the galactic plane of the Milky Way — and all of the gaseous material in between us and the black hole. That provides a lot of interference that the scientists had to work around.” Science is so cool! [Link - Loren Grush // theverge.com]

7️⃣ I’m glad Tony Fadell has stepped back into the spotlight with the release of his book. He’s wicked smart and so straightforward in his communication. This interview of him by Nilay Patel on Decoder is great. One of the best episodes yet. [Link - Nilay Patel & Tony Fadell // overcast.fm]

Thanks for reading 7 Things! If you enjoyed these links or have something neat to share, please hit me up on Twitter or send me an email!

7 Things

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

1️⃣ Alto’s Adventure. Challenging yet calming.

2️⃣ Crossy Road. I loved Frogger on GameBoy, and this is the next best thing.

3️⃣ Head’s Up. Best party game (and can be played over FaceTime with SharePlay!).

4️⃣ Knotwords. My newest favorite.

5️⃣ Letterpress. And oldie but goodie, so beautiful.

6️⃣ SudoKoi. The best sudoku app, in my opinion. It’s great on iPad with an Apple Pencil.

7️⃣ GamePigeon. So many great games that can be played over Messages.

Thanks for reading 7 Things! If you enjoyed these links or have something neat to share, please hit me up on Twitter or send me an email!

7 Things Favorites Apps

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

1️⃣ Whoa. [Link - @kevinbparry // twitter.com]

2️⃣ A clever solution for a problem. It’s silly that there isn’t a preference for disabling Universal Links per app or in general. [Link - Jeff Johnson // lapcatsoftware.com]

3️⃣ You can hear Matt Herbst talk with Mark Gurman about the possibility of unions at Apple Retail. It’s kinda surreal that after two decades of Apple employees being relatively absent from the public discussion, Matt, who trained me at the Apple Store, has broken that barrier. [Link - Mark Gurman & Matt Herbst // twitter.com]

4️⃣ An incredibly savvy marketing campaign for refurbished devices using AirDrop at Apple Stores. [Link - Sami Fathi // macrumors.com]

5️⃣ I’m looking forward to getting my hands on this book. [Link - José Adorno // 9to5mac.com]

6️⃣ I’ve been having a ton of fun trying Knotwords, a new crossword-like word game. [Link - John Voorhees // macstories.net]

7️⃣ I’ve listened in on a few Twitter Spaces, and I guess I like them for small conversations. I actually didn’t mind Fleets either. But I’m not sold on Twitter Communities. I just can’t get over the core principle that tweets are meant to be for anyone to see. [Link - Greg Morris // gregmorris.co.uk]

Thanks for reading 7 Things! If you enjoyed these links or have something neat to share, please hit me up on Twitter or send me an email!

7 Things

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

1️⃣ Clove Hitch. Fantastic for securing the rope to a fixed point, and extra handy because it’s easily adjusted. A must-know for anchoring yourself, but also handy in day-to-day life. I use it to secure my dog with his leash. [Link - animatedknots.com]

2️⃣ Bowline. Ostensibly for boating, as the name might tell you, but good anytime you need a fixed loop at the end of a rope. I used to practice tying this one-handed in Boy Scouts and now use it for building climbing anchors. [Link - animatedknots.com]

3️⃣ Alpine Butterfly Loop. I think this knot is so neat because it lets you put a loop anywhere you want in a line of rope without disrupting its integrity or direction. [Link - animatedknots.com]

4️⃣ Munter Mule Overhand. You’ll probably only ever use this as a backup or an emergency while climbing, but it’s pretty handy to know. You can replicate a belay/rappel device using this knot, and even lock it off in case you need to perform a rescue. [Link - animatedknots.com]

5️⃣ Figure 8 Follow Through. The classic. Easy to tie and untie, and it creates a fixed loop. Most often used for tying directly into a climbing rope. [Link - animatedknots.com]

6️⃣ Klemheist. My favorite friction hitch because it’s so easy to arrange, and works almost as well as Prusik in most situations. If you need a mobile grab point in the rope, this is a good one to learn. [Link - animatedknots.com]

7️⃣ Double Alpine Butterfly Loop. I actually just found this knot tonight, but it looks handy for hooking into two anchors from one knot. And I’m a sucker for Alpine Butterflies. [Link - animatedknots.com]

Thanks for reading 7 Things! If you enjoyed these links or have something neat to share, please hit me up on Twitter or send me an email!

7 Things

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

1️⃣ This teacher stopped using grades to evaluate their students’ work and instead gave expanded feedback and the opportunity to revise. Their university-mandated grade comes from a portfolio of their revised work at the end of the semester. I think this is so smart. If the goal of a class is to have a student learn and master the material, Insee the advantage for their grade to reflect where they ended the journey, and not an average from each of the assignments. [Link - Elisabeth Gruner // theconversation.com]

2️⃣ Netflix switched to using the latest version of the standard video player on tvOS. More of this, please! [Link - José Adorno // 9to5mac.com]

3️⃣ I lost a good 45 minutes re-learning things from this Wikipedia page of common misconceptions. One of many things I learned: “Coffee, tea, diet cola, and other drinks containing caffeine are not dehydrating, and in fact have hydration profiles indistinguishable from that of water.” [Link - wikipedia.com]

I’ve been studying up on rope management for rock climbing in anticipation of climbs drying out here soon. So here are a few things I’ve found helpful.

4️⃣ I’m a little over halfway through The Trad Climber’s Bible by John Long and Peter Croft. They use an interesting way of conveying tips and best practices through anecdotes of when these two old school climbers had to learn them for themselves back when they were pioneering great climbs in North America. [Link - John Long, Peter Croft // goodreads.com]

5️⃣ This is a good primer on building anchors for multi-pitch trad climbing. I geek out on this stuff and can recommend the whole series of videos. [Link - Climbing Tech Tips // youtube.com]

6️⃣ Here’s an efficient method for setting and using rappel anchors on a multi-pitch climb. [Link - Chillino Rock Climbing // youtube.com]

7️⃣ And a good tutorial on how to pass a knot when rappeling if there’s a bad section in your rope or you’ve tied multiple ropes together to extend their reach down the rock. [Link - Ryan Tilley // youtube.com]

Thanks for reading 7 Things! If you enjoyed these links or have something neat to share, please hit me up on Twitter or send me an email!

7 Things

A weekly list of things I found interesting, posted on Sundays.¹ Sometimes themed, often not.

1️⃣ The Playdate is soon to be in the hands of its first customers, and some media folks got a first look at the innovative handheld console. Panic, the company behind the little device, put together a thread of some of the first looks. Man does it look fun! [Link - @playdate // twitter.com]

2️⃣ The Find My network is making reselling AirPods tricky when the original customer doesn’t remove them from their iCloud account first. [Link - Caroline Haskins // businessinsider.com]

3️⃣ I love seeing outdoor spaces designed with accessibility in mind. The care that goes into creating and servicing a park where anyone — in this case even someone who uses a motorized wheelchair — can have a solo backcountry expertise, warms my heart. [Link - Jason Thurston // adirondackexperience.com]

4️⃣ The Verge scored an interview with a production designer for the show Severance. It’s a fascinating look into the thought behind the weird office the “Innies” live in. [Link - Andrew Webster // theverge.com]

5️⃣ Severance captured my interest like nothing else on television has for some time. It’s utterly fantastic, and so creepy. This interview with director Ben Stiller provides neat insight into the casting and character development. I’ll be thinking about this show for the next year until season two comes out! [Link - Alan Sepinwall // rollingstone.com]

6️⃣ I got a good chuckle out of this intro mashup of The Office and Severance. [Link - Magoob Toys // youtube.com]

7️⃣ And because I guess I’m on a Severance tear, this tweet thread is a neat look at how they pull off the captivating elevator transition with some film magic. [Link - @vashikoo // twitter.com]

Thanks for reading 7 Things! If you enjoyed these links or have something neat to share, please hit me up on Twitter or send me an email!

7 Things

Piper Sandler, Inc.:

• For payment apps, Apple Pay ranked first, partly due to 87% of teens in the survey saying they have an iPhone
• PYPL’s Venmo ranked No. 2 (with the PayPal app No. 4) behind Apple Pay among payment apps used in the last month while SQ’s Cash App ranked No. 3

Teen culture becomes mainstream culture, and this latest survey shows that US teens have flocked to Apple Cash as their peer-to-peer payment method of choice. I was surprised by the news, but shouldn’t have been. A vast majority of teens have iPhones, and Apple Cash is right there in the built-in messaging app. The default is a hell of a thing.

There are lots more interesting findings in the rest of the report.

Go to the linked site (Piper Sandler, Inc. // pipersandler.com) →

Linked

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

1️⃣ I was going to do a post like this, checking to see which iOS 15 features were still MIA, but José Adorno beat me to it. It looks like everything announced has shipped! [Link - José Adorno // 9to5mac.com]

2️⃣ A staggering animation by the folks at NASA shows the dramatic increase in temperature on Earth over the last 150 years. [Link - @kirstinferguson // twitter.com]

3️⃣ This older piece by Nilay Patel about giving his parent a Chromebook (rather than an iPad or traditional laptop) got me thinking. Is the future the web, not apps? Which is more beneficial for a non-nerd to learn? [Link - Nilay Patel // theverge.com]

4️⃣ This new iOS app lets you scan and convert braille to text. Or copy and paste the braille itself. Very cool. [Link - @azzoor // twitter.com]

5️⃣ It looks to me as though Apple went all-in on using Shortcuts to build their April Fools’ Day game this year. Michael Potuck has the deets. [Link - Michael Potuck // 9to5mac.com]

6️⃣ I got the “Grace Kelly” song stuck in my head yesterday, so I fell back down the rabbit hole on its TikTok challenge. I could listen to these compilations all day. [Link - youtube.com]

7️⃣ I spent way too much time today reading about The Mighty Mountain Megamarathon, where folks try for the best time in climbing all 55 of the Colorado 14ers. This webpage looks like a time capsule from the year 2000 but is packed with the rules, myths and lore, and stats from its author, Cave Dog. [Link - Cave Dog // thedogteam.com]

Thanks for reading 7 Things! If you enjoyed these links or have something neat to share, please hit me up on Twitter or send me an email!

7 Things

I whipped out Pixelmator Pro over the last couple of weeks to make some new shirts that I really like. They’re all Classic Mac-inspired, using the hues from the colorful Apple logo. Those with an eye for typefaces will recognize Chicago used on the ⌘Q and ’84 shirts, and Ted Lasso fans might recall the Believe phrase from the series.

Each is available in a few different colors, and the shirts that Cotton Bureau uses are top-notch. Very soft and fits just right.

Along with these three fresh designs, there is a handful more to see at my storefront. Every purchase helps me out with the cost of keeping this site up, so if you buy one, I thank you for the support! I hope you enjoy them as much as I do.

Merch