Getting back into reading the Make Something Wonderful book this morning, I was struck by the very first story I saw as I turned the page. It’s the “Email Exchange Between Steve, Intel CEO, and an Intel Engineer” in the 1985-1996 section. (In case that link doesn’t work, you’ll find this story right after some pictures of Steve Jobs at Disneyland in the book.)
In it, Steve Jobs was approached by an Intel engineer about setting up a meeting to discuss help on their graphics architecture that Steve had apparently offered from Pixar. Steve asked what Intel would offer them in exchange for those “secrets”. This request for compensation apparently took Intel by surprise and Andy Grove told Steve so (firmly, but not unkindly), citing examples where Andy had offered friendly help to NeXT without any such financial exchange. Steve took a few days to consider, and then flipped his position, offering their help again, but this time with no strings attached.
Andy,
I have many faults, but one of them is not ingratitude. And, I do agree with you that “In the long run, these things balance out.”
Therefore, I have changed my position 180 degrees - - we will freely help [Engineer 1] make his processors much better for 3D graphics. Please ask [Engineer 1] to call me, and we will arrange for a meeting as soon as the appropriate Pixar technical folks can be freed up from the film.
Thanks for the clearer perspective.
Steve
Now there’s some behavior that I wish we saw more of from Apple these days. Certainly, sticking to your beliefs when you’re challenged on them is admirable (and valuable), but so is maintaining an open mind and being willing to “change your position 180 degrees.” That willingness to admit when you were wrong change course decisively, and to do so with humility, is a kind of leadership that needs to be on display from the top.
You could say that one of Apple’s faults these days is that of ingratitude, particularly toward its developer partners, and especially around their pushing to get more money for the tools Apple provides to them. Apple seems to be now, Iike Steve Jobs was then, choosing not to see the imbalance of what they’re demanding. They don’t act like a company that recognizes the enormous value that Apple already gets in return from the apps that developers make for its platforms. I appreciate and applaud that Jobs made that 180 degree turn and chose a different way.
Holy smokes, I’ve done it! This is post #31/31 for Blaugust 2024. While it’s not my first time writing at least one post for every day of the month, this kind of volume/consistency is pretty rare for my blog.
As I wrote in my halfway point check-in post, the first few weeks went pretty smoothly. I found the time and motivation to sit down and write out a full blog post every evening. Ideas came easily and the words flowed out of my fingertips. And then, having properly jinxed myself by saying it was going well, the second half of the month kind of fell apart for my daily posting habit. Anyone following me on social media will have noticed that the last final 9 or 10 posts were published over the last two days. 😳
I feel justified in blaming some of that intermittence on a crazy work schedule the last two weeks. I’ve been out guiding nearly every day with many long hiking days and climbing trips. It’s been great working full-time (overtime?) as a guide, but it also left me exhausted. Coupled with an illness that I didn’t have the recovery time to shake, I came home most evenings with only enough energy to eat dinner, repack my bag for the next day, and then drag myself up to bed. I tried to keep up with my 7 Things and “Crashing Clockwise” series at least, but other creative writing took a backseat.
Finally, the last few days I had some time in the evenings to dedicate back to blogging. It meant sacrificing other fun activities (I haven’t been to our local Thursday night live concert series in weeks!), but I was committed to finishing this blogging challenge. 31 posts in 31 days (not necessary one per day 😉).
While Blaugust didn’t have the same fervor or participation that I saw from WeblogPoMo2024 back in May of this year, it was just the motivation I needed to get back from my “summer break” off of blogging. As they say, the best way to start writing is to just start writing. One word follows another, and soon enough you’ve filled a sentence, a paragraph, a blog post.
Publishing every day has also helped me to get more comfortable with not agonizing over every detail of the post. I didn’t add as many screenshots of photos as I typically do. I intentionally wrote with more of my speaking voice, rather than the more perfect grammar that I tend towards. Sometimes posts didn’t even get a pass through Grammarly before publishing. [gasp!] And all of that was okay — good even. While I don’t necessarily subscribe to the idea that quantity beats quality, I do think that posting more often is better for me than hardly at all, which is what May through July was like here on HeyDingus.
One regret I have about this month is that I didn’t find the time to flip over the new design I’ve been working on for the site. I thought it would be nice to introduce it for Blaugust where presumably more people would stop by to see it. But that’s okay, that’s time that went toward writing instead.
To finish things off, here’s a short list of my favorite things I wrote this month. Check ’em out if you haven’t already, and if you like what you read you’re welcome to check out the whole Blaugust archive. Thanks for reading.
As I write these words, I’m sitting in the passenger seat of my wife’s car as she drives us down I-90W out of New York State and toward Pennsylvania and Ohio. Although we’ve driven through this way before on our way back to see family in Michigan, this will be the first time we’re staying in Ohio since moving from the Cleveland area nearly three years ago.
We’re headed back to our old stomping grounds for a wedding between two dear friends. One I met when he volunteered and then worked for me at the Boy Scout camp I used to direct there. We became fast friends through sarcasm, late nights, and dedication to a job well-done. I met his boyfriend a few years later. He’s equally delightful and they make a perfect couple.
Better yet, the wedding is being held at the scout camp where we used to work. It’ll be a homecoming both of people and places and for me.
There are a lot of emotions wrapped up in this event:
First and foremost, excitement to celebrate my friends’ marriage. I love weddings and how it’s an opportunity for us all to celebrate two people’s love for one another.
Second, pride in the fact that the organization that had such a profound impact on my life has progressed so far in recent memory. When I joined the Boy Scouts of America, it was a boys-only club, and was not accepting of gay scouts or leaders. And while the organization is certainly not perfect today, I at least feel good about them opening their doors to every youth and adult, LGBTQ and all. To be hosting a same-sex wedding on Boy Scout property would have been unthinkable not that many years ago. 🏳️🌈
Third, a wee bit of nerves. While I left the camp and the area on good terms, it’s always a bit weird going back to places where you used to have authority and no longer do. I’m sure to see and talk with old scouts and scouters I used to serve, and they like to gossip about “how things are going with Council these days.” The thing is, many of my close friends still work for the scout council and it’s uncomfortable to hear complaints about people who I know are giving their all day in and day out. But this weekend isn’t about that stuff. It’s about the wedding, and I’m sure it’s going to be a blast reconnecting.
It’ll be awesome to roam around camp again and see what’s changed and what hasn’t. And my mouth is watering just thinking about hitting up The Feve for some late-night tots, just like old times.
Most of all, I can’t wait to get down on the dance floor. 🕺
Writing about my work shift scheduling shortcut reminded me that I used to use another shortcut on a weekly basis in the workplace.
Since I get paper paychecks with no digital paper trail, I wanted to be able to easily scan a copy the paystub into my Finances folder. Doing so was surprisingly tricky seeing as Apple’s own ‘Scan Document’ action in Shortcuts doesn’t allow you to do much with that scanned item as a variable. Instead, I used an action provided by the (aptly named) Actions app that fills the gap by sending the scan to the clipboard to be used elsewhere in the shortcut. Instead the end, I got the shortcut to open to the system file scanner to scan my paystub, automatically rename the file to my preferred naming scheme with current date, and save it to my Finances → Paystubs folder in iCloud Drive.
It worked well enough, save for the fact that you had to download that Actions app and sometimes the scanning action would flake out and demand another go. In fact, the shortcut was helpful enough that I was getting ready to add it to the HeyDingus Libary.
Then came along Simple Scan. This app by Greg Pierce (maker of Drafts, in which I’m writing this very blog post) was designed to fill this exactly use case: quickly scan something with the system scanner and send it elsewhere. Sure, you could do all of this within the Files app, but it’s cumbersome there and not nearly as versatile.
Long story short, I tried out Simple Scan during its TestFlight beta period, and its pretty much immediately replaced my custom shortcut. The scanner is fast and reliable, and Greg built in a bunch of power automation options including defining a naming scheme and specific destination. You can even set up a whole host of those custom automations — along with the built in ones for Messages, Files, Email, Photos and Share Sheet — to use at will. I’ve got one for my paystubs of course, and another to send random scans to my generic Scans folder.
Simple Scan has everything you need on one screen, with a giant button to start the scan. ⌘
One of my favorite features is that those automations show up as quick actions when you search the app’s name in Spotlight or when doing a long-press on the app’s icon. With one tap I can start the scan and know it’s going to end up in the right place. You can also choose to get either a JPEG image, or just recognized text out of a scan, rather than a PDF. It’s so handy.
I’d love for every app to offer these kind of quick actions. ⌘
Simple Scan fills a specific need and does it so well that I don’t even mind paying for it, despite the fact that I had already built my own free solution. I’m pretty sure you can use it for free under some limitations, but an annual subscription of $5 gets you full access. You can also do a lifetime purchase of $20 and get everything without a subscription (that’s what I did). If you want to try out my old shortcut, here’s a link to its unmaintained version.
You know me, I’m always up for spending an hour to make a shortcut that’ll save a few minutes each week. In this case, I grew tired of duplicating and dragging around my work calendar events each time the schedule came out. Now, with just a couple of taps, my whole week’s work of shifts get added to my calendar.
My workplace is a little behind the times. We write out our time cards by hands. We receive paper paychecks in lieu of any direct deposit. And our work schedule is simply a paper grid with our names and which days we’re supposed to come in written on it, and then a picture of it is emailed to us the weekend before. What can I say? My boss has been doing it this way for 40 years and I don’t expect him to give up his paper and pencil anytime soon. But it means for me to get my shifts onto my calendar, I used to have to flip-flop between my email app with the picture of the schedule open and Fantastical where I’d duplicate an older event (with the right title, location, and time frame set) and change its date for each of the new ones. Not totally onerous, but also not super easy.
Shortcuts makes this process super easy.
My goal was to be able to just select which days of the week I was scheduled to work and have the events appear on the correct calendar with all the right details. And by using a bit of date math, I got it working perfectly.
The whole shortcut (just barely) fits on one screen. It’s the simple ones that are sometimes the most helpful. ⌘
It starts by asking which day the work schedule starts on. Our calendar runs Monday to Sunday (as all good calendars should), so I select the upcoming Monday. Or, if by some miracle we get our schedule more than a week out, I’ll select whatever Monday starts the week of shifts.
Next, I select from a list of each day of the week which days I’m scheduled to work. The list comes from a ‘Dictionary’ action in which I’ve defined how many days after Monday each it. For example, Tuesday is one day past Monday, and Friday is four days after.
Finally, using a ‘Repeat With Each’ block, I add the number of days past Monday to the start date I initially chose and add each shift with a ‘Add New Event’ action that’s pre-defined with the location, start and end times, and title. All those events get added to my Work calendar that’s shared with my wife.
Here’s what it looks like:
If you need to schedule events that are mostly constant, but just their days of the week change, I encourage you to download and customize the shortcut to fit your needs. It certainly saves me hassle and time, makes me less error prone, and keeps our family on the same page.
A weekly list of interesting things I found on the internet, posted on Sundays. Sometimes themed, often not.
I’m off to Ohio for a wedding this weekend, so (perhaps for the first time ever) you’re getting an issue of 7 Things early!
1️⃣ MereCivilian turned a 13-year-old iPad 2 into $1000 toward a brand-new Pixel 9 Pro Fold. Wow! [🔗 merecivilian.com]
2️⃣ Nick Heer makes the case that iOS has gotten a bit harder to use with a handful of examples related to the Dynamic Island, Lock Screen, and gestures. [🔗 pxlnv.com]
3️⃣ I wholeheartedly agree with this short post from Manu Moreale. Having links to your social profiles on your website is great, but you really really should have an email address there. It’s the most universal way of sending a message to someone. [🔗 manuelmoreale.com]
4️⃣ Can you believe that it’s been 15 whole years since the greatest software update of all time was released? 😏 I kid, but it really has been that long since Mac OS X Snow Leopard came out, and BasicAppleGuy has a short retrospective and fantastic up-res’ed versions of its iconic desktop wallpapers. [🔗 basicappleguy.com]
5️⃣ Remember that One Million Checkboxes website that was up for a couple of weeks? Its author just wrote up this wild story about how teens worked out how to coordinate to send secret messages, draw, and even make animations with it. So cool! [🔗 eieio.games]
6️⃣ This OP3 thing that helps you track downloads on your podcast even if the host doesn’t have it built in (like Micro.blog) seems pretty neat! If I ever start a show, I’ll have to remember it. [🔗 chrisenns.com]
7️⃣ Jonathan Ruiz took an idea shared by Federico Viticci on Connected and ran with it to develop a fully-fledged app that he just released on the App Store. It’s, fittingly, called Ticci Tabs and is a way to easily browse your favorite 6 or 7 websites. I’m planning on using it for the publications I subscribe to, and a few other sites that I just really like their designs. 🔗 thermalcorner.net
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.
My barging in (and not so subtle attempt to someday be a guest) on “the tech podcast where our favorite muppet is The Count.”
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Dan Moren: Do you buy books from Apple Books and read on your iPhone or iPad, and if not, how do you do most of your reading?
While my Apple Books library has 100 or so titles in it, I’ve only purchased a small handful of them there. The others I’ve sideloaded as ePubs or PDFs. And even with that many things in the library, it’s quite rare that I actually read in Apple Books either. Not that it’s a bad app, I just always seem to find myself in other apps when reading on my phone or iPad. Namely in Reeder where I browse my RSS feeds and save articles and blog posts for later.
If I’m reading an actual (e)book, it’s probably happening on my Kobo, or in the Kobo or Kindle apps on my iPhone. I’ll also give a shoutout to Libby, the app where you can check out ebooks and audiobooks from your local library(s) for free. It’s got a great interface on its own if you don’t want to send those titles to a Kobo or Kindle device.
Oh how I wish Apple would make the eReader of our dreams. But then again, it’d probably only allow you read things purchased from the Apple Book Store and I have many titles purchased elsewhere…so maybe not. I’m coming around to the idea that what I actually desire is a Boox eReader, on which I can install all my reading apps. But we’ll see.
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Karissa Bell: Do you have any gadgets that are specifically for your pets?
As my wife and I have decided not to have human children, our fur babies (cat, dog, and turtle) get all our misplaced offspring love. Which also means more things than they really need.
As far as gadgets go, the dog has an AirTag sealed in a weatherproof case on his collar (which works great), a mobile and adjustable electronic fence/coller (also great and a real eliminator of stress), and a small light-up and self-moving ball that he stole from the cat (not as great, but still kind cool).
The turtle enjoys his lights, heat rock, and mister all being controlled on a schedule with an Apple Home-compatible power strip.
The cat has received many toys over the years, but none have ever retained his interest for very long. Especially not when compared to cardboard boxes and bread ties. For several years we did have a PetCube camera to check on him when we weren’t home. It allowed us to talk through its speaker with an app and even shine a laser around to play remotely. But when it died we decided it wasn’t worth replacing. Don’t tell the criminals, but we’re not keen on cameras inside our home.
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Mikah Sargent: Do you use any of the accessibility features on your smartphone regularly?
Oh, I’m so glad you asked this question! It gives me the opportunity to make a plug for my clever little text-to-speech setup.
For nearly a year I’ve been very happy with using the ‘Speak Screen’ feature in Accessibility. As you might expect, when you start ‘Speak Screen’, it reads aloud all the text on screen with your chosen system voice. I use the traditional Siri voice (Siri Voice 4), but sped up slightly to my liking. I’ve also customized the experience in a couple of ways to optimize it for listening to longer articles, emails, and more in Reeder, Safari, Spark, or any other app.
First, I turned on the ‘Highlight Content’ option, which highlights both the paragraph and specific word being spoken in different colors. It helps me keep track of my pace in an article, and, I think, retain what I’m reading even better.
Second, I set ‘Speak Screen’ to start whenever I triple-click the side button of my phone (or three-finger swipe down from the top of the screen). I love using this physical interaction to start a narration of anything I’m reading, even if the app doesn’t have a good text-to-speech feature.
If you want to know more or see screenshots, I’ve detailed my setup in full in this blog post. Give it a shot!
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Casey Liss: Let’s say you have a magic wand and you can make magic happen (engineering be darned), what feature would you add or remove from any of your technology products?
This is an easy one. I would simply wish for all the wishes I’ve catalogued for my Apple stuff here to come true!
Oh, I can only choose one?
I guess I’ll have to go with the one at the top of the list, no matter how insignificant it seems. And that’s for Apple to update their compact Magic Keyboard with Touch ID to charge with USB-C and finally offer it in the slick silver frame with black keys that I’ve been lusting after for…1726 days.
That would make me smile.
(Dan’s alternative app installation, Karissa’s perfect robot drivers, Mikah’s elimination of DRM, and Casey’s next-gen battery life are all excellent options too.)
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Bonus Topic: Who is your favorite Muppet?
[Looks around sheepishly] I actually don’t have any special affinity for The Muppets. I don’t remember watching it regularly growing up, so my only exposure was occasionally watching it at school when we had a substitute teacher.
That said, I think most fondly of Bert and Ernie, so I’m picking them as a pair.
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Overtime Topic: What is the first app you ever downloaded, and what is the oldest download that you still have on your phone?
It looks like the app I downloaded first on August 22, 2008 was a Newton’s Cradle app. I have only a vague recollection of this app, but I assume it used the accelerometer of the iPhone to simulate swinging a Newton’s Cradle. It’s no longer available to download.
My second app that same day was Wikipanion, a Wikipedia client, and you can still download it today — although I don’t have it on my phone any longer.
My earliest downloaded apps that I still have on my phone today are Shazam (April 10, 2009), Facebook (August 15, 2009) and Mactracker (September 9, 2009).
What a trip down memory lane!
Until next time, watch what you say, and keep watching the clock. Bye everybody!
It’s time to jump aboard another blogging fad from those trendy guys over on Hemispheric Views. Oh, what’s that? I’m late? Shoot, I guess it was waaay back in May that Martin, Andrew and Jason spoke about their perfect albums. And then Robb, of course, put together an amazing cover flow-inspired mini site to catalog all the albums that listeners sent in. Well, I want mine in that hall of glory!
But what constitutes a “perfect album”? Here’s the prompt that Jason posed to his co-hosts:
Pick in your mind a perfect album. And I think it’s mostly open to interpretation, but I’m kind of thinking an album that you would say you could just start from beginning, let it run all the way through, without skipping songs, without moving around, just front to back and just sit there and do nothing else and just listen to that whole album.
What would that album be?
There are a handful of albums in my library that fit this description, but only one immediately jumped to mind. And it was the very first entry in my 52 Albums project (that’s been on hiatus but will come back, I swear) this year: ~How I’m Feeling~ by Lauv (2020)
(And just look at that album cover! Iconic.)
Here’s how I described it for the 52 Albums project:
It’s only been out for three years, but ~How I’m Feeling~ has to be one of my most-played albums of all-time. Lauv’s crystal-clear vocals ring true and carry forth all the emotion you’d expect from an album with such a title. It’s catchy from start to finish. It’s well-produced, yet raw. It makes me feel things. I love it.
Based on its themes around loneliness, depression, and self-reflection, you could be excused for thinking this was a COVID album, released by someone struggling through the effects lockdown. In fact, it was released on March 6, 2020 — just a few days before things “got real” here in the United States.
As you might expect for a “perfect album”, there are so many fantastic track in this record. A few standouts for me: “f**k, i’m lonely (feat. Anne-Marie)“,”Billy”, “Tell My Mama”, “Feelings”, “For Now”, “I’m So Tired…”, “Tatoos Together”, “Sad Forever”, “Modern Loneliness”, god there’s so many that I’m finding it difficult to not list every single song.
Whereas some albums, even great ones, can feel like they’re a mashup of all the individual songs an artist has come up with lately, ~How I’m Feeling~ has a distinct style and through-line of sound that carries from the first note to the final one. It makes my heart swell and constrict. It’s achingly beautiful. It captures raw emotion. It’s perfect.
I actively avoid using Snapchat because its notification system is so bad. It’s a messaging service that doesn’t show you your messages in the notification preview. Instead, you get bland and unhelpful notifications saying “John sent a message.” Great. I tap on the notification to go into the chat view and reply. Now that I have an active conversation going, my notifications get even worse because when my chat buddy starts to type, I get another notification saying that they’re typing. Not the little typing indicator within the chat view that every other messaging service does. No. A full-on notification sent to the lock screen that buzzes my phone or watch with the text “John is typing…”. I don’t want typing indicator notifications and I don’t need them, but hell if I can figure out how to turn them off without turning off all of Snapchat’s notifications altogether.
But Snapchat is primarily a photo messaging service, you might say. Surely those notifications are better. Nope. Instead of showing a photo preview in the notification, you just get a big red (or purple for videos) square image to let you know that you have a photo waiting for you. Super helpful, thanks.
I assume part of the problem is that Snapchat is erring on the side of privacy, seeing as part of their differentiation is that their messages are only temporary. Photos can often only be seen once and old chats fade from the conversation history (also super annoying, in my opinion). But that’s not how everyone uses Snapchat, and it sure would be great to have more user preferences that I could adjust for how I receive my messages.
(And while I’m on a rant about Snapchat, I’m also often put into a bad mood when I open their app because they’ve put the ‘My AI’ chat at the very top of my chat list. But it seems to load slower than all the other chats, so when I aim and tap on the top conversation in my list, at the last second the list refreshes and I find myself tapping into the AI chat instead. So I’m often extra annoyed.)
Snapchat, I’m sure you can do better. But since you don’t seem to want to, I’ll continue to prefer Instagram DMs, iMessages, Discord chats, and basically any other service that does their notifications in a sane way.
I’ve gotta share with you one of the small changes that my wife and I made to our home that’s had a far outsized effect on our wellbeing. A life hack, if you will. It’s to turn off your microwave.
Well, not quite turn it off. But turn off two specific functions of it. First, turn off its clock display. Second, turn off its ability to beep.
Turn off the clock
Do you really need another appliance clock in your kitchen? The stove has one, your coffee maker has one. Even your fridge might have a clock on it these days. And that’s not even considering smart displays, the smartphone in your pocket, watch on your wrist, or actual clocks on the wall. If you can, I say choose only one to keep going. The rest, turn off if you can — and if you can’t, set it to a wildly different time and then never think about it again.
It’ll be at least one fewer clocks to set when the time springs forward and falls back each year. One fewer clock to dial in after a power outage. One fewer clock to try (and fail) to keep in sync with the countless other timekeepers in your house.
Personally, I like fewer things on my to-do list.
Turn off the sound
My wife gets all the credit for this one. For as long as we’ve been together, she’s loathed letting the microwave get to the end of its cooking cycle and sound the alarm that the food is done. The loud beeps that go on for way too long were personally offensive to her. So when she used the microwave, she stayed on alert waiting for the time to tick down toward zero, and then she’d manually stop it with one or two seconds remaining. All in the service of fewer shrill beeps.
When we eventually bought a new microwave in one of our moves, I happened to be riffling through the manual and saw a section about changing its options, including how to turn off the beeps. It made the microwave completely silent — no beeps when it’s done and no beeps on each press of its buttons. I earned some Good Husband Points that day as I banished those beeps from our life.
If you’re worried about forgetting about food in the microwave because there’s no alarm, well, that’s not been a problem for us. The only downside is that, although I eliminated having to reset its clock, now I need to go through those options to turn off the beeps after every power outage.
Give it a shot! A quick internet search for your microwave’s model name and the word “manual” should bring up a PDF of that instruction booklet you assuredly discarded long ago. But there could be some life-changing stuff in there.
