On All Consuming this week, Noah and Adam reviewed Vacation sunscreen. While I can’t personally speak to its quality, I do love the website. It’s retro in an entertaining way — matching the parent company, Poolsuite, aesthetic. Check it out even if you have no interest in purchasing unknown sunscreen on the internet.
I thought that Myke and Jason had a really well-considered conversation on Upgrade regarding the ramifications that Apple could face by both playing chicken with regulators on App Store policies and not giving ground to developer wishes. The legislation and sideloading discussion begins about 50 minutes into the episode.
This app demo blows my socks off! Just by scanning a pile of Lego bricks with your phone, you can get tons of ideas of what can be built with them. The app spits out instructions and can guide you on finding the correct bricks within the pile. Camera and machine learning technology have come a long way to be possible at such speed on a mobile device. While I don’t have lego bricks to test it with, I wish that I did!
I came across another fun project this week: iPod.js, made by Tanner Villarete. If you’re nostalgic for using an iPod, this website (when accessed from your phone) can get you pretty close to that sweet music-specific experience. Log in with your Apple Music or Spotify account, and you’re off to the races navigating through the iPod menus to select a playlist, album, artist, or song from your library. And don’t miss the fully-functional Brick game, which I used to play for hours on end. (See also: this website by Zane Kleinberg for Dashboard nostalgia.)
Thanks for reading! If you found these things interesting too, or have something exciting to share, please drop me a line on Twitter!
When I opened Fitness+ on an Apple TV running the tvOS 15 beta, I noticed that Apple has leaned into the episodic nature of its workouts by adding episode numbers for each workout video. This type of metadata wasn’t visible before, but I think it makes sense as they branch out into special series, such as with guest trainers. It also makes it easier to describe an episode that you particularly enjoy now that it has an identifier.
It appears the episode numbering format is by Trainer/Workout type. For example, looks like trainer Bakari has made 34 High-intensity interval training (HIIT) workouts so far.
If you ask me, this update suggests that every episode will be accessible in perpetuity. I had wondered if older workouts would eventually get phased out in favor of newer ones. But now, it would be strange to scroll back and have episodes stop before reaching #1.
At first, I thought that this would make the Fitness+ library get unwieldy. However, I’d guess that most users watch the most recent videos anyway, and only scroll back if they want more of a particular workout. And if Netflix can get away with its massive library of video content, I suppose Apple shouldn’t mind that its back catalog grows ever larger. Plus, if you prefer a specific trainer or workout type, you won’t have to worry that your favorite episodes will disappear.
The amount of ads embedded inside Apple News is unhinged, and it’s not uncommon for any 5-minute article to have 5-6 inline ads between every third paragraph, ranging from advertisements for horrifying skin conditions to embedded videos that autoplay while I’m reading. And with no reader view or effective way to block this content, the ads can go a long way towards ruining the experience.
I wanted to like News+, and still hop in there for the occasional article or mindless scroll, but the ads situation is grating. It’s a surprising dissonance coming from the company who is dead-set on disrupting the digital adverting industry. If it wasn’t included in the Apple One bundle, I wouldn’t renew News+.
On the other hand, if they were revamp the service and introduce a fully ad-free tier (which was also somehow fair to publishers), I could see myself gravitating to Apple News to read outside of the usual sources I get via RSS.
This would likely need to be at a higher price than the standard $9.99/month that News+ costs on its own right now. Keeping track of readership so that publishers get paid appropriately despite removing ads would be a big undertaking, but couldn’t be that different from what YouTube does for its YouTube Premium service.
To get a more favorable view of Apple News+, check out the full article on the BasicAppleGuy blog.
TL;DR: While I commend Big Mail for going big (heh) on rethinking email, a few missing basic features, bugs, and a realization that I’m more of an email traditionalist keeps me from sticking with it.
I’ve long said that email is my love language. I take pride in crafting valuable messages to people, in and out of the workplace. If you send me an email, you can rest assured that you’ll get a thoughtful response. So as an email aficionado, it should come as no surprise that I’ve tried all the high-profile email clients throughout the years:
The hype for Big Mail, by The Not So Big Company, has been real. Flashy promo videos, a well-designed website, and pre-orders helped to raise its visibility well before launch. I, like many others, was hopeful for the promise of Big Mail: a rethink of email management — brought to the masses by HEY — but in a more familiar package.
Here are a few of the headline features.
Bouncer - Approve or deny senders the first time they email you. Approved senders get categorized automatically, ignored get hidden forever.
Automatic Categorization Using Scenes - Nearly every email can be categorized into Conversation, Notifications, Newsletters, or Purchases. Big Mail would sort them for you.
The Latest - Where new email surfaces, rather than an inbox. Once read, the email disappears from The Latest but sticks around in its Scene.
Privacy - Blocking those tracking pixels that have come under fire lately.
Setting up Big Mail
I’ve been using Big Mail as my primary email client for the past week, and I have some thoughts about what it’s like to make the switch. I removed Spark from all my Home Screens and docks and replaced them with Big Mail. I was only comfortable with this trial because Big Mail doesn’t do anything funny with your messages. Everything stays between your email provider’s server and your device. Big Mail just uses pseudo messages within a Big Mail folder to sync data and work its magic. If I didn’t want to keep using Big Mail after the two-week trial, I could easily switch back to another client. Having just recently made a transition away from HEY, I was glad for the non-destructive nature of Big Mail.
The sign-up process, I’ll admit, was a little confusing. I’d pre-ordered the free app, but I was greeted with a subscription screen upon opening it for the first time. I’d known this was a paid email service that came with a two-week free trial. Though I’m very familiar with subscription sign-ups, the welcome screen gave me pause. I wasn’t sure if I would be charged right away or if the free trial would kick in. Apple apparently also took issue with the subscription screen, which led to the app’s delayed launch, and I think I see why.
After a reasonably quick initial sync, I was up and running. I had a few emails that needed to be approved in the Bouncer. First, I took a look in the settings area — a little bare, which was especially surprising coming from Spark’s stuffed full settings screens.
Spark (left) has far more options in its settings than Big Mail (right). ⌘
Big Mail delivered on its guarantee to feel native to the operating system. With its large headings, SF Symbols, standard context menus, and following the layout guidelines for each platform, Big Mail looks at home on iOS, iPadOS, and macOS.
Sorting my existing emails into Big Mail’s scenes was simple. I could move an individual message or always sort a sender into a specific category, which I’d recommend. While not difficult to change afterward, I wish that I was given an option of where to sort that sender on approval in the Bouncer. I guess the developer wants the app to have the opportunity to do auto-sorting, but that was inaccurate enough that a choice upon approval would be helpful.
Since Big Mail works like most any other client, there was very little else to set up. So I made sure Glancing (marking messages as read upon a slow scroll by them) was turned on and adjusted the order in which items appeared in The Latest. After that, I waited for more messages to come in.
Using Big Mail day-to-day
Having gone through an email makeover last year when I tried out HEY, I thought I knew what I was in for with Big Mail. But while HEY was weird and quirky in ways that made sense, I’ve found Big Mail to be a mixed bag of delightful touches and frustrating omissions.
One thing I appreciated about HEY and now enjoy in Big Mail is partitioning off newsletter-type messages. Big Mail promised a little extra design polish for these messages to make them look more like articles in a read-later app, and I think it works. Newsletters (along with Notifications and Purchases) get a nice sidebar that takes on identity from the email content. I like it. Some messages don’t get the formatting exactly right, but I didn’t find the occasional pinch and zoom needed to be annoying.
A clean layout for newsletters, purchases, and notifications makes reading in Big Mail a breeze. ⌘
Another feature somewhat lifted from HEY’s playbook is eschewing the act of archiving messages. In Big Mail, once a message is read, it leaves The Latest and lives forever within its Scene. No need to archive because it’s (kind of) done for you. Except that Big Mail doesn’t archive the messages. Since it reads messages from specific folders, it leaves every message in the canonical inbox. When I opened Spark to see what was happening to the messages, there they were — marked as read but living in the inbox.1
I’ll acknowledge that the Conversation scene is quite nice. I had a few important messages that I was waiting for, and having all emails that involve a back-and-forth between recipients always be in the Conversations tab made it simple to keep up with them. But, weirdly, all the previous messages sorted into Conversations display my name rather than the person I was conversing with, which made them difficult to differentiate from each other. This brings me to the bugs I’ve experienced.
A buggy 1.0
I’ve experienced other strange bugs that taken alone would not be a big deal. I’m willing to overlook a few bugs knowing that writing an email app is a significant undertaking. But some of these bugs I have never experienced in any other app and make Big Mail feel as though it is built on a house of cards ready to tumble.
A notifications bug has become a sticking point for me. I typically leave email notifications off but like to have a badge display the number of new messages in my inbox. Unfortunately, that differentiation isn’t currently available, so I left notifications turned off, and yet a few days into the trial, I started getting message notifications on my lock screen. Though I don’t recall doing so, I had permitted Big Mail to send notifications in the Settings apps, but I still had notifications set to “None” within Big Mail itself.
If notifications are set to “none,” why am I still getting them? ⌘
I also regularly see empty alerts upon opening the app. Not being able to read them, I have no idea of what I’m supposed to be aware. I assume it’s trying to let me know of a syncing issue because I’ve seen plenty of those. Sadly, the Mac app or usually doesn’t get the memo about messages I’ve already passed through the Bouncer on my iPhone.
I swear I’ve approved a bunch of newsletters through the Bouncer, but my Mac doesn’t realize it. ⌘
When composing a reply, I have had the large heading-style subject follow my scroll down the page, obscuring the previous messages I’m trying to read.
And, perhaps most concerning, is the speed at which messages are delivered. It’s not uncommon for messages to take dozens of minutes to appear in The Latest or Bouncer even though they’ve been received without issue in Spark or Apple Mail. Since Big Mail is purportedly using only on-device processing and no third-party servers, I’m not sure what’s delaying those messages.
It’s good to keep in mind that the app has only been released to the public for about a week now, and I’m sure that the developer will iron out many of these bugs over time. But in the meantime, it gives me a nagging feeling that I can’t trust my email client — and email is supposed to be the most reliable form of online messaging around.
Some additional pros and cons
Pros
Native design.
Quick navigation.
Scenes, while there are many, make sense to how I mentally categorize messages.
I like “The Latest” both as a separate tab and a section within each Scene. But, to take advantage of the “Glancing” feature (mark as read while scrolling), you need to go down to the more traditional list of messages which isn’t apparent.
Attachments tab for each message thread to aggregate any attachments sent within that conversation. There’s also a global Attachments tab.
Cons
Some sidebar selections automatically close the sidebar, while others keep it open. That inconsistency is jarring.
I’d prefer that everything that gets marked as read also gets moved to the archive. This is important because, otherwise, everything gets left in the inbox. If I need to check from a web interface or just want to use a feature of another email app, that will be overwhelming.
Likewise, Big Mail would be much more useful if it organized my archived email using Scenes in addition to what’s in the inbox.
No Quick Actions from the Home Screen.
No Shortcuts support.
No Widgets.
Not available to set as a default mail app on iPhone and iPad. Apple introduced this integration in last year’s operating systems, and I’m flabbergasted that this wasn’t included in the 1.0 release of Big Mail. The result is that if I tap on an email address outside of Big Mail, I’m brought to Spark’s composing interface instead.
It seems like the app is always trying to catch up on syncing. Perhaps with time, more frequent background updates will kick in, but right now, it needs to sync every time I open the app.
My takeaway
It will probably come as no surprise that I don’t plan to stick with Big Mail after the trial period. But that’s not to say that trying it out has been a waste. On the contrary, I’ve learned a lot about how I prefer to manage email while I’ve bumped against Big Mail’s features and limitations.
For years now, I’ve been an email completionist. That is to say that I try to get to “inbox zero” as quickly as possible. While not easy, it makes me feel good not to keep people waiting on a response or keep irrelevant messages taking up space in my inbox and mind. Spark has been my trusty tool for getting to inbox zero for several years. With its swipe gestures, customizable keyboard shortcuts, and integrations with other apps (like my task manager), I can triage messages with surprising speed in Readle’s app. However, Big Mail is quick in a different way. Once the message is read, it assumes that it is no longer relevant. Every message is still accessible, but I can’t use the client as a productively layer in the way that I can with Spark.2 And I don’t get the same satisfaction from “completing” an email in Big Mail.
I’ve also realized that I get too many messages in general. While the newsletter formatting is pleasant in Big Mail, it can feel like organizing a junk drawer. And you should never organize anything that you should discard. I’d sooner unsubscribe or mark as spam with aplomb than need to glance through dozens of marketing messages, no matter how nicely they’re formatted, or easily they get marked as read.
So, I’m headed back to my trusty Spark and prolific use of archiving, snoozing, flagging, reminders, and sending as a task to Things. And I won’t need to pay a monthly subscription for my email client, which in the case of Big Mail is up to $10/month.3 But I wish Big Mail the best of luck, and I’ll be keeping an eye on how the developer responds to feedback. I have high hopes, even if it’s not for me.
It’s worth noting that in the 1.1 release, the developer did add archiving support, as well as reading messages from the archive folder, but by default, every message continues to live in the inbox. If you archive an email in Big Mail, it’s no longer sorted into its Scene. ↩︎
I recently came across an interesting article about using email as a to-do list and productively layer. While this example features the Superhuman app, I find that I can do everything I need with Spark’s integrations and keyboard shortcuts. ↩︎
If some of the features of Big Mail, and HEY before it, appeal to you my experience has you second-guessing, I recommend reading this article on Just Use Email. It tells how to set up similar benefits using the most vanilla of email clients: Apple Mail. ↩︎
After the idea floated by earlier this year on his Connected podcast, Stephen Hackett (who also writes 512 Pixels) has created a custom calendar for 2022 featuring Apple’s hardware and significant dates in Apple’s history.
The project launched today on Kickstarter, and has already hit its goal. I thought it was a great idea when I heard it on Connected, and I’m so glad that Stephen followed through. It’s fully on brand for him.
Here’s a bit of the description from the Kickstarter page:
I love sharing my knowledge in this field, and wanted to do so in a practical way, so I have designed a custom 2022 calendar. Each calendar measures 20 inches by 13 inches when it’s hanging on your wall with a simple thumbtack or pin. The top features my own product photography, while each month highlights some of Apple’s hardware announcements over the years.
Check out the video there as well, for a peek at the calendar’s design. I’ve backed it, and will eagerly await its arrival (estimated for November).
But that last point, that all in-app subscriptions are listed in an obvious location, where it’s easy to unsubscribe, and you get email notifications before every renewal, is the singular reason why I think Apple should not — and should not be forced to — allow in-app purchases and especially subscriptions via developers’ own payment systems. What I endorse is allowing apps to direct users to the web to make purchases and subscriptions. In-app purchases vs. out-app purchases. Let Apple earn its cut by showing that in-app purchases have higher conversions.
For the past few weeks, while I’ve been ruminating on how Apple should adapt their in-app purchase guidelines, I’ve been struggling with this point. Side-by-side, customers will likely choose the lower-cost item. But in apps, where people are now used to the protections of one subscription center, one place for refunds, and the security of purchasing through your Apple ID, I think John’s suggestion is a good compromise. Apple’s in-app purchase model while in apps or let developers link to the open web for another purchase method.
Customers should be used to the higher relative threat of purchasing on the web, and therefore take appropriate precautions before hitting “Buy.” Does this still give an advantage to Apple? Sure, but I think it’s an appropriate compromise.
TL;DR: Your Apple Watch’s Stand ring is missing an hour. Maybe you really did stand up for at least a minute but the Apple Watch didn’t catch it, or maybe you’re cheating the system. Who am I to judge? Either way, just download and run this shortcut to fill in the hour to #CloseYourRings.
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If you’re anything like me, you like to keep up streaks. Whether it’s writing regularly, keeping up with a workout routine, drinking enough water, or closing Apple Watch fitness activity rings, something is compelling about not breaking a stretch of good habits. That’s why when my Apple Watch doesn’t accurately track my standing hours, it can be infuriating.
When your watch doesn’t accurately track the hours during which you stood — or you just can’t bear to see your streak go broken — the shortcut below can help.
Some background on the Activity Rings
The Apple Watch, since the beginning, has had the concept of activity rings that fill throughout the day. They are based on three goals: general movement counted by calories burned, exercise minutes, and stand hours. The first two metrics are pretty straightforward to earn. If you move around, you’ll burn calories and fill the red ring. More if your heart rate is elevated, less if simply moving about your day. Then if you start a workout, or the watch detects that your heart rate and movement is at or above that of a brisk walk, you’ll earn exercise minutes toward the recommended 30 minutes per day, which fills the green ring.
The blue ring, in my experience, can be the hardest to fill. It sounds easy enough; just stand up for at least one minute in each of 12 differnt hours throughout the day. Surely I do that without thinking. Well, it turns out that I do often need that extra prompting to get up. I use it as an opportunity to fill my water bottle or use the bathroom after an hour of sitting.
Other times (such as this very evening), my watch will prompt me with the “Time to Stand!” notification even though I had been standing for the entire hour. There seems to be something about how it expects a wrist to be held that if you don’t drop your wrist down by your side, the watch can miss real standing time.
The worst time to discover that you’re missing stand hours that you should have earned is after 11 pm when you can no longer make up for lost time. If the watch counted 11 or fewer hours, you’re shit out of luck.
Except not, with the utility of Shortcuts!
Shortcuts and the Heath app to the rescue
Fortunately, the database of health information stored within the Health app is accessible and writable by Shortcuts. I’ve created a Stand Goal Cheater shortcut that lets me quickly log a stand hour for ones that the watch missed. And it can be done with just one action! My implementation adds some accountability which makes it three steps long. Allow me to walk you through them.
Because I don’t want to use this shortcut to cheat on my fitness and activity goals, I start with a menu prompt, verifying that I did walk around during the hour I’m about to log. Suppose I answer Yes!, the shortcut proceeds. If I respond No, it reminds me to be honest with myself and ends the shortcut.
Presuming I did stand, the key is the Log Workout action. I use it to log a walking workout for a specific time. Within the Show More disclosure, I added “Today” and an Ask Each Time variable for the date. The duration is set for 1 minute, and no calories or distance is recorded.
When this shortcut is run (which is usually from Spotlight search for me), I’m presented with the menu and then the date prompt, which accepts natural language input. Since “Today” is set within the shortcut, all I need to type is the hour for which I want a stand hour recorded (e.g., “10 pm”). I hit Done, and then the workout is saved to the Health app.
Just type the hour you want to record, and you’re all set! ⌘
It can take some time for the Apple Watch to realize that data was manually added and reflect the additional stand hour in the rings, but it does always get there. So don’t worry if it crosses past midnight, the rings will catch up, and any relevant awards will be awarded. You can even overwrite the “Today” text to record a workout for days further in the past.
If you make a mistake on an entry, just head to the Health app to correct it. In Browse, search for the Workouts section, and then scroll to the bottom of the page. Hit Show All Data and then swipe left on the entry to delete the workout and its data.
Mistakes are easy to delete from the Health app. ⌘
A few other tips
There are some other ways to “game” the stand ring without using the Shortcuts app.
Wrist position - As I mentioned above, the watch can be particular about how it expects a wrist to be held while standing. I have found that dropping my hand to my side, fingers pointed down, and slowly swinging it forward and back will convince the watch that I’m moving around. You can test this by trying it while sitting — just drop your wrist for a minute and see the hour get counted. It’s also helpful to remember when you are specifically trying to earn standing credit. If you’re holding something up with your watch hand, it may not get counted.
Add in Health directly - Seeing as this shortcut relies on writing to the Health app, you can write data within the Health manually. Although a section for Stand Hours exists, you can’t add there, only delete existing data. Instead, you still need to rely on the Workout section, and it works the same as the Shortcut described above. Here are the steps to get you there:
Go to Health app → Browse → Activity → Workouts
Hit Add Date (top right-hand corner)
Choose an Activity Type (I usually go with walking)
Adding Calories and Distance is optional
Ensure the start and end times are (1) during an hour that you missed earning a standing hour and (2) at least one minute apart.
Hit Add to finish recording the workout
Change Stand Goal - Introduced last year in watchOS 7, you can change the number of hours needed to fill your ring and maintain your streak. Adjusting is beneficial when you’re having a rest day or can’t catch up with the number of hours remaining in a day. Here’s how to do it:
On your Apple Watch, go to the Activity app.
Scroll down to the bottom of the page.
Hit Change Goals.
Hit Next on the Move Goal and Exercise Goal pages.
Use the on-screen buttons or the Digital Crown to adjust your Stand Goal to a minimum of 6 and a maximum of 12 hours.
Hit Ok to accept the changes.
Lowering the Stand goal will also allow your streak to continue. ⌘
It’s important to note that these goals do not reset each day. So if you change them intending to maintain a streak for one day, you’ll need to change them back the next day.
Now is the time to start putting in your wishes for Apple’s 2022 operating systems. I’ll throw a +1 onto the ideas in this concept for iOS 16 by 9to5Mac.
I look forward to Noah Kalina’s newsletter each and every week. If he wrote more, I’d slurp up every last bit. Not only does each issue feature some of his fantastic photography, but he tells a story with it. A funny story. A funny story using the kind of dry humor that often catches me off guard and produces a snort.
This piece from The Atlantic got me thinking about the airflow of my own home. I should crack a window. Well, two of them, according to the article.
Season 2 of Central Park came out this week on Apple TV+. My wife and I loved season one —- it was one of our favorite shows last year. We watched the first two episodes, and they’ve kept the quality.
The long-anticipated Big Mail app by The Not So Big Company (🙃) came out this week, as well. I’m a sucker for email apps, so I’m giving it a try. It’s got a bunch of features like HEY, but done on-device and is more native to the platform. I plan to write a review after I get more time with it.
Microsoft introduced the next version of Windows this week, as I’m sure the whole internet has heard by now. After reportedly saying that Windows 10 would be the “last version of Windows,” they’ve turned it up to 11.1
As someone who lives firmly in Apple’s ecosystem and has only interacted with the Windows operating system sporadically and reluctantly for the past nine years, I felt oddly drawn to this introduction. So here are a few thoughts I had on the new operating system and the event in general. (If you don’t have 45 minutes, here’s a slimmed-down version of the video provided by The Verge.)
Am I just taken in by visually impressive introduction videos, or is Microsoft finally doing some good stuff with design? It looks modern, more inviting, and yet still distinctly Microsoft in a way that Windows 10 didn’t.
Panos Panay is an engaging presenter, but he always seems just a little off — like he’s not sure what he’s going to say. Not nearly as distracting as Elon Musk, though.
Snapping is a real winner with preset arrangements that I’d actually use. It looks like the maximize button retains that behavior by default and snapping appears on hover. Clever. It reminds me of what Apple just did with the multitasking control in iPadOS 15, but Microsoft has the edge here with additional convenient options.
(Image: Microsoft | Apple)
This event is well-produced, but Apple’s quality of presenters, videography, and transitions remain unmatched. They nailed remote presentations on their first try with WWDC20 and have only gotten better.
Microsoft has an intriguing relationship with Android. They’ve now introduced Android apps on Windows, which adds to the partnership they’ve had still making Android phones. It’s a little odd that they’re using the Amazon App Store as a mediator. Does this new feature make Windows tablets the best Android tablets available?
The taskbar sure does look like the macOS dock these days. The frosted glass aesthetic, too. I know Vista started this trend, but Apple took ownership in iOS 7. Meanwhile, Windows moved away from that style in Windows 8 and 10. It makes Microsoft feel like the follower here.
Centered on frosted glass…looks familiar. 🤔
Microsoft is finally all its core software (e.g., Teams) and services (e.g., Game Pass) closer together in their flagship product. Maybe they’ve been integrated before, but it sounds like they’re doing more here. I bet this will get a fair number of people to try them out who usually wouldn’t have gone searching.
Microsoft brings the heat with its app store announcements: bring-your-own commerce engine, support for many types of app frameworks, alternative app stores, and a lower cut of revenue share, to name a few. These are surely going to put pressure on Apple, which is excellent! Should Apple replicate everything they introduced? Probably not, but alternative payment options alone are a big deal. Competition, what a concept!
Satya Nadella is very well-spoken. He seems legitimately excited and keen on the future of Windows. I may not use many Microsoft products, but I’ve always had respect for Satya, and I think he’s the right person to be leading the company.
For the first time in living memory, I could see myself not hating Windows if I had to use it. But I’m thankful that I don’t. Nevertheless, I’m happy to see the operating system take a few steps forward. It brings some competitive features, which I hope will compel Apple to make a satisfactory response. I also glad to see the version number bump, as it looks to be a good release for Windows users, and going to version 11 adds hype.
Likes
Rounded corners
Lots of snapping options
Tipping creators (but I have questions about how this will work in practice)
Alternative payment engines in the Microsoft Store
Updated icons
Widget view. I’d prefer to pin widgets on the desktop, but I like that it looks like it can expand out to the full screen in the style of Dashboard.
Disconnect external display and app windows get minimized. And then they remember where they go when the display is reconnected. Yes, please!
Android apps via the Amazon App Store. I thought they already had this, to be honest. It sounds like iOS/iPadOS apps on the Mac. Hopefully, fewer developers will limit them than they have on macOS.
Dislikes
There’s too much going on in each window, which, I know, is just the Windows style. I’m still not too fond of the ribbon. Maybe those controls should live in a sidebar as they’ve done with browser tabs.
There are still bits of very old classic Windows hidden in there. While most people won’t find them, some will, and it won’t be clear why. If not now, when?
AI-powered widget feed. I will hold out for more feedback, but if it’s anything like other machine-learning news feeds, it gives me way too much distracting crap.
Subsequent reporting has revealed that the system requirements are pretty restrictive. I know Microsoft has a vast swath of devices to support, but for an update that seems like it was built on the bones of Windows 10X, this decision will severely limit who can take advantage of the new OS — which is a shame because there’s a lot to like.
Europol noted that there is “a huge demand for encrypted communication platforms” among criminal networks but that the market for encrypted devices is “volatile.” Law-enforcement takedowns of the EncroChat encrypted platform in July 2020 and the Sky ECC communication service tool in March 2021 helped agencies steer criminals toward the FBI’s own encrypted devices
Clever stuff. I’m impressed how the FBI created both the supply of encrypted phones, and the demand for them by shutting down another encrypted messaging service favored by criminals.
The sheer volume of drugs and other illicit items seized is mind-boggling:
This culminated in a “series of large-scale law enforcement actions [that] were executed over the past days across 16 countries resulting in more than 700 house searches, more than 800 arrests and the seizure of over 8 tons of cocaine, 22 tons of cannabis and cannabis resin, 2 tons of synthetic drugs (amphetamine and methamphetamine), 6 tons of synthetic drugs precursors, 250 firearms, 55 luxury vehicles and over $48 million in various worldwide currencies and cryptocurrencies,” Europol wrote.
I hope they’ve got a few shelves in the back for it all.
