{ "version": "https://jsonfeed.org/version/1.1", "user_comment": "This feed allows you to read the posts from this site in any feed reader that supports the JSON Feed format. To add this feed to your reader, copy the following URL -- https://morrick.me/feed/json -- and add it your reader.", "next_url": "https://morrick.me/feed/json?paged=2", "home_page_url": "https://morrick.me", "feed_url": "https://morrick.me/feed/json", "language": "en-US", "title": "Riccardo Mori", "description": "Writer & Translator", "icon": "https://i0.wp.com/morrick.me/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/cropped-new-R-logo-red-siteicon.png?fit=512%2C512&ssl=1", "items": [ { "id": "https://morrick.me/?p=9810", "url": "https://morrick.me/archives/9810", "title": "Brief personal update", "content_html": "
I have been receiving a few messages from readers of this site and people on social media, asking whether everything was all right, since I haven\u2019t written much in a while. Also, since a terrible fire consumed an entire 138-apartment building on February 22 here in Valencia, some were really concerned about my and my family\u2019s well-being. So, even though I don\u2019t typically write personal updates, here I am again with another after the one I published in late November 2023.
\nThe apartment building fire was horrific, and didn\u2019t happen very far from where I live, but definitely far enough as to not impact my family and me in the slightest.
\nAs for the rest, things haven\u2019t really changed since my November update. Back then I wrote:
\n\n\nLately I\u2019m just busier than the usual level of busy, and alternately fatigued and annoyed by technology. I\u2019m also a lot behind my RSS feed reading, and when this happens, one frustrating consequence is that by the time I can write something in reaction to a certain piece of news or commentary, the debate (and inevitably the interest) around it has already died down.\n
My RSS feed backlog remains disastrous to this day, and I\u2019d like to apologise to people like Nick Heer and Michael Tsai \u2014 whose blogs usually have precedence in my reading list \u2014 for my recent lack of feedback. Their blogs have been getting better and better, and it\u2019s not lack of interest on my part. Just lack of time.
\nIn fact, the most important development behind the scenes, and the major factor robbing me of even more time has been the search of a new place to live.
\nSo far we have always lived in rented apartments, and the current lease is set to expire in March 2025. But our landlord passed away in December 2023, and the apartment we\u2019re in was inherited by her three sons, who have jointly decided to sell it as soon as the lease expires. We made them two different purchase offers, but were both refused. (These people are not exactly poor, our offers were far from unreasonable \u2014 especially the second one \u2014 and based on the current state of the apartment, which is \u2018nice\u2019 but not \u2018great\u2019, but apparently and unsurprisingly, greed won over empathy and reasonableness one more time).
\nOn the one hand, given that the lease expires a year from now, we\u2019re lucky enough as not to have to look for a new home in a rush, as that usually ends up in hasty decisions you regret very quickly. On the other hand, we\u2019re also not taking this too slowly. We have also decided to stop living in rented accommodations and to finally purchase a home. Unlike 15 years ago, we have a bit more savings in our accounts, but we\u2019re also entering an age range where asking banks for a mortgage becomes a delicate affair. We\u2019re not young newlyweds who can afford to ask for mortgages payable in 20 or 30 years, if you know what I mean. This has two important consequences: (1) Our budget is somewhat limited. (2) Time, absolutely speaking, is not exactly on our side. This naturally has had a major impact on the search of a suitable place to live.
\nSo, together with work, whose pace has definitely increased in the past few months, there has been a lot of time devoted to apartment hunting, which is a painful and tedious process as you can imagine. Not to mention all the worrying that\u2019s normally associated with a move: how to organise it, looking for boxes to put our stuff, taking more time to start sifting through our (many) belongings and deciding what to keep and what to get rid of.
\nThe apartment hunting is going well for now. At the time of writing we may have found a deal, but I\u2019m not saying anything definitive until things have gone through completely, documents are signed, and money has passed hands.
\nIn short, this is a stressful, transitional period for me. The main subjects of this site \u2014 technology, design, interfaces, photography, and associated criticism \u2014 are still interesting and relevant for me; it\u2019s just that lately I haven\u2019t found enough time and attention to properly mull over them and write something meaningful. And I\u2019m aching to do so. Perhaps I\u2019ll manage to write a few brief posts in the immediate future, so if you don\u2019t see a long-form piece from me in a while, now you know why.
\n", "content_text": "I have been receiving a few messages from readers of this site and people on social media, asking whether everything was all right, since I haven\u2019t written much in a while. Also, since a terrible fire consumed an entire 138-apartment building on February 22 here in Valencia, some were really concerned about my and my family\u2019s well-being. So, even though I don\u2019t typically write personal updates, here I am again with another after the one I published in late November 2023.\nThe apartment building fire was horrific, and didn\u2019t happen very far from where I live, but definitely far enough as to not impact my family and me in the slightest. \nAs for the rest, things haven\u2019t really changed since my November update. Back then I wrote:\n\nLately I\u2019m just busier than the usual level of busy, and alternately fatigued and annoyed by technology. I\u2019m also a lot behind my RSS feed reading, and when this happens, one frustrating consequence is that by the time I can write something in reaction to a certain piece of news or commentary, the debate (and inevitably the interest) around it has already died down.\n\nMy RSS feed backlog remains disastrous to this day, and I\u2019d like to apologise to people like Nick Heer and Michael Tsai \u2014 whose blogs usually have precedence in my reading list \u2014 for my recent lack of feedback. Their blogs have been getting better and better, and it\u2019s not lack of interest on my part. Just lack of time.\nIn fact, the most important development behind the scenes, and the major factor robbing me of even more time has been the search of a new place to live. \nSo far we have always lived in rented apartments, and the current lease is set to expire in March 2025. But our landlord passed away in December 2023, and the apartment we\u2019re in was inherited by her three sons, who have jointly decided to sell it as soon as the lease expires. We made them two different purchase offers, but were both refused. (These people are not exactly poor, our offers were far from unreasonable \u2014 especially the second one \u2014 and based on the current state of the apartment, which is \u2018nice\u2019 but not \u2018great\u2019, but apparently and unsurprisingly, greed won over empathy and reasonableness one more time).\nOn the one hand, given that the lease expires a year from now, we\u2019re lucky enough as not to have to look for a new home in a rush, as that usually ends up in hasty decisions you regret very quickly. On the other hand, we\u2019re also not taking this too slowly. We have also decided to stop living in rented accommodations and to finally purchase a home. Unlike 15 years ago, we have a bit more savings in our accounts, but we\u2019re also entering an age range where asking banks for a mortgage becomes a delicate affair. We\u2019re not young newlyweds who can afford to ask for mortgages payable in 20 or 30 years, if you know what I mean. This has two important consequences: (1) Our budget is somewhat limited. (2) Time, absolutely speaking, is not exactly on our side. This naturally has had a major impact on the search of a suitable place to live.\nSo, together with work, whose pace has definitely increased in the past few months, there has been a lot of time devoted to apartment hunting, which is a painful and tedious process as you can imagine. Not to mention all the worrying that\u2019s normally associated with a move: how to organise it, looking for boxes to put our stuff, taking more time to start sifting through our (many) belongings and deciding what to keep and what to get rid of. \nThe apartment hunting is going well for now. At the time of writing we may have found a deal, but I\u2019m not saying anything definitive until things have gone through completely, documents are signed, and money has passed hands. \nIn short, this is a stressful, transitional period for me. The main subjects of this site \u2014 technology, design, interfaces, photography, and associated criticism \u2014 are still interesting and relevant for me; it\u2019s just that lately I haven\u2019t found enough time and attention to properly mull over them and write something meaningful. And I\u2019m aching to do so. Perhaps I\u2019ll manage to write a few brief posts in the immediate future, so if you don\u2019t see a long-form piece from me in a while, now you know why.", "date_published": "2024-02-26T15:54:47+01:00", "date_modified": "2024-02-26T15:54:47+01:00", "authors": [ { "name": "Riccardo Mori", "url": "https://morrick.me/archives/author/admin", "avatar": "https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/ed738e1ed4787ff5636abfe6a6e39610?s=512&d=blank&r=g" } ], "author": { "name": "Riccardo Mori", "url": "https://morrick.me/archives/author/admin", "avatar": "https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/ed738e1ed4787ff5636abfe6a6e39610?s=512&d=blank&r=g" }, "tags": [ "English", "Self", "Tech Life" ], "summary": "Yet another status update to explain the recent lack of meaningful long-form articles on this blog." }, { "id": "https://morrick.me/?p=9802", "url": "https://morrick.me/archives/9802", "title": "Taking a step back to see better", "content_html": "Back in my university days, I used to haunt several bars and caf\u00e9s near the university buildings with a few mates, students of literature and philosophy. We would typically choose a place to have lunch there at first, but often we ended up staying there all afternoon if we didn\u2019t have other classes to attend. We would order more tea or coffee, study, compare notes, and so on. But the best part, the unforgettable part was the conversations. It\u2019s that stage of your life where you feel you can make an impact on the world, where you feel you\u2019re really understanding how the world works and you feel your intellectual ramblings can redefine entire aspects of society. You\u2019re the generation \u2018in charge\u2019, you\u2019re the thinker. Et cetera.
\nWe loved to dissect theories, poetry, literary criticism, language, semantics, people\u2019s behaviour\u2026 It was abstract at times, but also pragmatic and rooted in the here and now. During one of these conversations, I remember trying to link habits and interests. Or rather, trying to find a way to differentiate between interests mixed with passion, and interests tainted by habit. Don\u2019t ask me why I had this urge. Perhaps my interlocutor was talking about interests and hobbies in a way I found too generic and shallow. I recall making drawings on a small Moleskine notebook, and talking about vectors. The interests+passion label had a big arrow pointing up, i.e. forward. The interests+habit label, instead, had an arrow on a circle, a loop.
\nAnd I know, it\u2019s weird I still remember parts of this conversation so many years later, but my university days had a huge impact on my life, and so many details have remained with eerie vividness in my memory.
\nAnyway, at some point during that conversation, I said: Beware of loops. Loops kill you. With loops you don\u2019t go anywhere. If you start feeling a loop, step back and try to refocus.
\n\u201cYou mean routines. You mean the routine,\u201d said my interlocutor.
\nBut some routines are just part of life, I responded. My parents\u2019 work schedule is rather fixed. It sorts of creates routines for them. They have to go to work at these hours, so they need to organise their day this way, go to bed at a certain hour, wake up at a certain hour, and so forth. The loops I\u2019m talking about are sort of a thing of our own creation. They\u2019re more similar to bad habits, little addictions with little voices we love to hear the sound of\u2026 Am I making sense?
\nWith hindsight, I think I was trying to push some variant of the concept of echo chamber. Now, when you look up the definition of echo chamber (I\u2019m using the Dictionary app on my Mac for convenience), it says:
\n\n\n\n
\n- an enclosed space where sound reverberates.
\n- an environment in which a person encounters only beliefs or opinions that coincide with their own, so that their existing views are reinforced and alternative ideas are not considered.
\n
What I was trying to convey when talking about loops, if I remember well, was something in between these two meanings, the literal and sociologic one. Something like an environment in which a person becomes so involved and enveloped in their interests and reverberations of such interests, that they lose sight of the actual importance of such interests and simultaneously of the actual influence these interests have on their worldview. That\u2019s why I was talking about bad habits and little addictions.
\nThis long-winded introduction serves to explain the eureka moment I had a few days ago. When it happened, I immediately felt myself inside the core of that constant feeling of tech fatigue I\u2019ve been experiencing for the past couple of years at least.
\nMy interest in technology over time has been slowly but steadily transforming into such a loop. I was getting more and more frustrated because I kept feeling the effects of this process, without being able to pinpoint the cause. I had to step back and try to refocus. Only I didn\u2019t step back consciously. I sort of found myself distanced from the whole thing like two magnets rejecting each other. Tech fatigue acted like a rejecting force getting stronger with time.
\nI am now in a phase where I\u2019m renegotiating the importance of technology after the sobering realisation of the influence it has been having over my life for the past 30+ years, but especially in the past five years or so. If I\u2019m sounding like those people who left a cult and feel that only now they can really talk about the cult because they finally see it for what it is, that\u2019s because yeah, in part it feels the same.
\nThere are other interests that can become loops and trap yourself into them, like a tornado vacuuming everything it encounters on its path. Another example might be photography when all you do is obsess over gear, spend an unhealthy amount of time in online forums (maybe engaging in foolish battles over what\u2019s the best mirrorless camera or what\u2019s the perfect focal length for street photography), spend an inordinate amount of time watching photography-related videos on YouTube, ingest so much \u2018latest news\u2019 and articles on the topic, and so forth. You end up completely absorbed in the \u2018photography world\u2019 and perhaps feel good in the process\u2026 except that now you spend 90% of the time in that \u2018photography world\u2019 loop, and 10% actually taking photos. Whenever you take a genuine interest or hobby and nerdify the heck out of it, you lose yourself in its reverberations (remember that revised definition of echo chamber above) and become consumed by it.
\nDon\u2019t get me wrong, the pursuit of knowledge is a good thing. I\u2019ve been intellectually curious my whole life. I love learning something new every day. What constantly pushes my curiosity is the idea that the more I know, the more I understand the world around me. But the way information flows today, the direction Internet and social media have taken today, it all points towards hyperspecialisation and obsessive-compulsive inflation of interests and hobbies. You become an expert in, say, military aircraft, and can recite all the specifications, background and development of the Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-25, yet you have no idea where Hungary is, or what Newton theorised in 1684, or how to spell certain words in your own language. I\u2019m making silly examples, perhaps, but the point is, you lack a healthy general knowledge background.
\nBack to technology. The tech world today is particularly insidious because it\u2019s become more than just an interest for many people. Given the way it has taken over in many aspects of our lives, it\u2019s almost impossible to avoid its gravitational pull. It\u2019s also almost impossible to prevent it from becoming a loop. The tech world is especially good at producing reverberations of its own shit. What tech companies and tech \u2018celebrities\u2019 do and say, the breakneck pace of tech news, the veritable oceans of digital ink produced daily to talk about such news, to comment on them, to comment on others\u2019 comments on them\u2026 In Christopher Nolan\u2019s 2010 masterpiece Inception, Cobb, the protagonist, is a skilled information extractor using the technique of entering the dream state and picking up valuable data and secrets from the target\u2019s subconscious. During the film, we see a lot of this dream state. So many sequences that, if you were to stumble on the film halfway into it, you would believe were really happening and you would believe the characters are acting in the real world, and not in a shared dream reality. Sometimes the world of technology today feels like this. Some dimension that not only absorbs you and your time, but also alters your worldview and the way you think. And not always for the best.
\nI truly appreciated this article by Eric Schwarz back in November 2023 \u2014 or a \u2018venting session\u2019 as he calls it \u2014 and I hate that I\u2019ve been so slow in acknowledging it here (I\u2019ll probably address the reasons behind this latest hiatus in another post).
\nEric\u2019s piece is aptly titled, When It\u2019s Not Fun Anymore, and if I had to describe what it\u2019s about in short, I\u2019d say it\u2019s Eric\u2019s analysis of what has accumulated over the past few years to make him feel \u2018tech fatigued\u2019. It\u2019s hard to quote from it, because it\u2019s all quote-worthy. So many things resonated with me:
\n\n\nI think being an enthusiast about technology by default makes one an optimist [\u2026]
\nInstead, we\u2019ve sort of gotten into this dystopian, late-stage capitalism doom loop [Oh look, that word again. \u2014 RM]. There\u2019s idiotic billionaires acting like they\u2019re the saviors of society through vanity projects, rather than the useful work of actual philanthropists of the past. There\u2019s sometimes the assumption that anyone interested in tech wants to be like that. Every company is focused on \u201cmaximizing shareholder value\u201d to the point that any joy and humanity is squeezed out of products. There\u2019s no respect for users when it comes to privacy and being good stewards of our data \u2014 I had that hell with trying to delete accounts with some companies. In short, the monetization people won out and sometimes it feels like there\u2019s no room for art or care.
\nI\u2019m tired of everything seeming to get worse and more expensive, followed by patronizing emails explaining that this is better for me. For some businesses, the argument is \u201cyou can save money by using our app,\u201d yet it wants access to every aspect of my phone. I\u2019m sorry, but fast food doesn\u2019t ever need to access my contacts or photo albums. In the past, I\u2019ve been passionate about streaming services, as it seemed to be the dream of \u00e0 la carte TV and mixed two things that I\u2019m heavily interested in: tech and media. Instead of focusing on quality and content, it was a race-to-the-bottom to get subscribers, a proliferation of generic garbage (I\u2019m looking at you Disney and Warner Bros. Discovery), and then price hikes and more price hikes. Ad-free tiers only exist to sort of tease us, while the money to be made is in ad-supported content. While I haven\u2019t entirely unsubscribed en masse, it hurts to see the direction things are going in.
\nIn terms of privacy, it\u2019s frustrating how everything is becoming an inkjet printer or smart TV\u2014a device that is a more tech-infused version of something we already know, yet the manufacturer can make it creepy and subscription-based. [\u2026]
\nBeyond that, we\u2019ve gotten into a routine of buzzwords being the only driver of technology. I\u2019m the last person to hate on new ideas, but we\u2019ve had instance after instance of a solution looking for a problem and it\u2019s just tiring. Cryptocurrency is terrible for the environment and proponents seem to think it can replace money when way too many retailers still haven\u2019t moved on from magstripe card readers. NFTs seem like a way for influencers to drum up business. Artificial intelligence has some utility, but it\u2019s exhausting to hear every company try to cram it into their sales pitch\u2014I sat through a sales pitch for PCs at my day job and the manufacturer was trying to sell their bloatware as AI that will make my job easier.\n
I apologise for quoting 80% of the article, but Eric really and succinctly sums up so many things that are just plain wrong with tech today. You wonder why we\u2019re letting so much of this happen. My take is that many people are lost in the tech loop, lost in its reverberations, living the shared dream state of tech, jacked up in the Matrix thinking it\u2019s the real world. Don\u2019t think I\u2019m passing judgment from my high horse here. Don\u2019t think I\u2019m being Neo or Morpheus (if we have to keep referencing the Matrix). Or rather, I am like Neo at his most confused phase in the first film of the franchise.
\nIf you start looking at the tech sphere this way, the increasing loss of common sense in online discourse begins to make sense. I still remember the absurd back-and-forth with a guy in a forum, where he was going on and on about how amazing it was to control all lights in his house from an app on his smartphone, and how cool it was that his smart fridge was keeping track of his calorie intake. (No, really, you can\u2019t make this shit up.) What do you do when the light app drops support for your phone model? What do you do when the startup making the smart light solution files for bankruptcy and shuts everything down? What happens when your fridge breaks or loses the connection to the Internet? were some of my genuine, down-to-earth, objections. He thought I was the crazy one. And anyway his solutions to those potential issues were essentially to waste more money to keep those \u2018smart\u2019 solutions alive. If the light app drops support for his phone, well, apparently he will buy a newer phone. Let that sink in. Then ask yourself who\u2019s the crazy one here.
\nAgain, I\u2019m doing my best not to sound pretentious or holier-than-thou, but I\u2019ve come to a point where I think more and more people need to wake up, take a step back, and refocus. This is not the kind of \u2018tech detox\u2019 I did in the past for some periods of time, and it\u2019s not the usual Oh god I feel so overwhelmed by my tech news feed lately, I need to take a break kind of detox either. It\u2019s more like distancing myself from technology\u2019s constant siren song to distinguish between what\u2019s healthy knowledge and what\u2019s just the product of the reverberations of the tech loop.
\nAt this point it\u2019s fair to ask, So, what do you suggest one should do to distance themselves from tech in a good way? But I really don\u2019t have satisfactory answers to that. I haven\u2019t entered this extremely critical and distrustful phase towards the tech world by following a recipe or a method I sat down and devised myself. I just went progressively out of sync and out of tech\u2019s orbit. Life coincidentally got in the way, too, by demanding a lot of my time elsewhere doing other stuff (work & worries, mostly, but not only that). So, less time to read my tech RSS feeds, very little time to watch tech YouTube, very little time to read tech news. At first I missed all of that quite badly. Now I distinctly feel that 90% of that was not really necessary \u2014 and I was already extremely selective of what I read and watched.
\nOf course technology is not something you just \u2018leave behind\u2019. And it\u2019s not the kind of advice I\u2019m implying here. When you\u2019re looking at a map and you realise you\u2019re too zoomed in, what you do is zoom out and still look at the map to have a better idea of the bigger picture, literally. You don\u2019t close the Google Maps tab in your browser or your Apple/Google Maps app on your device and swear you won\u2019t look at another map in your life from now on. So many things in technology are advancing and permeating society because so many people are led to believe (by the loop! It\u2019s always the loop!) that such things are good and totally harmless and have no side effects and it\u2019s all \u2018progress\u2019. Being tech-illiterate today is not wise and is the first step towards being taken advantage of. This renegotiating phase I\u2019m currently in is rather chaotic, and it\u2019s difficult for me to give meaningful suggestions. I\u2019ll share a small portion of an email I wrote to Fran\u00e7ois, a reader of this site, back in May 2023 in response to an email he wrote me asking about \u201cways to balance the need to stay reasonably up-to-date with breaking changes and that to put enough distance between yourself and The News\u2122 to stay creative and productive.\u201d
\nThis was part of my response:
\n\n\nIf I had to summarise, I think I\u2019d say it\u2019s a bit like when you\u2019re on a diet. You remove many foods that \u2014 while tasty and somewhat addictive \u2014 aren\u2019t ultimately nutritious and, worse, are bad for your health. What I\u2019ve been realising over time with the tech world is that there is a lot of, um, \u2018tasty and somewhat addictive\u2019 noise filling the space and making the signal harder to distinguish and pick up. So I constantly try to filter out all the noise and focus on what I think it\u2019s the meatier stuff.
\nOne thing that helps is that I usually rely on selected trusted sources to stay reasonably up-to-date, so I don\u2019t have to waste time reading a dozen different reviews or watching a dozen different videos about a product. There are exceptions, of course, especially when something potentially controversial appears. But at that point it\u2019s clear that the matter requires more attention, and if it seems worthwhile to pay that more attention, then I\u2019ll play along. Otherwise my attitude is more like \u201cYeah, okay, got it. Next!\u201d\n
This, in retrospect, makes me realise I was already on the right path, but that was probably not good enough all the same. To stay within the metaphor, I thought I was doing great with my \u2018diet\u2019, but I\u2019ve come to realise I haven\u2019t lost that much weight, really.
\nRecently I\u2019ve skimmed through a few blog articles talking about being optimistic about tech today, and I increasingly find fewer and fewer reasons to be so. There\u2019s this overwhelming, nagging feeling that an increasing amount of things are getting out of hand, that greed is spreading from the top in so many aspects of technology, and too few people at the bottom are actually \u2018voting with their wallet\u2019, so their acts of protest are irrelevant in the grand scheme. Many are stupefied by the usual tide of latest-and-greatest gadgets. Many just shrug and don\u2019t care, volunteering so much personal information and \u2018productifying\u2019 themselves in exchange for a small convenience in their daily lives. Being optimistic about tech ultimately means being optimistic about people and their will to jack themselves out of this Matrix.
\nGood luck with that, my sceptic voice quips, as Apple is about to launch Vision Pro, designed to further draw you in.
\n", "content_text": "Back in my university days, I used to haunt several bars and caf\u00e9s near the university buildings with a few mates, students of literature and philosophy. We would typically choose a place to have lunch there at first, but often we ended up staying there all afternoon if we didn\u2019t have other classes to attend. We would order more tea or coffee, study, compare notes, and so on. But the best part, the unforgettable part was the conversations. It\u2019s that stage of your life where you feel you can make an impact on the world, where you feel you\u2019re really understanding how the world works and you feel your intellectual ramblings can redefine entire aspects of society. You\u2019re the generation \u2018in charge\u2019, you\u2019re the thinker. Et cetera.\nWe loved to dissect theories, poetry, literary criticism, language, semantics, people\u2019s behaviour\u2026 It was abstract at times, but also pragmatic and rooted in the here and now. During one of these conversations, I remember trying to link habits and interests. Or rather, trying to find a way to differentiate between interests mixed with passion, and interests tainted by habit. Don\u2019t ask me why I had this urge. Perhaps my interlocutor was talking about interests and hobbies in a way I found too generic and shallow. I recall making drawings on a small Moleskine notebook, and talking about vectors. The interests+passion label had a big arrow pointing up, i.e. forward. The interests+habit label, instead, had an arrow on a circle, a loop.\nAnd I know, it\u2019s weird I still remember parts of this conversation so many years later, but my university days had a huge impact on my life, and so many details have remained with eerie vividness in my memory.\nAnyway, at some point during that conversation, I said: Beware of loops. Loops kill you. With loops you don\u2019t go anywhere. If you start feeling a loop, step back and try to refocus. \n\u201cYou mean routines. You mean the routine,\u201d said my interlocutor.\nBut some routines are just part of life, I responded. My parents\u2019 work schedule is rather fixed. It sorts of creates routines for them. They have to go to work at these hours, so they need to organise their day this way, go to bed at a certain hour, wake up at a certain hour, and so forth. The loops I\u2019m talking about are sort of a thing of our own creation. They\u2019re more similar to bad habits, little addictions with little voices we love to hear the sound of\u2026 Am I making sense?\nWith hindsight, I think I was trying to push some variant of the concept of echo chamber. Now, when you look up the definition of echo chamber (I\u2019m using the Dictionary app on my Mac for convenience), it says:\n\n\nan enclosed space where sound reverberates.\nan environment in which a person encounters only beliefs or opinions that coincide with their own, so that their existing views are reinforced and alternative ideas are not considered.\n\n\nWhat I was trying to convey when talking about loops, if I remember well, was something in between these two meanings, the literal and sociologic one. Something like an environment in which a person becomes so involved and enveloped in their interests and reverberations of such interests, that they lose sight of the actual importance of such interests and simultaneously of the actual influence these interests have on their worldview. That\u2019s why I was talking about bad habits and little addictions.\nThis long-winded introduction serves to explain the eureka moment I had a few days ago. When it happened, I immediately felt myself inside the core of that constant feeling of tech fatigue I\u2019ve been experiencing for the past couple of years at least.\nMy interest in technology over time has been slowly but steadily transforming into such a loop. I was getting more and more frustrated because I kept feeling the effects of this process, without being able to pinpoint the cause. I had to step back and try to refocus. Only I didn\u2019t step back consciously. I sort of found myself distanced from the whole thing like two magnets rejecting each other. Tech fatigue acted like a rejecting force getting stronger with time.\nI am now in a phase where I\u2019m renegotiating the importance of technology after the sobering realisation of the influence it has been having over my life for the past 30+ years, but especially in the past five years or so. If I\u2019m sounding like those people who left a cult and feel that only now they can really talk about the cult because they finally see it for what it is, that\u2019s because yeah, in part it feels the same.\nThere are other interests that can become loops and trap yourself into them, like a tornado vacuuming everything it encounters on its path. Another example might be photography when all you do is obsess over gear, spend an unhealthy amount of time in online forums (maybe engaging in foolish battles over what\u2019s the best mirrorless camera or what\u2019s the perfect focal length for street photography), spend an inordinate amount of time watching photography-related videos on YouTube, ingest so much \u2018latest news\u2019 and articles on the topic, and so forth. You end up completely absorbed in the \u2018photography world\u2019 and perhaps feel good in the process\u2026 except that now you spend 90% of the time in that \u2018photography world\u2019 loop, and 10% actually taking photos. Whenever you take a genuine interest or hobby and nerdify the heck out of it, you lose yourself in its reverberations (remember that revised definition of echo chamber above) and become consumed by it. \nDon\u2019t get me wrong, the pursuit of knowledge is a good thing. I\u2019ve been intellectually curious my whole life. I love learning something new every day. What constantly pushes my curiosity is the idea that the more I know, the more I understand the world around me. But the way information flows today, the direction Internet and social media have taken today, it all points towards hyperspecialisation and obsessive-compulsive inflation of interests and hobbies. You become an expert in, say, military aircraft, and can recite all the specifications, background and development of the Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-25, yet you have no idea where Hungary is, or what Newton theorised in 1684, or how to spell certain words in your own language. I\u2019m making silly examples, perhaps, but the point is, you lack a healthy general knowledge background. \nBack to technology. The tech world today is particularly insidious because it\u2019s become more than just an interest for many people. Given the way it has taken over in many aspects of our lives, it\u2019s almost impossible to avoid its gravitational pull. It\u2019s also almost impossible to prevent it from becoming a loop. The tech world is especially good at producing reverberations of its own shit. What tech companies and tech \u2018celebrities\u2019 do and say, the breakneck pace of tech news, the veritable oceans of digital ink produced daily to talk about such news, to comment on them, to comment on others\u2019 comments on them\u2026 In Christopher Nolan\u2019s 2010 masterpiece Inception, Cobb, the protagonist, is a skilled information extractor using the technique of entering the dream state and picking up valuable data and secrets from the target\u2019s subconscious. During the film, we see a lot of this dream state. So many sequences that, if you were to stumble on the film halfway into it, you would believe were really happening and you would believe the characters are acting in the real world, and not in a shared dream reality. Sometimes the world of technology today feels like this. Some dimension that not only absorbs you and your time, but also alters your worldview and the way you think. And not always for the best.\nI truly appreciated this article by Eric Schwarz back in November 2023 \u2014 or a \u2018venting session\u2019 as he calls it \u2014 and I hate that I\u2019ve been so slow in acknowledging it here (I\u2019ll probably address the reasons behind this latest hiatus in another post). \nEric\u2019s piece is aptly titled, When It\u2019s Not Fun Anymore, and if I had to describe what it\u2019s about in short, I\u2019d say it\u2019s Eric\u2019s analysis of what has accumulated over the past few years to make him feel \u2018tech fatigued\u2019. It\u2019s hard to quote from it, because it\u2019s all quote-worthy. So many things resonated with me:\n\nI think being an enthusiast about technology by default makes one an optimist [\u2026]\nInstead, we\u2019ve sort of gotten into this dystopian, late-stage capitalism doom loop [Oh look, that word again. \u2014 RM]. There\u2019s idiotic billionaires acting like they\u2019re the saviors of society through vanity projects, rather than the useful work of actual philanthropists of the past. There\u2019s sometimes the assumption that anyone interested in tech wants to be like that. Every company is focused on \u201cmaximizing shareholder value\u201d to the point that any joy and humanity is squeezed out of products. There\u2019s no respect for users when it comes to privacy and being good stewards of our data \u2014 I had that hell with trying to delete accounts with some companies. In short, the monetization people won out and sometimes it feels like there\u2019s no room for art or care.\nI\u2019m tired of everything seeming to get worse and more expensive, followed by patronizing emails explaining that this is better for me. For some businesses, the argument is \u201cyou can save money by using our app,\u201d yet it wants access to every aspect of my phone. I\u2019m sorry, but fast food doesn\u2019t ever need to access my contacts or photo albums. In the past, I\u2019ve been passionate about streaming services, as it seemed to be the dream of \u00e0 la carte TV and mixed two things that I\u2019m heavily interested in: tech and media. Instead of focusing on quality and content, it was a race-to-the-bottom to get subscribers, a proliferation of generic garbage (I\u2019m looking at you Disney and Warner Bros. Discovery), and then price hikes and more price hikes. Ad-free tiers only exist to sort of tease us, while the money to be made is in ad-supported content. While I haven\u2019t entirely unsubscribed en masse, it hurts to see the direction things are going in.\nIn terms of privacy, it\u2019s frustrating how everything is becoming an inkjet printer or smart TV\u2014a device that is a more tech-infused version of something we already know, yet the manufacturer can make it creepy and subscription-based. [\u2026]\nBeyond that, we\u2019ve gotten into a routine of buzzwords being the only driver of technology. I\u2019m the last person to hate on new ideas, but we\u2019ve had instance after instance of a solution looking for a problem and it\u2019s just tiring. Cryptocurrency is terrible for the environment and proponents seem to think it can replace money when way too many retailers still haven\u2019t moved on from magstripe card readers. NFTs seem like a way for influencers to drum up business. Artificial intelligence has some utility, but it\u2019s exhausting to hear every company try to cram it into their sales pitch\u2014I sat through a sales pitch for PCs at my day job and the manufacturer was trying to sell their bloatware as AI that will make my job easier.\n\nI apologise for quoting 80% of the article, but Eric really and succinctly sums up so many things that are just plain wrong with tech today. You wonder why we\u2019re letting so much of this happen. My take is that many people are lost in the tech loop, lost in its reverberations, living the shared dream state of tech, jacked up in the Matrix thinking it\u2019s the real world. Don\u2019t think I\u2019m passing judgment from my high horse here. Don\u2019t think I\u2019m being Neo or Morpheus (if we have to keep referencing the Matrix). Or rather, I am like Neo at his most confused phase in the first film of the franchise. \nIf you start looking at the tech sphere this way, the increasing loss of common sense in online discourse begins to make sense. I still remember the absurd back-and-forth with a guy in a forum, where he was going on and on about how amazing it was to control all lights in his house from an app on his smartphone, and how cool it was that his smart fridge was keeping track of his calorie intake. (No, really, you can\u2019t make this shit up.) What do you do when the light app drops support for your phone model? What do you do when the startup making the smart light solution files for bankruptcy and shuts everything down? What happens when your fridge breaks or loses the connection to the Internet? were some of my genuine, down-to-earth, objections. He thought I was the crazy one. And anyway his solutions to those potential issues were essentially to waste more money to keep those \u2018smart\u2019 solutions alive. If the light app drops support for his phone, well, apparently he will buy a newer phone. Let that sink in. Then ask yourself who\u2019s the crazy one here.\nAgain, I\u2019m doing my best not to sound pretentious or holier-than-thou, but I\u2019ve come to a point where I think more and more people need to wake up, take a step back, and refocus. This is not the kind of \u2018tech detox\u2019 I did in the past for some periods of time, and it\u2019s not the usual Oh god I feel so overwhelmed by my tech news feed lately, I need to take a break kind of detox either. It\u2019s more like distancing myself from technology\u2019s constant siren song to distinguish between what\u2019s healthy knowledge and what\u2019s just the product of the reverberations of the tech loop. \nAt this point it\u2019s fair to ask, So, what do you suggest one should do to distance themselves from tech in a good way? But I really don\u2019t have satisfactory answers to that. I haven\u2019t entered this extremely critical and distrustful phase towards the tech world by following a recipe or a method I sat down and devised myself. I just went progressively out of sync and out of tech\u2019s orbit. Life coincidentally got in the way, too, by demanding a lot of my time elsewhere doing other stuff (work & worries, mostly, but not only that). So, less time to read my tech RSS feeds, very little time to watch tech YouTube, very little time to read tech news. At first I missed all of that quite badly. Now I distinctly feel that 90% of that was not really necessary \u2014 and I was already extremely selective of what I read and watched. \nOf course technology is not something you just \u2018leave behind\u2019. And it\u2019s not the kind of advice I\u2019m implying here. When you\u2019re looking at a map and you realise you\u2019re too zoomed in, what you do is zoom out and still look at the map to have a better idea of the bigger picture, literally. You don\u2019t close the Google Maps tab in your browser or your Apple/Google Maps app on your device and swear you won\u2019t look at another map in your life from now on. So many things in technology are advancing and permeating society because so many people are led to believe (by the loop! It\u2019s always the loop!) that such things are good and totally harmless and have no side effects and it\u2019s all \u2018progress\u2019. Being tech-illiterate today is not wise and is the first step towards being taken advantage of. This renegotiating phase I\u2019m currently in is rather chaotic, and it\u2019s difficult for me to give meaningful suggestions. I\u2019ll share a small portion of an email I wrote to Fran\u00e7ois, a reader of this site, back in May 2023 in response to an email he wrote me asking about \u201cways to balance the need to stay reasonably up-to-date with breaking changes and that to put enough distance between yourself and The News\u2122 to stay creative and productive.\u201d\nThis was part of my response:\n\nIf I had to summarise, I think I\u2019d say it\u2019s a bit like when you\u2019re on a diet. You remove many foods that \u2014 while tasty and somewhat addictive \u2014 aren\u2019t ultimately nutritious and, worse, are bad for your health. What I\u2019ve been realising over time with the tech world is that there is a lot of, um, \u2018tasty and somewhat addictive\u2019 noise filling the space and making the signal harder to distinguish and pick up. So I constantly try to filter out all the noise and focus on what I think it\u2019s the meatier stuff. \nOne thing that helps is that I usually rely on selected trusted sources to stay reasonably up-to-date, so I don\u2019t have to waste time reading a dozen different reviews or watching a dozen different videos about a product. There are exceptions, of course, especially when something potentially controversial appears. But at that point it\u2019s clear that the matter requires more attention, and if it seems worthwhile to pay that more attention, then I\u2019ll play along. Otherwise my attitude is more like \u201cYeah, okay, got it. Next!\u201d\n\nThis, in retrospect, makes me realise I was already on the right path, but that was probably not good enough all the same. To stay within the metaphor, I thought I was doing great with my \u2018diet\u2019, but I\u2019ve come to realise I haven\u2019t lost that much weight, really. \nRecently I\u2019ve skimmed through a few blog articles talking about being optimistic about tech today, and I increasingly find fewer and fewer reasons to be so. There\u2019s this overwhelming, nagging feeling that an increasing amount of things are getting out of hand, that greed is spreading from the top in so many aspects of technology, and too few people at the bottom are actually \u2018voting with their wallet\u2019, so their acts of protest are irrelevant in the grand scheme. Many are stupefied by the usual tide of latest-and-greatest gadgets. Many just shrug and don\u2019t care, volunteering so much personal information and \u2018productifying\u2019 themselves in exchange for a small convenience in their daily lives. Being optimistic about tech ultimately means being optimistic about people and their will to jack themselves out of this Matrix. \nGood luck with that, my sceptic voice quips, as Apple is about to launch Vision Pro, designed to further draw you in.", "date_published": "2024-01-31T16:04:01+01:00", "date_modified": "2024-01-31T16:34:14+01:00", "authors": [ { "name": "Riccardo Mori", "url": "https://morrick.me/archives/author/admin", "avatar": "https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/ed738e1ed4787ff5636abfe6a6e39610?s=512&d=blank&r=g" } ], "author": { "name": "Riccardo Mori", "url": "https://morrick.me/archives/author/admin", "avatar": "https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/ed738e1ed4787ff5636abfe6a6e39610?s=512&d=blank&r=g" }, "tags": [ "English", "Self", "Tech Life" ], "summary": "Musings following an eureka moment I had a few days ago regarding the constant 'tech fatigue' I've been feeling lately." }, { "id": "https://morrick.me/?p=9792", "url": "https://morrick.me/archives/9792", "title": "A few thoughts about Humane\u2019s Ai Pin", "content_html": "As I was gathering some notes for this piece and reading other people\u2019s takes, I found myself in a very similar position as Jesper\u2019s.
\nHis article begins as follows:
\n\n\nThe Humane Ai Pin has been announced, a phone alternative trying its best to not be a phone in any way. Humane famously spearheaded by ex-Apple luminaries Imran Chaudhri (with large amounts of the iPhone and multi-touch user experience to his name), Bethany Bongiorno (a Director of Software Engineering from the launch of the original iPad) and counting among its ranks Ken Kocienda (part of the initial Safari/WebKit team and designer of the first software keyboard and typing autocorrect), I\u2019m finding myself wondering what I\u2019m missing.\n
There are a lot of people in Humane\u2019s personnel who have an impressive background in understanding user interfaces and human-machine interaction. There are a few aspects of the Ai Pin I find fairly interesting, and I think they nailed both the hardware design of the device, and its wearability. I also think that the concept of the Pin, in its most abstract sense, is pretty intriguing. I\u2019ve always believed that technology and machines should serve people and adapt to their needs, instead of the other way round. So, when at the beginning Humane vaguely hinted at working on something following this philosophy, my interest was piqued. I think smartphones have done a lot of good to society, but also a lot of harm when it comes to the interpersonal sphere. And whenever I\u2019ve had the time to be at my most contemplative, I\u2019ve often thought about what is the next step beyond smartphones. That\u2019s why I was very interested in Humane\u2019s intents and projects. Again, these people are not amateurs at all. Let\u2019s hear them out.
\nWhen mentions of this upcoming device being fully \u2018AI\u2019-powered started to appear, my interest started waning a little. But wait \u2014 I said to myself \u2014 perhaps Humane has found an innovative way to make \u2018AI\u2019 work. Some kind of left-field implementation. Who knows.
\nThen the Ai Pin was announced and demoed. And my reaction was just like that famously memetic GIF of the Star Trek character Jean-Luc Picard, with his resigned, frustrated facepalm.
\nFor me, the most ironic aspect of what doesn\u2019t work with the Ai Pin is that it underwhelms in the two main departments I least expected it to underwhelm: user interface and human-machine interaction.
\nI know nothing about the thought process the people at Humane went through to bring forward the idea of the Pin, but I suspect that a lot of analysis about how people use and interact with smartphones was involved. They must have asked themselves, What can we do to go beyond this? \u2014 What do we feel is wrong with the way people interact with their phones, and what can we do to improve things? \u2014 What kind of human-device interaction can make things smoother and frictionless but also make the relationship less device-centric, less addictive? \u2014 You know, questions like these. It\u2019s rather clear to me that they wanted to come up with a device that could be out of the way as much as possible but also be as useful in assisting users so that they would not miss using a smartphone.
\nThis intent, this design, is worthy of praise. This is difficult territory. I know well all the little things that annoy me about smartphones, the way they\u2019re used, the way I use mine, and I\u2019m sure everyone has their peeves. But if someone asked me point-blank what kind of device or interface or interaction I would create to solve the issue, to make things better, less tech-addictive and more human-focused, I wouldn\u2019t know what to say.
\nIf I were given more time, I\u2019d probably try to start with something people would familiarise with in no time and interact with in ways that are even easier and more intuitive than taking out a smartphone and fiddling with it. Maybe this, too, was something Humane considered in their brainstorming sessions. And maybe the Ai Pin is what they consider a good answer to such proposition.
\nBut from what I\u2019ve seen in the demonstrations showing how to use the Ai Pin, this device doesn\u2019t seem all that intuitive and easy to pick up, and it doesn\u2019t seem to be more frictionless than using a smartphone. It also faces the basically insurmountable challenge of winning over people who have accumulated years of smartphone-centric habits. But even I \u2014 who am terrible at marketing and predicting technology trends \u2014 understand that people only change their habits if the reward is receiving more comfort and convenience. The Ai Pin brings awkwardness in every sense of the term, and little else.
\nOversimplifying, the Ai Pin is like having a Siri\u2011, Alexa\u2011, or Google Assistant-powered smart home device always with you. You wear it. The main form of interaction is you asking it to do things for you or to retrieve information you need. You have to talk to it. There is no really tangible interface. Any visual interaction may happen with a UI that is laser-projected on the palm of your hand. While you\u2019re reading this, do this quick thought-experiment and ask yourselves, Would I seek to purchase such a device solely based on this description? Would I ditch my iPhone or Android phone for such a device? Yeah, I thought as much.
\nEver since Siri was introduced in 2011, I talked about how fundamentally sceptical I am regarding voice-only interaction with this type of virtual assistants. (It\u2019s hard to find short quotes, but you should go back and read Siri\u2019s fuzziness and friction from 2015 and more importantly A few stray observations on voice assistants from 2018).
\nBefore this list grows and grows, let\u2019s stop for a moment and focus on what I consider the fundamental point of failure of this device (and other similarly-working assistants): people don\u2019t like and don\u2019t want to interact with devices via voice commands and voice-based interaction. They just don\u2019t. There are exceptions at the extremes of the spectrum, like spoiled tech bros on one side, and people with disabilities on the other. But the vast majority of regular people find this kind of interaction awkward, fatiguing, uncomfortable (especially in public) and ultimately inefficient. For the past ten years or so I have accumulated a fair amount of data through personal observation but also through repeated surveys targeting different demographics in the part of the world where I live, and the results have never changed. Only a negligible sample of people use these virtual assistants with some frequency. The vast majority still prefers doing things themselves: setting timers, choosing and changing music, looking for places to eat, checking their schedule, finding the shortest route to their destination. In other words, they like to be and feel in control, they find that taking out their smartphone or tablet and checking things themselves is way quicker than asking stuff to a virtual assistant the right way so that they can extract a meaningful response, and they really really don\u2019t like talking out loud to an inanimate object.
\nI was talking with a friend recently about this subject, and during our chat another important aspect of this kind of voice-based interaction came to light \u2014 and it further explains why a lot of people find it fatiguing. It\u2019s information retention on the part of the user. In the Ai Pin showcase page on Humane\u2019s website, the Catch me up feature is presented like this: Simply say \u201cCatch me up,\u201d and your Ai Pin does all the work of sifting your texts and calls to give you the essence of what you need to know \u2014 and saving you precious time for what\u2019s important. The response may vary according to how busy you are and what\u2019s going on at the moment in your life, but I suppose that when you prompt the Pin this way, you\u2019ll still receive a fair amount of information. How much of it will you actually remember?
\nI don\u2019t think I\u2019m alone in preferring to go through my stuff myself, using a device where the information is presented clearly and can be interacted with easily and directly, and take note of what\u2019s important. It may take longer, but I end up retaining more information in the process. It\u2019s a more satisfying experience. Perhaps I may miss something, but given the black box nature of these devices, how sure can you be that they have caught everything there was to catch?
\nThe Ai Pin makes the same conceptual mistake behind all the assistants that preceded it: to treat all people as if they were so utterly helpless and clueless to manage even basic stuff. And to grossly miscalculate which tasks people find tedious and willing to delegate to a machine. These assistants want to assist with stuff people have no problem doing themselves, and they do so through an interaction model that ultimately makes things more awkward, impractical, and longer to accomplish. (On the other hand, it\u2019s a good interaction model for people who have different types of motoric or visual disabilities and need assistance when sending and receiving messages, collecting information, etc.).
\nPerhaps it\u2019s too early to say, but I strongly feel a certain similarity between the Ai Pin and Google Glass. Like I previously noted in A few stray observations on voice assistants:
\n\n\nIt has been pointed out how Google Glass has turned out to be a failed attempt as a general-purpose device aimed at the general public, but a more successful one in limited, specialised applications and environments. I believe voice assistants have started with the wrong foot [\u2026] I think that if voice assistants had been originally designed having people with disabilities as first and sole target audience (instead of lazy tech dudes), and then gradually extended to everyone else, today they\u2019d be a bit better.\n
And:
\n\n\n[T]here\u2019s a big difference when your goal is to develop a tool that makes your life-as-an-able-bodied-person easier (read: spoiled) instead of a tool that makes the life of a disabled person more tolerable. Your able-bodied person\u2019s \u2018friction\u2019 is bullshit compared to the real friction of a person with any disability. A useful virtual assistant is one that, first and foremost, addresses a few crucial types of impairments. Design with that in mind, give precedence to solving problems related to the interaction between a person with impairments, develop against those, test against those, then worry about perfectly healthy twenty-somethings who are too inconvenienced to manually select the music they want to play.\n
Instead there\u2019s this urge to create The Next Big Thing that will be a hit for everyone, everywhere. And to create it in one fell swoop, skipping all the steps that might help you really get there.
\nAnd this insistence on treating \u2018AI\u2019 (in quotes, because artificial intelligence doesn\u2019t exist) as a panacea for everything is as misguided as it is tiring. In wanting to feed these hungry \u2018AI\u2019 Black Boxes with all kind of data, and especially personal, sensitive data, we are quickly and surely creating that Big Brother George Orwell warned us about in his novel 1984. A novel that, I feel, is more cited than actually read and understood.
\nAt the end of the day, like my friend and I were saying in our chat, what comes after the smartphone has to be something that it\u2019s better, more pleasant to use, easier to interact with, more efficient in use, and providing an even more fulfilling experience. A device like the Ai Pin doesn\u2019t fit this description, at least in its current state.
\nBack to his piece, Jesper wonders:
\n\n\nThe Humane Ai Pin didn\u2019t happen by chance and was not lazily extracted from between the couch cushions. A lot of talented people spent a lot of time at it, clearly chasing a deep vision.
\nSo why does it seem so terribly, undeniably off?\n
My theory \u2014 and it\u2019s just that, a theory \u2014 is that this final product isn\u2019t exactly the embodiment of Humane\u2019s original idea. That\u2019s what feels off to me, for the most part. I may be completely wrong about this, but the more I look at it, the more I feel that Humane had a much more ambitious concept in the design phase than essentially putting Alexa in an iPod shuffle, but the technology they would have had to put inside it was perhaps still out of reach, or it would have been so expensive to implement and deploy that they would need to give the final product a price tag so ridiculous nobody would buy it. At $700, the Ai Pin is already a hard sell as it is.
\n", "content_text": "As I was gathering some notes for this piece and reading other people\u2019s takes, I found myself in a very similar position as Jesper\u2019s.\nHis article begins as follows:\n\nThe Humane Ai Pin has been announced, a phone alternative trying its best to not be a phone in any way. Humane famously spearheaded by ex-Apple luminaries Imran Chaudhri (with large amounts of the iPhone and multi-touch user experience to his name), Bethany Bongiorno (a Director of Software Engineering from the launch of the original iPad) and counting among its ranks Ken Kocienda (part of the initial Safari/WebKit team and designer of the first software keyboard and typing autocorrect), I\u2019m finding myself wondering what I\u2019m missing.\n\nThere are a lot of people in Humane\u2019s personnel who have an impressive background in understanding user interfaces and human-machine interaction. There are a few aspects of the Ai Pin I find fairly interesting, and I think they nailed both the hardware design of the device, and its wearability. I also think that the concept of the Pin, in its most abstract sense, is pretty intriguing. I\u2019ve always believed that technology and machines should serve people and adapt to their needs, instead of the other way round. So, when at the beginning Humane vaguely hinted at working on something following this philosophy, my interest was piqued. I think smartphones have done a lot of good to society, but also a lot of harm when it comes to the interpersonal sphere. And whenever I\u2019ve had the time to be at my most contemplative, I\u2019ve often thought about what is the next step beyond smartphones. That\u2019s why I was very interested in Humane\u2019s intents and projects. Again, these people are not amateurs at all. Let\u2019s hear them out.\nWhen mentions of this upcoming device being fully \u2018AI\u2019-powered started to appear, my interest started waning a little. But wait \u2014 I said to myself \u2014 perhaps Humane has found an innovative way to make \u2018AI\u2019 work. Some kind of left-field implementation. Who knows. \nThen the Ai Pin was announced and demoed. And my reaction was just like that famously memetic GIF of the Star Trek character Jean-Luc Picard, with his resigned, frustrated facepalm.\nFor me, the most ironic aspect of what doesn\u2019t work with the Ai Pin is that it underwhelms in the two main departments I least expected it to underwhelm: user interface and human-machine interaction. \nI know nothing about the thought process the people at Humane went through to bring forward the idea of the Pin, but I suspect that a lot of analysis about how people use and interact with smartphones was involved. They must have asked themselves, What can we do to go beyond this? \u2014 What do we feel is wrong with the way people interact with their phones, and what can we do to improve things? \u2014 What kind of human-device interaction can make things smoother and frictionless but also make the relationship less device-centric, less addictive? \u2014 You know, questions like these. It\u2019s rather clear to me that they wanted to come up with a device that could be out of the way as much as possible but also be as useful in assisting users so that they would not miss using a smartphone.\nThis intent, this design, is worthy of praise. This is difficult territory. I know well all the little things that annoy me about smartphones, the way they\u2019re used, the way I use mine, and I\u2019m sure everyone has their peeves. But if someone asked me point-blank what kind of device or interface or interaction I would create to solve the issue, to make things better, less tech-addictive and more human-focused, I wouldn\u2019t know what to say.\nIf I were given more time, I\u2019d probably try to start with something people would familiarise with in no time and interact with in ways that are even easier and more intuitive than taking out a smartphone and fiddling with it. Maybe this, too, was something Humane considered in their brainstorming sessions. And maybe the Ai Pin is what they consider a good answer to such proposition.\nBut from what I\u2019ve seen in the demonstrations showing how to use the Ai Pin, this device doesn\u2019t seem all that intuitive and easy to pick up, and it doesn\u2019t seem to be more frictionless than using a smartphone. It also faces the basically insurmountable challenge of winning over people who have accumulated years of smartphone-centric habits. But even I \u2014 who am terrible at marketing and predicting technology trends \u2014 understand that people only change their habits if the reward is receiving more comfort and convenience. The Ai Pin brings awkwardness in every sense of the term, and little else.\nOversimplifying, the Ai Pin is like having a Siri\u2011, Alexa\u2011, or Google Assistant-powered smart home device always with you. You wear it. The main form of interaction is you asking it to do things for you or to retrieve information you need. You have to talk to it. There is no really tangible interface. Any visual interaction may happen with a UI that is laser-projected on the palm of your hand. While you\u2019re reading this, do this quick thought-experiment and ask yourselves, Would I seek to purchase such a device solely based on this description? Would I ditch my iPhone or Android phone for such a device? Yeah, I thought as much. \nEver since Siri was introduced in 2011, I talked about how fundamentally sceptical I am regarding voice-only interaction with this type of virtual assistants. (It\u2019s hard to find short quotes, but you should go back and read Siri\u2019s fuzziness and friction from 2015 and more importantly A few stray observations on voice assistants from 2018).\n\nThey\u2019re essentially black boxes, which is a real problem when it comes to feedback. Can I just talk to them in plain language? Do I need to use some kind of formulaic pattern so that my requests have a higher chance to be recognised and acted upon? Does the Assistant understand concatenated questions? (You ask question 1. Assistant responds. You ask question 2 based on the Assistant\u2019s response to question 1. Is the Assistant still \u2018following\u2019 you or has it reset?) How does the Assistant handle ambiguity in language and speech?\nThis can lead to friction in the interaction, and I suppose things are not that different from what happens with Siri already (which has been happening since Siri appeared): like I wrote in Siri\u2019s fuzziness and friction, \u201cSiri is the kind of interface where, when everything works, there\u2019s a complete lack of friction. But when it does not work, the amount of friction involved rapidly increases[\u2026]\u201d\nAnother by-product of being black boxes is their reliability. Both regarding how they handle communication failures, and regarding how reliable, i.e. trustworthy, is the information they relay. In these products\u2019 demo videos everything happens flawlessly. In real life, virtual assistants misunderstand you more often than not. Like my dad had suggested in the conversation I reported in my afore-linked piece A few stray observations on voice assistants, \u201cReliability must be put first with these assistants. They ought to understand you at once, and if they don\u2019t, they ought to allow you to correct them as quickly as possible. Otherwise they\u2019re just like that subordinate at the office who is supposed to help you do the work, but he doesn\u2019t understand or misunderstands what you want him to do, and you end up doing more work to fix the misunderstandings.\u201d \nThe Ai Pin requires a lot of trust on the part of the user. The user must be comfortable wearing a device which essentially constantly monitors its surroundings. And, as hinted above, the user has to trust any response coming from the Pin. Showing that you can hold some almonds and ask the Pin whether you can eat them or not is a cool interaction. But should we trust its response to be factual and correct? Some have already pointed out that in a few usage examples of the Ai Pin made by Humane, the Pin gave incorrect responses, which isn\u2019t exactly trust-building.\n\nBefore this list grows and grows, let\u2019s stop for a moment and focus on what I consider the fundamental point of failure of this device (and other similarly-working assistants): people don\u2019t like and don\u2019t want to interact with devices via voice commands and voice-based interaction. They just don\u2019t. There are exceptions at the extremes of the spectrum, like spoiled tech bros on one side, and people with disabilities on the other. But the vast majority of regular people find this kind of interaction awkward, fatiguing, uncomfortable (especially in public) and ultimately inefficient. For the past ten years or so I have accumulated a fair amount of data through personal observation but also through repeated surveys targeting different demographics in the part of the world where I live, and the results have never changed. Only a negligible sample of people use these virtual assistants with some frequency. The vast majority still prefers doing things themselves: setting timers, choosing and changing music, looking for places to eat, checking their schedule, finding the shortest route to their destination. In other words, they like to be and feel in control, they find that taking out their smartphone or tablet and checking things themselves is way quicker than asking stuff to a virtual assistant the right way so that they can extract a meaningful response, and they really really don\u2019t like talking out loud to an inanimate object.\nI was talking with a friend recently about this subject, and during our chat another important aspect of this kind of voice-based interaction came to light \u2014 and it further explains why a lot of people find it fatiguing. It\u2019s information retention on the part of the user. In the Ai Pin showcase page on Humane\u2019s website, the Catch me up feature is presented like this: Simply say \u201cCatch me up,\u201d and your Ai Pin does all the work of sifting your texts and calls to give you the essence of what you need to know \u2014 and saving you precious time for what\u2019s important. The response may vary according to how busy you are and what\u2019s going on at the moment in your life, but I suppose that when you prompt the Pin this way, you\u2019ll still receive a fair amount of information. How much of it will you actually remember? \nI don\u2019t think I\u2019m alone in preferring to go through my stuff myself, using a device where the information is presented clearly and can be interacted with easily and directly, and take note of what\u2019s important. It may take longer, but I end up retaining more information in the process. It\u2019s a more satisfying experience. Perhaps I may miss something, but given the black box nature of these devices, how sure can you be that they have caught everything there was to catch?\nThe Ai Pin makes the same conceptual mistake behind all the assistants that preceded it: to treat all people as if they were so utterly helpless and clueless to manage even basic stuff. And to grossly miscalculate which tasks people find tedious and willing to delegate to a machine. These assistants want to assist with stuff people have no problem doing themselves, and they do so through an interaction model that ultimately makes things more awkward, impractical, and longer to accomplish. (On the other hand, it\u2019s a good interaction model for people who have different types of motoric or visual disabilities and need assistance when sending and receiving messages, collecting information, etc.). \nPerhaps it\u2019s too early to say, but I strongly feel a certain similarity between the Ai Pin and Google Glass. Like I previously noted in A few stray observations on voice assistants:\n\nIt has been pointed out how Google Glass has turned out to be a failed attempt as a general-purpose device aimed at the general public, but a more successful one in limited, specialised applications and environments. I believe voice assistants have started with the wrong foot [\u2026] I think that if voice assistants had been originally designed having people with disabilities as first and sole target audience (instead of lazy tech dudes), and then gradually extended to everyone else, today they\u2019d be a bit better.\n\nAnd: \n\n[T]here\u2019s a big difference when your goal is to develop a tool that makes your life-as-an-able-bodied-person easier (read: spoiled) instead of a tool that makes the life of a disabled person more tolerable. Your able-bodied person\u2019s \u2018friction\u2019 is bullshit compared to the real friction of a person with any disability. A useful virtual assistant is one that, first and foremost, addresses a few crucial types of impairments. Design with that in mind, give precedence to solving problems related to the interaction between a person with impairments, develop against those, test against those, then worry about perfectly healthy twenty-somethings who are too inconvenienced to manually select the music they want to play.\n\nInstead there\u2019s this urge to create The Next Big Thing that will be a hit for everyone, everywhere. And to create it in one fell swoop, skipping all the steps that might help you really get there.\nAnd this insistence on treating \u2018AI\u2019 (in quotes, because artificial intelligence doesn\u2019t exist) as a panacea for everything is as misguided as it is tiring. In wanting to feed these hungry \u2018AI\u2019 Black Boxes with all kind of data, and especially personal, sensitive data, we are quickly and surely creating that Big Brother George Orwell warned us about in his novel 1984. A novel that, I feel, is more cited than actually read and understood.\nAt the end of the day, like my friend and I were saying in our chat, what comes after the smartphone has to be something that it\u2019s better, more pleasant to use, easier to interact with, more efficient in use, and providing an even more fulfilling experience. A device like the Ai Pin doesn\u2019t fit this description, at least in its current state.\nBack to his piece, Jesper wonders:\n\nThe Humane Ai Pin didn\u2019t happen by chance and was not lazily extracted from between the couch cushions. A lot of talented people spent a lot of time at it, clearly chasing a deep vision.\nSo why does it seem so terribly, undeniably off?\n\nMy theory \u2014 and it\u2019s just that, a theory \u2014 is that this final product isn\u2019t exactly the embodiment of Humane\u2019s original idea. That\u2019s what feels off to me, for the most part. I may be completely wrong about this, but the more I look at it, the more I feel that Humane had a much more ambitious concept in the design phase than essentially putting Alexa in an iPod shuffle, but the technology they would have had to put inside it was perhaps still out of reach, or it would have been so expensive to implement and deploy that they would need to give the final product a price tag so ridiculous nobody would buy it. At $700, the Ai Pin is already a hard sell as it is.", "date_published": "2023-12-08T17:17:29+01:00", "date_modified": "2023-12-08T17:31:09+01:00", "authors": [ { "name": "Riccardo Mori", "url": "https://morrick.me/archives/author/admin", "avatar": "https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/ed738e1ed4787ff5636abfe6a6e39610?s=512&d=blank&r=g" } ], "author": { "name": "Riccardo Mori", "url": "https://morrick.me/archives/author/admin", "avatar": "https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/ed738e1ed4787ff5636abfe6a6e39610?s=512&d=blank&r=g" }, "tags": [ "Design", "English", "UX", "Tech Life" ], "summary": "Not really more humane, not really more smartphone." }, { "id": "https://morrick.me/?p=9790", "url": "https://morrick.me/archives/9790", "title": "A long-overdue status update", "content_html": "I realise that lately the silence here must have felt deafening for a fair amount of my loyal readers. My apologies. This time, things behind the scenes have also been more problematic due to an issue I had with the email account tied to this website, which I extensively use to respond to any feedback related to my articles.
\nThe issue turned out to be simple in nature, but since the system was failing silently, it took me a while before realising what was going on, and an additional little while to troubleshoot and resolve matters. The consequences have been a bit disastrous, though. Essentially, if you wrote me an email between mid-October and mid-November 2023, I couldn\u2019t access it before 20 November or so, and it\u2019s now part of a pretty sizeable email backlog I\u2019m trying to go through in my spare time.
\nIn other words, if you\u2019ve written me in the past month and a half (or even longer in some cases), I haven\u2019t been ignoring you \u2014 I just couldn\u2019t see your message immediately; I have seen it now, and I will try to get back to you. I want to especially apologise to Vladimir Prelovac, whom I still owe some feedback about the Orion browser (which is still my main browser on Mac along with Vivaldi), and to Maciej W., who wrote me a long and thoughtful email talking about the subject of my previous article on Apple\u2019s DNA and Europe\u2019s DMA.
\nI normally don\u2019t write status updates and \u201csorry for not having posted anything in a while\u201d blog posts. Years ago I used to publish more stuff more frequently here, trying to keep up with the frantic pace of technology. It didn\u2019t take long to realise that it wasn\u2019t feasible. Especially when my daily job became more demanding of my time and attention. In recent years, tech has also become a rather weary subject to follow, debate, talk about. Essentially, my stance is that I publish an article when I have something to say. When I don\u2019t have anything useful to say or add to a discussion, I just don\u2019t write and I also don\u2019t like to pepper this place with short-form things like quick links or brief quotes with one-line commentary. I use Mastodon (and X/Twitter, but less and less frequently) for that.
\nBut in this case I made an exception because among the emails that are now queued in this big backlog I\u2019ve seen subjects like, \u201cAre you okay?\u201d, \u201cEverything good?\u201d, \u201cYou\u2019re not dead, are you?\u201d, and so on. These are clearly people who only follow my blog and don\u2019t follow me on social media, otherwise they would know I\u2019m okay. So, given this level of concern \u2014 thank you, everyone, it really means a lot \u2014 I wanted to write an update and reassure you all. I\u2019m fine. Lately I\u2019m just busier than the usual level of busy, and alternately fatigued and annoyed by technology. I\u2019m also a lot behind my RSS feed reading, and when this happens, one frustrating consequence is that by the time I can write something in reaction to a certain piece of news or commentary, the debate (and inevitably the interest) around it has already died down.
\nAnyway, I hope this status update has been useful and helped clearing things up about what\u2019s been going on behind the scenes. I\u2019m currently writing a new piece, which I hope to publish here shortly. Thank you all again for your concern and for your messages of support. It\u2019s always greatly appreciated.
\n", "content_text": "I realise that lately the silence here must have felt deafening for a fair amount of my loyal readers. My apologies. This time, things behind the scenes have also been more problematic due to an issue I had with the email account tied to this website, which I extensively use to respond to any feedback related to my articles.\nThe issue turned out to be simple in nature, but since the system was failing silently, it took me a while before realising what was going on, and an additional little while to troubleshoot and resolve matters. The consequences have been a bit disastrous, though. Essentially, if you wrote me an email between mid-October and mid-November 2023, I couldn\u2019t access it before 20 November or so, and it\u2019s now part of a pretty sizeable email backlog I\u2019m trying to go through in my spare time. \nIn other words, if you\u2019ve written me in the past month and a half (or even longer in some cases), I haven\u2019t been ignoring you \u2014 I just couldn\u2019t see your message immediately; I have seen it now, and I will try to get back to you. I want to especially apologise to Vladimir Prelovac, whom I still owe some feedback about the Orion browser (which is still my main browser on Mac along with Vivaldi), and to Maciej W., who wrote me a long and thoughtful email talking about the subject of my previous article on Apple\u2019s DNA and Europe\u2019s DMA. \nI normally don\u2019t write status updates and \u201csorry for not having posted anything in a while\u201d blog posts. Years ago I used to publish more stuff more frequently here, trying to keep up with the frantic pace of technology. It didn\u2019t take long to realise that it wasn\u2019t feasible. Especially when my daily job became more demanding of my time and attention. In recent years, tech has also become a rather weary subject to follow, debate, talk about. Essentially, my stance is that I publish an article when I have something to say. When I don\u2019t have anything useful to say or add to a discussion, I just don\u2019t write and I also don\u2019t like to pepper this place with short-form things like quick links or brief quotes with one-line commentary. I use Mastodon (and X/Twitter, but less and less frequently) for that.\nBut in this case I made an exception because among the emails that are now queued in this big backlog I\u2019ve seen subjects like, \u201cAre you okay?\u201d, \u201cEverything good?\u201d, \u201cYou\u2019re not dead, are you?\u201d, and so on. These are clearly people who only follow my blog and don\u2019t follow me on social media, otherwise they would know I\u2019m okay. So, given this level of concern \u2014 thank you, everyone, it really means a lot \u2014 I wanted to write an update and reassure you all. I\u2019m fine. Lately I\u2019m just busier than the usual level of busy, and alternately fatigued and annoyed by technology. I\u2019m also a lot behind my RSS feed reading, and when this happens, one frustrating consequence is that by the time I can write something in reaction to a certain piece of news or commentary, the debate (and inevitably the interest) around it has already died down.\nAnyway, I hope this status update has been useful and helped clearing things up about what\u2019s been going on behind the scenes. I\u2019m currently writing a new piece, which I hope to publish here shortly. Thank you all again for your concern and for your messages of support. It\u2019s always greatly appreciated.", "date_published": "2023-11-26T14:42:50+01:00", "date_modified": "2023-11-26T14:42:50+01:00", "authors": [ { "name": "Riccardo Mori", "url": "https://morrick.me/archives/author/admin", "avatar": "https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/ed738e1ed4787ff5636abfe6a6e39610?s=512&d=blank&r=g" } ], "author": { "name": "Riccardo Mori", "url": "https://morrick.me/archives/author/admin", "avatar": "https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/ed738e1ed4787ff5636abfe6a6e39610?s=512&d=blank&r=g" }, "tags": [ "English", "Self", "Writing", "Briefly" ], "summary": "It's been a while, and no, I'm not dead." }, { "id": "https://morrick.me/?p=9768", "url": "https://morrick.me/archives/9768", "title": "Apple\u2019s DNA and Europe\u2019s DMA", "content_html": "I praised a few video essays by Jon Prosser in the past, and I respect the guy, but while his latest This is the END of Apple may have a \u2018hit\u2019 title and premise, I feel it\u2019s actually a \u2018miss\u2019. A fair warning and admission: I\u2019ve only watched the first 10 minutes of this 14-minute video, then I got so irritated that I had to close the browser tab. But I think it was enough to understand Prosser\u2019s argument, and in any case what I\u2019m going to talk about here is based on what I watched, so I don\u2019t think I\u2019m jumping to conclusions. But do let me know if I missed something crucial.
\nProsser\u2019s video first points out how the appearance of USB\u2011C in iPhones is remarkable because for the first time in Apple\u2019s history, it\u2019s not exactly there because Apple chose to go this route, but it was a decision heavily influenced by EU legislation and its Digital Markets Act. Prosser theorises that this turning point \u2014 Apple\u2019s compliance with government legislation \u2014 may very well be the beginning of the end for Apple. Because now that the EU Commission has successfully forced Apple\u2019s hand, like the story of the mouse and the cookie, the EU will want more, the EU will require Apple to make changes to their products in ways that go against Apple\u2019s own direction, and ultimately against Apple\u2019s DNA. This is what Prosser calls \u2018the end of Apple\u2019.
\nProsser:
\n\n\nA week or so ago, a chief of EU industry, Thierry Breton, publicly called on Tim Cook to open up the iPhone\u2019s walled garden ecosystem of hardware and software to\u2026 rivals. In a quote, Thierry said, The next job for Apple and other Big Tech, under the DMA (Digital Markets Act) is to open up its gates to competitors. Be it the electronic wallet, browsers or app stores, consumers using an Apple iPhone should be able to benefit from competitive services by a range of providers.
\nThis doesn\u2019t seem like an unreasonable request for most companies, and it can be hard to pinpoint where the problem lies exactly for iPhone users, for Apple fans in general. But let\u2019s really look at what this means. Under this new DMA law, Apple\u2019s major platforms like the App Store, Safari, and iOS as a whole were officially classified as \u2018gatekeepers\u2019 [Note: To be precise, the Wikipedia entry for the Digital Markets Act states that \u201cTwenty-two services across six companies \u2014 Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, ByteDance, Meta, and Microsoft \u2014 were named as \u2018gatekeepers\u2019 by the EU in September 2023.\u201d] and as a solution Apple is expected to add support for the sideloading of apps from outside the App Store on iPhones and iPads. Apple\u2019s argument for their walled garden approach has always been user security and privacy. Obviously the lack of competition in their own platform is another huge positive, and our guy Thierry was quick to respond to that argument too. In a quote, he said, EU regulation fosters innovation, without compromising on security and privacy. And in a very \u2018Apple\u2019 move, [Apple] haven\u2019t responded to this comment. But I will: this is fucked up!\n
Here Prosser inserts a Steve Jobs quote taken from the interview at the All Things Digital D8 Conference in 2010 with Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher:
\n\n\nWe\u2019re just people running this company. We\u2019re trying to make great products for people, and so we have at least the courage of our convictions to say, \u201cWe don\u2019t think this is part of what makes a great product, we\u2019re gonna leave it out\u201d. Some people are going to not like that, they\u2019re going to call us names, it\u2019s not going to be in certain companies\u2019 vested interests that we do that, but we\u2019re going to take the heat. Because we want to make the best product in the world for customers, and we\u2019re going to instead focus our energy on these technologies which we think are in their ascendancy and we think are going to be the right technologies for customers. And you know what? They\u2019re paying us to make those choices! That\u2019s what a lot of customers pay us to do, to try to make the best products we can, and if we succeed they\u2019ll buy them. And if we don\u2019t, they won\u2019t.\n
Then Prosser comments:
\n\n\nThis opening of Apple\u2019s ecosystem is not pro-consumer. This is not something consumers \u2014 Apple\u2019s iPhone users specifically \u2014 are asking for. This is just anti-Apple, and it\u2019s kind of gross.\n
So much to unpack here. I\u2019ll start from the very last paragraph quoted above, and loudly call bullshit.
\nThis opening of Apple\u2019s ecosystem is very much pro-consumer, and very much anti-fanboy. I sympathise a lot with that Steve Jobs\u2019s quote, and every time I see excerpts from his attendances at the various \u2018D\u2019 Conferences I get nostalgic and start missing the man badly. But we have to put that quote in context. And the context is the year 2010, thirteen years ago, when the newest phone was the iPhone 4, the latest iOS version was iOS 4, the first iPad had just been introduced, the iOS App Store was two years old, and iCloud didn\u2019t exist yet. An era when Apple\u2019s ecosystem was rather strong in general, but not as stifling as it would become in the following thirteen years.
\nI\u2019ve been writing online about tech since late 2004 (if you don\u2019t count my participation in forums and mailing lists, which started circa 2000), and I\u2019ve launched this website in 2011. Since morrick.me started getting some traction circa 2014, I have lost count of the number of emails I have received from people, Apple users, utterly frustrated by the progressively walled-garden structure of Apple\u2019s mobile ecosystem. Even back when the iPhone 3G was introduced, and it finally became widely available here in Europe as well, I had clients and friends who were puzzled by certain aspects of \u2018Apple\u2019s way of doing things\u2019. Bluetooth file transfer between phones was one. An acquaintance at the time pointed out how easy it was for them to just send any file via Bluetooth from a Nokia (or any other brand) dumb phone to another phone, with just a few clicks. Try that with an iPhone to any other phone, or even between iPhones. There was no AirDrop back then. The quickest way was sending the file via email, or maybe uploading it somewhere and sharing the download link. Or using some kind of third-party solution, but both iPhones had to have the same third-party app installed, and so forth.
\nWhen Jobs says, That\u2019s what a lot of customers pay us to do, to try to make the best products we can, and if we succeed they\u2019ll buy them. And if we don\u2019t, they won\u2019t. \u2014 That\u2019s not as clear-cut as it perhaps was in 2010. Recently, in a feedback email I received, one of my readers was sharing his exasperation about feeling irrevocably locked into Apple\u2019s ecosystem:
\n\n\nI\u2019ve seen a lot of interesting Android devices in the past 2\u20133 years or so. I like what certain brands like Google and Samsung and Nothing are doing with the design. iPhones feel stale in comparison. And Android, I\u2019ve tried the latest version on a borrowed Google Pixel. I like it. When you remove all the crap and the bloatware, it\u2019s pleasant, and certain quality apps don\u2019t feel that much different from their iOS counterparts. I also think this Pixel takes better photos than my iPhone 13.
\nBut I can\u2019t just switch to Android and leave the iPhone behind. Why? Because friends and family all have iPhones. Because chats means using iMessage. Video calls means FaceTime. Photo sharing, file sharing means iCloud. Convenience should mean using whatever the hell solution you want to seamlessly connect with others. Not, let\u2019s just all lock ourselves in the same ecosystem and use the tools that are graciously bestowed on us by our overlords.
\nAnd before you ask, no, I can\u2019t afford to dual-wield an iPhone and an Android phone. I\u2019m also not saying it\u2019s impossible for me to just switch. I\u2019d probably find a workaround for many situations where the 2 platforms [iOS and Android] diverge. But it\u2019s exhausting, and you know, also ridiculous if you stop and think about it. It\u2019s 2023, there should be more interoperability and fewer ivory towers, you know? These constraints look more and more stupid and artificial.\n
And this is by no means the only message I\u2019ve received with this kind of complaint or frustration.
\nTo avoid becoming too long-winded, I\u2019ll point you to my article On sideloading from November 2021. My position on the matter hasn\u2019t changed since then (it never changed, by the way).
\nPainting sideloading as this serious threat against Apple\u2019s ecosystem or even DNA is really just parroting Apple\u2019s stance and just accepting a closed and proprietary system as the best and most consumer-friendly solution. It is neither. It\u2019s simply the easiest solution to implement, the easiest to maintain, and the one that potentially brings more money through user lock-in.
\nApple likes to use privacy and security as a way to justify the walled-garden approach of its mobile ecosystem. I don\u2019t doubt that a locked-down system (like current Macs\u2019 hardware and some parts of Mac OS) or a locked-down platform (like iOS on iPhones and iPads) is inherently more secure than a system or platform where users have complete freedom of movement and choice. But the flipside is, well, that as a consequence, users do not have complete freedom of movement and choice. So they cannot replace a Mac\u2019s internal SSD or expand a Mac\u2019s RAM if they want more down the road, because it\u2019s all soldered and impenetrable. You have to go through Apple, probably spending double or triple what you would spend by sourcing the parts yourself and replacing them yourself or having them replaced in a repair shop.
\nAnd if someone creates a wonderful Commodore or Nintendo simulator to play classic games on your iOS device, and Apple rejects the app citing some App Store rule, you won\u2019t be able to enjoy such app, full stop. If someone creates an iOS utility that truly takes advantage of certain iPhone/iPad features, but in a way Apple considers too \u2018close to the metal\u2019 or too competitive with what they\u2019re already offering in the operating system, Apple will reject this utility. Not because it\u2019s \u2018dangerous\u2019 or \u2018malware\u2019, but because it interferes with their agenda in some way. And we should believe that Apple has the customer\u2019s best interests at heart? Sideloading may open the doors to frauds, scams, and malware, but also to many potential great apps that are currently rejected for some bizarre App Store rule, technicality, or interference with Apple\u2019s internal plans. And by the way, the current state of all App Stores is not really secure for customers either, since a plethora of scammy apps are discovered practically every day. As I wrote back in 2021:
\n\n\n[Back when the App Store was first introduced] Instead of teaching users how to fish, Apple decided to position themselves as sole purveyors of the best selection of fish. Now, leave aside for a moment all the tech-oriented observations you could make here. Just stop and think about how arrogant and patronising this attitude is. Sure, I can believe the genuine concerns of providing users with the smoothest experience and protecting them from badly-written apps (or just straight malware) that could compromise the stability of their devices. But by not taking a more moderate approach (it\u2019s either we lock down the platform or we\u2019ll have the cyber equivalent of the Wild West!), you also deprive users of choice and responsibility.
\nThe problem of appointing yourself as the sole guardian and gatekeeper of the software that should or should not reach your users is that you\u2019re expected to be infallible, and rightly so. Especially if you are a tech giant which supposedly has enough money and resources to do such a splendid job that is virtually indistinguishable from infallibility. Instead we know well just how many untrustworthy and scammy apps have been and are plaguing the App Store, and how inconsistent and unpredictable the App Review process generally is.\n
It\u2019s worrying to me that Prosser and so many technophiles (especially from the US) prefer to side with Apple and Big Tech and frame this whole matter as government/legislation versus tech companies/innovation \u2014 the typical us-versus-them mentality \u2014 as if these were two irreconcilable entities. In a world where tech companies are dictating and controlling (directly or indirectly) so many aspects of our lives, seeing a governmental body and legislation \u2014 whose purpose is to really care about people\u2019s best interests \u2014 as the enemy is just misguided. According to many of these nerds, tech companies should be given free rein to do whatever they please, because otherwise innovation would not happen; and we should give them free rein also because they said they want what\u2019s best for their customers and we of course must believe this narrative, because tech companies are typically sincere and altruistic in their pursuits. Shareholders, fiscal quarter results, money and capitalism are just minor, tertiary factors we shouldn\u2019t really look too much into \u2014 Right?
\nYou know what\u2019s gross and fucked up, Prosser? Siding with Big Tech today, instead of understanding that maybe a bit of legislation and compliance is necessary to protect customers from being treated like sheep with wallets, or reduced as products.
\nThe typical retort, If they don\u2019t like the status quo, customers can vote with their wallet, is just ridiculous and out of touch with many realities. Platform lock-in is a serious issue, and many people can\u2019t just buy an Android phone or a Linux laptop on a whim or in protest. Sometimes migrating platforms involves many months or even years of transition, especially if your business has always gravitated around Apple solutions. Sometimes you can\u2019t even migrate to a platform while leaving the other entirely behind, because your clients need compatible, cross-platform solutions. And on a personal level, like with the feedback email I quoted before, what keeps you locked into a platform is peer pressure, or the increased friction you would experience by switching. Mind you, increased friction that is artificially created by tech companies to keep you locked in. Friction that tech companies, if they truly wanted to enhance people\u2019s lives, would remove and let people decide what they want by really offering them incredibly good-quality products. Healthy competition and all that, you see.
\nBecause if you think about it, one quite detrimental side effect of a locked-down ecosystem is that you as a company (especially if you\u2019re in Apple\u2019s position) are not exactly incentivised to provide quality software. Apple still makes good hardware, but when software is concerned, the \u2018good quality\u2019 is essentially a myth today. The quality here is mostly tied to Apple\u2019s reputation and legacy, but its software has been on a downward spiral since Jobs passed away. With so many locked-in customers, you can get away with so many things, such as the appalling quality and reliability of iCloud services, which is incredibly baffling considering the resources of a trillion-dollar company and the fact that by now iCloud has been around for twelve years. Same with Siri, another 12-year-old fiasco. And some people complain, but due to the intricacies of switching to third-party solutions, or even migrating entirely, they remain within Apple\u2019s ecosystem, so customer retention is really not something Apple is terribly worried about.
\nSo, since people don\u2019t really have enough power to make tech companies behave in a more customer-friendly way, it\u2019s entirely natural that the government step in to act as a sort of mediator. I don\u2019t know if it\u2019s because I\u2019m European and have a different mindset from an American citizen, but I welcome this attempt by the EU Commission to legislate and provide a set of rules Big Tech should abide by, and nowadays I prefer this over a scenario where Big Tech can control and manipulate our lives without any kind of supervision.
\nYou could cynically point out that both Apple and the EU Commission are pushing their own agendas using the \u2018customer\u2019s best interests\u2019 as a pretext. But the difference between a big tech company that uses customer friendliness and acting in the customers\u2019 best interests as essentially marketing ploys, and a governmental body drawing legislation that should be more protective of customers\u2019 rights, is that the latter necessarily involves accountability. Laws and regulations are codified and written down. They aren\u2019t blurbs on a website you can retroactively change or delete if the wind turns a certain way. How much accountability has Apple had for all the troubles and headaches they created with the MacBook\u2019s butterfly keyboards? Is that pro-customers? The way they\u2019ve handled the whole \u2018right to repair\u2019 matter, does that look pro-customers to you? A governmental body wanting to create some legislative framework and regulations Big Tech must comply with in order to operate within a specific territory (not in the whole world), is that really the enemy here?
\nDon\u2019t even get me started with the argument that the European Digital Markets Act is stifling innovation. Eleven goddamn years with the Lightning connector \u2014 is that innovation? Persisting with an aging, proprietary solution even when every other port in every other Apple device is standard? What\u2019s innovative or even remotely user-friendly here?
\nAnd opening up Apple\u2019s ecosystem and allowing the sideloading of any kind of compatible app isn\u2019t exactly stifling innovation, either. Quite the opposite, because when people can install whatever software they like on your devices, you are absolutely incentivised to innovate. Firstly because, if you really have at heart your customers\u2019 best interests, you ought to start taking security and privacy even more seriously. Secondly because, when your customers aren\u2019t pushed to use your first-party solutions, you want to keep reeling them in by providing (but for real this time) the best software, services, and solutions you can come up with. You can\u2019t afford to rest on your laurels.
\nA walled-garden structure hinders innovation in a more profound way than having an open structure or an environment where competitors are allowed to participate. In a closed ecosystem, only Apple has the final word on what you, the customer, may use or not use. Any innovation here either comes from Apple or from whatever third-party solution Apple allows you to use. And so many fanboys and techies are okay with that, mind-bogglingly. Because ApPlE kNoWs BeSt. And let me tell you, as an Apple user since 1989: Apple used to know best; they really knew best for a period of time. An era when the company was much more genuine in their intents and purposes, an era when their main goal was really to put technology, innovation, and customers first (how much they cared for the final user was intrinsic to, and apparent in, the very way the operating system\u2019s UI was designed); by doing that, the money and the revenue just came as a natural consequence.
\nThe passion was palpable. Even in the most delicate phase in Apple\u2019s history, when they acquired NeXT and Jobs returned at the helm, and Apple\u2019s future was entirely uncertain, Jobs didn\u2019t approach the situation by thinking, In what way can we make money and save our arses? \u2014 Had he thought that, Apple would have probably released a computer or device completely in line with what people wanted or expected in 1998. Instead we got the iMac, which was an utter left-field move whose success was far from guaranteed. It was a different, unexpected product, getting rid of almost all legacy connections seen in previous Macs, getting rid of the floppy drive in a tech landscape where that was still a widely used medium. But it also made a lot of stuff easier, and made personal computing a more pleasant affair overall. The Think Different marketing campaign was also stellar, and it certainly helped with the sales. But in the end, the iMac\u2019s success rewarded Apple\u2019s innovation and courage (yeah, that was courage).
\nOpening up Apple\u2019s ecosystem is not making a disservice to the customers; and is not really an obstacle to innovation. It\u2019s reducing Apple\u2019s immense control over their ecosystem and over their customers. And look, Apple isn\u2019t the only entity classified as gatekeeper in this scenario \u2014 there are other five big-tech companies, too. The issue isn\u2019t, Should a governmental body decide how a company shapes the ecosystems the company itself created? \u2014 The issue is more like, Should Apple (and Alphabet, Amazon, ByteDance, Meta and Microsoft) have this level of control over people\u2019s personal lives and livelihoods, and society at large? With little to no accountability, at that?
\nAnd by the way, if you like using Apple products and ecosystems as they are, the provisions of the DMA won\u2019t really change your experience. You can keep using the App Store as Apple intended and never install any kind of extraneous software on your iPhone or iPad. And Apple\u2019s compliance with the DMA is only expected in the EU territories. It\u2019s up to the company to decide whether it\u2019s worth complying and keeping the presence on the European market. The burden is entirely on Apple\u2019s shoulders here, and their protests over the supposed threat to innovation the DMA poses really sound like the crocodile tears of someone playing the victim. If your attitude is to defend Apple, rather than your rights as a customer, I\u2019m sorry to say this but you\u2019re a fool.
\nThere\u2019s this interesting passage in the Steve Jobs Lost Interview with Robert X. Cringely (1995). In discussing Xerox\u2019s failure, Jobs says:
\n\n\nOh, I actually thought a lot about that. And I learned more about that with John Sculley later on, and I think I understand it now pretty well. What happens is, like with John Sculley\u2026 John came from PepsiCo, and they, at most, would change their product once every 10 years. To them, a new product was, like, a new-size bottle, right? So if you were a product person, you couldn\u2019t change the course of that company very much. So who influenced the success of PepsiCo? The sales and marketing people. Therefore they were the ones that got promoted, and therefore they were the ones that ran the company. Well, for PepsiCo that might have been okay. But it turns out, the same thing can happen in technology companies that get monopolies. Like, oh, IBM and Xerox. If you were a product person at IBM or Xerox\u2026 So you make a better copier or a better computer. So what? When you have a monopoly market share, the company is not any more successful. So the people that can make the company more successful are sales and marketing people, and they end up running the companies. And the product people get driven out of the decision-making forums. And the companies forget what it means to make great products. The product sensibility and the product genius that brought them to that monopolistic position gets rotted out by people running these companies who have no conception of a good product versus a bad product. They have no conception of the craftsmanship that\u2019s required to take a good idea and turn it into a good product. And they really have no feeling in their hearts usually about wanting to really help the customers. So that\u2019s what happened at Xerox.\n
Apple, as it is and as it operates today, is gradually becoming like this. The process is subtler, of course, and perhaps not entirely irreversible. But if and when comes a point where you can exactly identify Apple in these words from 28 years ago, then you\u2019ll have the real end of Apple, and the final disintegration of its DNA.
\n", "content_text": "I praised a few video essays by Jon Prosser in the past, and I respect the guy, but while his latest This is the END of Apple may have a \u2018hit\u2019 title and premise, I feel it\u2019s actually a \u2018miss\u2019. A fair warning and admission: I\u2019ve only watched the first 10 minutes of this 14-minute video, then I got so irritated that I had to close the browser tab. But I think it was enough to understand Prosser\u2019s argument, and in any case what I\u2019m going to talk about here is based on what I watched, so I don\u2019t think I\u2019m jumping to conclusions. But do let me know if I missed something crucial.\nProsser\u2019s video first points out how the appearance of USB\u2011C in iPhones is remarkable because for the first time in Apple\u2019s history, it\u2019s not exactly there because Apple chose to go this route, but it was a decision heavily influenced by EU legislation and its Digital Markets Act. Prosser theorises that this turning point \u2014 Apple\u2019s compliance with government legislation \u2014 may very well be the beginning of the end for Apple. Because now that the EU Commission has successfully forced Apple\u2019s hand, like the story of the mouse and the cookie, the EU will want more, the EU will require Apple to make changes to their products in ways that go against Apple\u2019s own direction, and ultimately against Apple\u2019s DNA. This is what Prosser calls \u2018the end of Apple\u2019.\nProsser:\n\nA week or so ago, a chief of EU industry, Thierry Breton, publicly called on Tim Cook to open up the iPhone\u2019s walled garden ecosystem of hardware and software to\u2026 rivals. In a quote, Thierry said, The next job for Apple and other Big Tech, under the DMA (Digital Markets Act) is to open up its gates to competitors. Be it the electronic wallet, browsers or app stores, consumers using an Apple iPhone should be able to benefit from competitive services by a range of providers.\nThis doesn\u2019t seem like an unreasonable request for most companies, and it can be hard to pinpoint where the problem lies exactly for iPhone users, for Apple fans in general. But let\u2019s really look at what this means. Under this new DMA law, Apple\u2019s major platforms like the App Store, Safari, and iOS as a whole were officially classified as \u2018gatekeepers\u2019 [Note: To be precise, the Wikipedia entry for the Digital Markets Act states that \u201cTwenty-two services across six companies \u2014 Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, ByteDance, Meta, and Microsoft \u2014 were named as \u2018gatekeepers\u2019 by the EU in September 2023.\u201d] and as a solution Apple is expected to add support for the sideloading of apps from outside the App Store on iPhones and iPads. Apple\u2019s argument for their walled garden approach has always been user security and privacy. Obviously the lack of competition in their own platform is another huge positive, and our guy Thierry was quick to respond to that argument too. In a quote, he said, EU regulation fosters innovation, without compromising on security and privacy. And in a very \u2018Apple\u2019 move, [Apple] haven\u2019t responded to this comment. But I will: this is fucked up!\n\nHere Prosser inserts a Steve Jobs quote taken from the interview at the All Things Digital D8 Conference in 2010 with Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher:\n\nWe\u2019re just people running this company. We\u2019re trying to make great products for people, and so we have at least the courage of our convictions to say, \u201cWe don\u2019t think this is part of what makes a great product, we\u2019re gonna leave it out\u201d. Some people are going to not like that, they\u2019re going to call us names, it\u2019s not going to be in certain companies\u2019 vested interests that we do that, but we\u2019re going to take the heat. Because we want to make the best product in the world for customers, and we\u2019re going to instead focus our energy on these technologies which we think are in their ascendancy and we think are going to be the right technologies for customers. And you know what? They\u2019re paying us to make those choices! That\u2019s what a lot of customers pay us to do, to try to make the best products we can, and if we succeed they\u2019ll buy them. And if we don\u2019t, they won\u2019t.\n\nThen Prosser comments:\n\nThis opening of Apple\u2019s ecosystem is not pro-consumer. This is not something consumers \u2014 Apple\u2019s iPhone users specifically \u2014 are asking for. This is just anti-Apple, and it\u2019s kind of gross.\n\nSo much to unpack here. I\u2019ll start from the very last paragraph quoted above, and loudly call bullshit.\nThis opening of Apple\u2019s ecosystem is very much pro-consumer, and very much anti-fanboy. I sympathise a lot with that Steve Jobs\u2019s quote, and every time I see excerpts from his attendances at the various \u2018D\u2019 Conferences I get nostalgic and start missing the man badly. But we have to put that quote in context. And the context is the year 2010, thirteen years ago, when the newest phone was the iPhone 4, the latest iOS version was iOS 4, the first iPad had just been introduced, the iOS App Store was two years old, and iCloud didn\u2019t exist yet. An era when Apple\u2019s ecosystem was rather strong in general, but not as stifling as it would become in the following thirteen years.\nI\u2019ve been writing online about tech since late 2004 (if you don\u2019t count my participation in forums and mailing lists, which started circa 2000), and I\u2019ve launched this website in 2011. Since morrick.me started getting some traction circa 2014, I have lost count of the number of emails I have received from people, Apple users, utterly frustrated by the progressively walled-garden structure of Apple\u2019s mobile ecosystem. Even back when the iPhone 3G was introduced, and it finally became widely available here in Europe as well, I had clients and friends who were puzzled by certain aspects of \u2018Apple\u2019s way of doing things\u2019. Bluetooth file transfer between phones was one. An acquaintance at the time pointed out how easy it was for them to just send any file via Bluetooth from a Nokia (or any other brand) dumb phone to another phone, with just a few clicks. Try that with an iPhone to any other phone, or even between iPhones. There was no AirDrop back then. The quickest way was sending the file via email, or maybe uploading it somewhere and sharing the download link. Or using some kind of third-party solution, but both iPhones had to have the same third-party app installed, and so forth.\nWhen Jobs says, That\u2019s what a lot of customers pay us to do, to try to make the best products we can, and if we succeed they\u2019ll buy them. And if we don\u2019t, they won\u2019t. \u2014 That\u2019s not as clear-cut as it perhaps was in 2010. Recently, in a feedback email I received, one of my readers was sharing his exasperation about feeling irrevocably locked into Apple\u2019s ecosystem:\n\nI\u2019ve seen a lot of interesting Android devices in the past 2\u20133 years or so. I like what certain brands like Google and Samsung and Nothing are doing with the design. iPhones feel stale in comparison. And Android, I\u2019ve tried the latest version on a borrowed Google Pixel. I like it. When you remove all the crap and the bloatware, it\u2019s pleasant, and certain quality apps don\u2019t feel that much different from their iOS counterparts. I also think this Pixel takes better photos than my iPhone 13.\nBut I can\u2019t just switch to Android and leave the iPhone behind. Why? Because friends and family all have iPhones. Because chats means using iMessage. Video calls means FaceTime. Photo sharing, file sharing means iCloud. Convenience should mean using whatever the hell solution you want to seamlessly connect with others. Not, let\u2019s just all lock ourselves in the same ecosystem and use the tools that are graciously bestowed on us by our overlords. \nAnd before you ask, no, I can\u2019t afford to dual-wield an iPhone and an Android phone. I\u2019m also not saying it\u2019s impossible for me to just switch. I\u2019d probably find a workaround for many situations where the 2 platforms [iOS and Android] diverge. But it\u2019s exhausting, and you know, also ridiculous if you stop and think about it. It\u2019s 2023, there should be more interoperability and fewer ivory towers, you know? These constraints look more and more stupid and artificial.\n\nAnd this is by no means the only message I\u2019ve received with this kind of complaint or frustration. \nSideloading\nTo avoid becoming too long-winded, I\u2019ll point you to my article On sideloading from November 2021. My position on the matter hasn\u2019t changed since then (it never changed, by the way). \nPainting sideloading as this serious threat against Apple\u2019s ecosystem or even DNA is really just parroting Apple\u2019s stance and just accepting a closed and proprietary system as the best and most consumer-friendly solution. It is neither. It\u2019s simply the easiest solution to implement, the easiest to maintain, and the one that potentially brings more money through user lock-in.\nApple likes to use privacy and security as a way to justify the walled-garden approach of its mobile ecosystem. I don\u2019t doubt that a locked-down system (like current Macs\u2019 hardware and some parts of Mac OS) or a locked-down platform (like iOS on iPhones and iPads) is inherently more secure than a system or platform where users have complete freedom of movement and choice. But the flipside is, well, that as a consequence, users do not have complete freedom of movement and choice. So they cannot replace a Mac\u2019s internal SSD or expand a Mac\u2019s RAM if they want more down the road, because it\u2019s all soldered and impenetrable. You have to go through Apple, probably spending double or triple what you would spend by sourcing the parts yourself and replacing them yourself or having them replaced in a repair shop.\nAnd if someone creates a wonderful Commodore or Nintendo simulator to play classic games on your iOS device, and Apple rejects the app citing some App Store rule, you won\u2019t be able to enjoy such app, full stop. If someone creates an iOS utility that truly takes advantage of certain iPhone/iPad features, but in a way Apple considers too \u2018close to the metal\u2019 or too competitive with what they\u2019re already offering in the operating system, Apple will reject this utility. Not because it\u2019s \u2018dangerous\u2019 or \u2018malware\u2019, but because it interferes with their agenda in some way. And we should believe that Apple has the customer\u2019s best interests at heart? Sideloading may open the doors to frauds, scams, and malware, but also to many potential great apps that are currently rejected for some bizarre App Store rule, technicality, or interference with Apple\u2019s internal plans. And by the way, the current state of all App Stores is not really secure for customers either, since a plethora of scammy apps are discovered practically every day. As I wrote back in 2021:\n\n[Back when the App Store was first introduced] Instead of teaching users how to fish, Apple decided to position themselves as sole purveyors of the best selection of fish. Now, leave aside for a moment all the tech-oriented observations you could make here. Just stop and think about how arrogant and patronising this attitude is. Sure, I can believe the genuine concerns of providing users with the smoothest experience and protecting them from badly-written apps (or just straight malware) that could compromise the stability of their devices. But by not taking a more moderate approach (it\u2019s either we lock down the platform or we\u2019ll have the cyber equivalent of the Wild West!), you also deprive users of choice and responsibility.\nThe problem of appointing yourself as the sole guardian and gatekeeper of the software that should or should not reach your users is that you\u2019re expected to be infallible, and rightly so. Especially if you are a tech giant which supposedly has enough money and resources to do such a splendid job that is virtually indistinguishable from infallibility. Instead we know well just how many untrustworthy and scammy apps have been and are plaguing the App Store, and how inconsistent and unpredictable the App Review process generally is.\n\nThe EU is not the enemy\nIt\u2019s worrying to me that Prosser and so many technophiles (especially from the US) prefer to side with Apple and Big Tech and frame this whole matter as government/legislation versus tech companies/innovation \u2014 the typical us-versus-them mentality \u2014 as if these were two irreconcilable entities. In a world where tech companies are dictating and controlling (directly or indirectly) so many aspects of our lives, seeing a governmental body and legislation \u2014 whose purpose is to really care about people\u2019s best interests \u2014 as the enemy is just misguided. According to many of these nerds, tech companies should be given free rein to do whatever they please, because otherwise innovation would not happen; and we should give them free rein also because they said they want what\u2019s best for their customers and we of course must believe this narrative, because tech companies are typically sincere and altruistic in their pursuits. Shareholders, fiscal quarter results, money and capitalism are just minor, tertiary factors we shouldn\u2019t really look too much into \u2014 Right?\nYou know what\u2019s gross and fucked up, Prosser? Siding with Big Tech today, instead of understanding that maybe a bit of legislation and compliance is necessary to protect customers from being treated like sheep with wallets, or reduced as products. \nThe typical retort, If they don\u2019t like the status quo, customers can vote with their wallet, is just ridiculous and out of touch with many realities. Platform lock-in is a serious issue, and many people can\u2019t just buy an Android phone or a Linux laptop on a whim or in protest. Sometimes migrating platforms involves many months or even years of transition, especially if your business has always gravitated around Apple solutions. Sometimes you can\u2019t even migrate to a platform while leaving the other entirely behind, because your clients need compatible, cross-platform solutions. And on a personal level, like with the feedback email I quoted before, what keeps you locked into a platform is peer pressure, or the increased friction you would experience by switching. Mind you, increased friction that is artificially created by tech companies to keep you locked in. Friction that tech companies, if they truly wanted to enhance people\u2019s lives, would remove and let people decide what they want by really offering them incredibly good-quality products. Healthy competition and all that, you see.\nBecause if you think about it, one quite detrimental side effect of a locked-down ecosystem is that you as a company (especially if you\u2019re in Apple\u2019s position) are not exactly incentivised to provide quality software. Apple still makes good hardware, but when software is concerned, the \u2018good quality\u2019 is essentially a myth today. The quality here is mostly tied to Apple\u2019s reputation and legacy, but its software has been on a downward spiral since Jobs passed away. With so many locked-in customers, you can get away with so many things, such as the appalling quality and reliability of iCloud services, which is incredibly baffling considering the resources of a trillion-dollar company and the fact that by now iCloud has been around for twelve years. Same with Siri, another 12-year-old fiasco. And some people complain, but due to the intricacies of switching to third-party solutions, or even migrating entirely, they remain within Apple\u2019s ecosystem, so customer retention is really not something Apple is terribly worried about.\nSo, since people don\u2019t really have enough power to make tech companies behave in a more customer-friendly way, it\u2019s entirely natural that the government step in to act as a sort of mediator. I don\u2019t know if it\u2019s because I\u2019m European and have a different mindset from an American citizen, but I welcome this attempt by the EU Commission to legislate and provide a set of rules Big Tech should abide by, and nowadays I prefer this over a scenario where Big Tech can control and manipulate our lives without any kind of supervision. \nYou could cynically point out that both Apple and the EU Commission are pushing their own agendas using the \u2018customer\u2019s best interests\u2019 as a pretext. But the difference between a big tech company that uses customer friendliness and acting in the customers\u2019 best interests as essentially marketing ploys, and a governmental body drawing legislation that should be more protective of customers\u2019 rights, is that the latter necessarily involves accountability. Laws and regulations are codified and written down. They aren\u2019t blurbs on a website you can retroactively change or delete if the wind turns a certain way. How much accountability has Apple had for all the troubles and headaches they created with the MacBook\u2019s butterfly keyboards? Is that pro-customers? The way they\u2019ve handled the whole \u2018right to repair\u2019 matter, does that look pro-customers to you? A governmental body wanting to create some legislative framework and regulations Big Tech must comply with in order to operate within a specific territory (not in the whole world), is that really the enemy here?\nInnovation, schminnovation\nDon\u2019t even get me started with the argument that the European Digital Markets Act is stifling innovation. Eleven goddamn years with the Lightning connector \u2014 is that innovation? Persisting with an aging, proprietary solution even when every other port in every other Apple device is standard? What\u2019s innovative or even remotely user-friendly here? \nAnd opening up Apple\u2019s ecosystem and allowing the sideloading of any kind of compatible app isn\u2019t exactly stifling innovation, either. Quite the opposite, because when people can install whatever software they like on your devices, you are absolutely incentivised to innovate. Firstly because, if you really have at heart your customers\u2019 best interests, you ought to start taking security and privacy even more seriously. Secondly because, when your customers aren\u2019t pushed to use your first-party solutions, you want to keep reeling them in by providing (but for real this time) the best software, services, and solutions you can come up with. You can\u2019t afford to rest on your laurels.\nA walled-garden structure hinders innovation in a more profound way than having an open structure or an environment where competitors are allowed to participate. In a closed ecosystem, only Apple has the final word on what you, the customer, may use or not use. Any innovation here either comes from Apple or from whatever third-party solution Apple allows you to use. And so many fanboys and techies are okay with that, mind-bogglingly. Because ApPlE kNoWs BeSt. And let me tell you, as an Apple user since 1989: Apple used to know best; they really knew best for a period of time. An era when the company was much more genuine in their intents and purposes, an era when their main goal was really to put technology, innovation, and customers first (how much they cared for the final user was intrinsic to, and apparent in, the very way the operating system\u2019s UI was designed); by doing that, the money and the revenue just came as a natural consequence. \nThe passion was palpable. Even in the most delicate phase in Apple\u2019s history, when they acquired NeXT and Jobs returned at the helm, and Apple\u2019s future was entirely uncertain, Jobs didn\u2019t approach the situation by thinking, In what way can we make money and save our arses? \u2014 Had he thought that, Apple would have probably released a computer or device completely in line with what people wanted or expected in 1998. Instead we got the iMac, which was an utter left-field move whose success was far from guaranteed. It was a different, unexpected product, getting rid of almost all legacy connections seen in previous Macs, getting rid of the floppy drive in a tech landscape where that was still a widely used medium. But it also made a lot of stuff easier, and made personal computing a more pleasant affair overall. The Think Different marketing campaign was also stellar, and it certainly helped with the sales. But in the end, the iMac\u2019s success rewarded Apple\u2019s innovation and courage (yeah, that was courage).\nOpening up Apple\u2019s ecosystem is not making a disservice to the customers; and is not really an obstacle to innovation. It\u2019s reducing Apple\u2019s immense control over their ecosystem and over their customers. And look, Apple isn\u2019t the only entity classified as gatekeeper in this scenario \u2014 there are other five big-tech companies, too. The issue isn\u2019t, Should a governmental body decide how a company shapes the ecosystems the company itself created? \u2014 The issue is more like, Should Apple (and Alphabet, Amazon, ByteDance, Meta and Microsoft) have this level of control over people\u2019s personal lives and livelihoods, and society at large? With little to no accountability, at that?\nAnd by the way, if you like using Apple products and ecosystems as they are, the provisions of the DMA won\u2019t really change your experience. You can keep using the App Store as Apple intended and never install any kind of extraneous software on your iPhone or iPad. And Apple\u2019s compliance with the DMA is only expected in the EU territories. It\u2019s up to the company to decide whether it\u2019s worth complying and keeping the presence on the European market. The burden is entirely on Apple\u2019s shoulders here, and their protests over the supposed threat to innovation the DMA poses really sound like the crocodile tears of someone playing the victim. If your attitude is to defend Apple, rather than your rights as a customer, I\u2019m sorry to say this but you\u2019re a fool. \nThe real end of Apple\nThere\u2019s this interesting passage in the Steve Jobs Lost Interview with Robert X. Cringely (1995). In discussing Xerox\u2019s failure, Jobs says: \n\nOh, I actually thought a lot about that. And I learned more about that with John Sculley later on, and I think I understand it now pretty well. What happens is, like with John Sculley\u2026 John came from PepsiCo, and they, at most, would change their product once every 10 years. To them, a new product was, like, a new-size bottle, right? So if you were a product person, you couldn\u2019t change the course of that company very much. So who influenced the success of PepsiCo? The sales and marketing people. Therefore they were the ones that got promoted, and therefore they were the ones that ran the company. Well, for PepsiCo that might have been okay. But it turns out, the same thing can happen in technology companies that get monopolies. Like, oh, IBM and Xerox. If you were a product person at IBM or Xerox\u2026 So you make a better copier or a better computer. So what? When you have a monopoly market share, the company is not any more successful. So the people that can make the company more successful are sales and marketing people, and they end up running the companies. And the product people get driven out of the decision-making forums. And the companies forget what it means to make great products. The product sensibility and the product genius that brought them to that monopolistic position gets rotted out by people running these companies who have no conception of a good product versus a bad product. They have no conception of the craftsmanship that\u2019s required to take a good idea and turn it into a good product. And they really have no feeling in their hearts usually about wanting to really help the customers. So that\u2019s what happened at Xerox.\n\nApple, as it is and as it operates today, is gradually becoming like this. The process is subtler, of course, and perhaps not entirely irreversible. But if and when comes a point where you can exactly identify Apple in these words from 28 years ago, then you\u2019ll have the real end of Apple, and the final disintegration of its DNA.", "date_published": "2023-10-04T22:55:27+01:00", "date_modified": "2023-10-05T18:30:50+01:00", "authors": [ { "name": "Riccardo Mori", "url": "https://morrick.me/archives/author/admin", "avatar": "https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/ed738e1ed4787ff5636abfe6a6e39610?s=512&d=blank&r=g" } ], "author": { "name": "Riccardo Mori", "url": "https://morrick.me/archives/author/admin", "avatar": "https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/ed738e1ed4787ff5636abfe6a6e39610?s=512&d=blank&r=g" }, "tags": [ "Apple", "English", "iOS", "Mac OS", "UX", "Tech Life" ], "summary": "In a world increasingly dominated by Big Tech and their products and services, is that so bad that a governmental body steps in to try and put some boundaries and reduce Big Tech's influence on our lives?" }, { "id": "https://morrick.me/?p=9762", "url": "https://morrick.me/archives/9762", "title": "Wondersomethingsomething", "content_html": "I don\u2019t know if you realised this, but the Lightning connector on iPhones has had a longer lifespan than the headphone jack. Apple was quicker to remove a well-established, widespread standard in the name of \u2018courage\u2019, yet left Lightning \u2014 a proprietary, and by now aging connector \u2014 on iPhones for eleven years. With Apple, it should be clear by now that ecosystem comes before customers.
\nI didn\u2019t really want to write this article. Not for lack of enthusiasm (though that is still present), but for a matter of honesty. For the first time in a long time, I didn\u2019t watch the Apple \u201cWonderlust\u201d event on 12 September. I don\u2019t know if it was my workload or just plain absentmindedness, but I simply forgot about it and went for a walk instead. I tried to watch it the day after on Apple\u2019s website, and I don\u2019t know if I was tired or (as my contacts on social media suggest) if the event itself was boring, but I fell asleep after about 20 minutes.
\nSo I really don\u2019t have firsthand impressions about the event. I watched some shorter summaries on YouTube, and the excellent recap-with-critical-commentary video by Quinn Nelson, which gave me a fairly good idea of what was introduced at the event, and whether it matters.
\nI\u2019m writing this piece only because I\u2019ve received a significant-enough number of emails and requests that couldn\u2019t just be ignored. But I wanted to be honest and clear about a few things: I missed the event, I\u2019m not particularly interested in any of the things Apple introduced, and in my (very biased) commentary I may miss some nuances or details I could have caught if I\u2019d taken a much deeper dive into these things.
\nFor me the biggest deal of the event is the introduction of USB\u2011C on the iPhone, at long last, after the European legislators beat some standard sense into Apple. The rest \u2014 and I\u2019m borrowing the impression of many who watched the event in its entirety \u2014 was pretty much a boring, predictable expanse. In his article about the event, John Gruber goes on for almost 700 words in the introduction to explain that this event may have been boring to some people, and that the iPhone September events may be repetitive and iterative in nature but are actually very much iconic, \u201cthe Super Bowls of technology\u201d. I find that to be a very hilariously American-centric comparison. A lot of people outside the US don\u2019t know when the Super Bowl is supposed to happen, and some regular folks don\u2019t even know what the Super Bowl specifically is, apart from a vague \u2018big American sports event\u2019. The first time I heard about it, many many years ago, I initially thought it was related to bowling.
\nDespite Gruber\u2019s attempts to paint the \u2018Wonderlust\u2019 event as something iconic and exciting, these past few years Apple\u2019s September iPhone events have really felt boring and repetitive. A very diverse network of people has grown around me, both online and offline; the spectrum goes from very tech-savvy nerds and developers, to regular folks who are tech literate enough to use current devices unaided, to people who are not into tech at all and rely on the advice of others to make their purchases. And while such network can only produce anecdotal data, I\u2019ve seen statistics made with smaller samples. So, when I said, Damn, I forgot Apple\u2019s event was today and went out for a walk instead, a lot of people in my network told me I didn\u2019t really miss out on anything special. The majority of those I interacted with weren\u2019t particularly excited about anything regarding the event.
\nCompared with the previous generation, the new iPhones are faster, have an improved camera system, and are made with different materials. I could use these words to describe the iPhone 11 line compared with the X, XS and XR iPhone models. But Rick, this time titanium is a big deal, because it makes iPhones lighter than their predecessors. Well, it was about time, I\u2019d say. Since today we have to endure oversized smartphones, making them lighter is the least Apple and other brands could do.
\nAccording to some tech YouTubers, the new camera system in the iPhone 15 Pro models is a big deal too. It\u2019s probably a big deal for those who rely on their phones for all their photography and videography needs. Hardware-wise these cameras are a true engineering feat, and thanks to the computational heavy lifting behind the scenes, the final result can be stunning in the right hands. But as someone who uses cameras, not smartphones, for most of his photography, smartphone photography has become less interesting and less exciting exactly since computational photography has taken the lion\u2019s share of image processing. Photos, even good photos taken with the last four generations of iPhones to me \u2014 to me \u2014 look artificial, clinical, lacking character (That \u2018Apple website\u2019 flair, a friend commented), at times overprocessed and with a somewhat weird colour science. Like I said on Mastodon, when showing older iPhone photos, I often get asked which camera I used. When seeing shots taken with more current iPhones, I often hear comments like, Yep, typical iPhone look.
\nThe fact that the cameras on the iPhone 15 Pro models will be able to shoot \u2018spatial videos\u2019 \u2014 which, as far as I know, you\u2019ll only be able to enjoy through the Vision Pro headset \u2014 and that for some this is another big deal, is another hilarious detail for me. And another example of ecosystem before customers. These 3D memories that will feel like magic in your Apple Vision Pro, how long they\u2019ll truly last? After the death of my mother I had to sell my parents\u2019 house and therefore remove all our personal belongings. In doing so, I came across a huge amount of memories in the form of old slides and printed photos (in most cases with their negatives carefully preserved). I saw pictures of myself when I was just a little child. I saw scenes from my parents\u2019 and grandparents\u2019 childhoods. Photos taken 50, 60, even 90 years ago. Will your children and grandchildren, 90 years from now, be able to watch that spatial video you shot in late 2023 or 2024? I don\u2019t know. Maybe. Maybe after a long chain of format conversions. Maybe through applications created by wise souls who see past the innovation du jour of our tech overlords.
\nI digress. I wanted to understand if these new iPhones were actually this big deal some kept repeating. A few YouTubers all seemed to sing to the tune of \u2018the new iPhone looks like a small update, but there\u2019s much more to it than meets the eye\u2019. So I turned to more prominent and established tech reviewers like Marques Brownlee, Dave Lee, Michael Fisher. They always have the most balanced reviews, I think, because they\u2019re all constantly using and testing different platforms, and when it comes to new features on a phone, they can look farther than any fanboy and put things in a more objective perspective.
\nAfter listening to their impressions, my takeaway is that, well, the new iPhone 15 and 15 Pro are actually an incremental update and little more. Here are the features that, based on these reviewers, seem worth mentioning:
\nThe new building materials. Titanium is a good choice especially because it allows the new iPhone 15 Pro models to be lighter than last year\u2019s Pro models, but also feel even lighter in the case of the Pro Max.
\nBetter displays. Brighter than the iPhone 14 and 14 Pro displays. This means better clarity and legibility when outdoors. The displays on the regular iPhone 15 and the iPhone 15 Pro have the same characteristics and specifications. The only two features missing from the non-Pro iPhones are always-on display and ProMotion.
\nSpeaking of ProMotion, I love this bit in Dave Lee\u2019s video review:
\n\n\nI really think they [Apple] used [ProMotion] to distinguish the difference between the Pros and the \u2018Amateurs\u2019, because I don\u2019t think that the cost of production is that far apart at this point, at least not for Apple, because the volumes are so high. But when I review these phones and see them side by side, the 60 Hz [screen] just got to stutter, right? But I really think if I remove myself from this situation and I try not to be a sweaty tech nerd about it, I really think, like, 99% of the world doesn\u2019t care about it. I\u2019ve shown it to many of my friends and my family members, and they\u2019re like, Yeah, that\u2019s cool, that ProMotion is neat and all, but who cares? And in that line, very very little media takes advantage of that stuff; very few games take advantage of 120 Hz [refresh]. But it\u2019s mostly just the UI. When you\u2019re in the UI, and you\u2019re browsing on your phone, and doing stuff, having ProMotion is just so much nicer to look at \u2014 if your eyes are used to it. And the fact that they [the regular iPhone 15 models] don\u2019t have it is just ridiculous, because there are phones out there that are, like, 300 bucks that have 120 Hz displays, for it to be missing on a $700 phone\u2026 It hurts.\n
Thinner bezels. The regular iPhone 15 models have slightly thinner bezels than the regular iPhone 14 models from last year. But the bezels on the 15 Pro models are much thinner. This may be excellent news for those nerds who are utterly obsessed with bezel thinness. I think there\u2019s a limit to such thinness, because too thin bezels in a handheld device could mean involuntary user-interface interference from the palm of your hands or the edges of your fingers. Dave Lee quickly points this out too, saying this happened to him a few times while gaming.
\nUSB\u2011C ports. Again, big Finally here. Thanks to EU legislation, which strongly reminded Apple that standards and customers come before ecosystems. It still sucks that you have to resort to a dongle if you use regular wired earphones or headphones with your iPhone. But at least when travelling you can just take the iPad charger, and one USB\u2011C cable to recharge the iPad, the iPhone, maybe a pair of over-ear noise-cancelling headphones, and you can use it to connect an external data drive if you use one with your iPad or Mac.
\nThe new Action button. A new customisable button that on the iPhone 15 Pro models replaces the mute switch, which has been a constant on iPhones since the beginning. Now you can assign a specific function to this Action button (it acts like the mute switch by default), like launching the camera or the flashlight, or taking a voice memo. At first the selection seems limited, but one of the options allows you to assign a Siri shortcut, and this really opens the doors to all kinds of stuff. Reactions to this new Action button have generally been positive. Marques Brownlee suggests it could be further improved if we could also map additional functions to double-tapping (or even triple-tapping) the button. Dave Lee wishes there was some kind of tactile marking on it so you could feel for it when the iPhone is in your pocket, and in his review he stressed a few times that \u201cit takes some time to get used to it\u201d. As for me, I\u2019m somewhat ambivalent. I both like the concept of a customisable button, and wish the physical mute switch could have remained. I wouldn\u2019t mind an iPhone with the mute switch in the same position as it was before, and an Action button on the other side, maybe further down from where the power/sleep button is located. (It\u2019s where some Nokia Lumia models had the dedicated camera button, and it was quite handy).
\nSlightly improved CPU performance. Much improved GPU performance. The fact that you can play triple\u2011A games like the Resident Evil remake on an iPhone is impressive, but the question is, why would you want to? The interface is cramped, the touch controls make things awkward, and with games like that, the better experience is definitely on a gaming PC or console like the PlayStation or Xbox. I know, I know there are portable gaming solutions like the Switch, the Steam Deck, the recently-introduced Lenovo Legion Go. But while these don\u2019t have very big screens, they all have physical controls, so you don\u2019t have to put your fingers on the screen when gaming, and the interface remains uncluttered.
\nSlightly better battery life. Tests may vary, but I found Dave Lee\u2019s numbers very telling. The full table is visible at about the 13:13 mark in his video. He calls his test \u2018Reddit refresh loop\u2019, which I assume is self-explanatory. The iPhone 15 Pro Max lasted 12 hours and 27 minutes, eight minutes more than the iPhone 14 Pro Max. The iPhone 15 Pro lasted 11 hours and 37 minutes, twenty-one minutes more than the iPhone 14 Pro and the iPhone 13 Pro. The iPhone 15, instead, lasted a few minutes less than the iPhone 14.
\nThe camera system. More megapixels, and a new 5\u00d7 telephoto lens on the Pro Max, essentially. Some observations from Dave Lee which again, ring true based on what I could see for myself. About the resolution:
\n\n\nI don\u2019t feel the sensor on the regular iPhone 15 makes good use of that extra resolution, but on the Pro I would say [\u2026] it\u2019s absolutely worth that larger file size. The details [in the photo] are there.\n
On low-light photography:
\n\n\nIt\u2019s still not great. Apple talked a bit about how they improved it, but the Pixel 7 devices and Samsung S23 devices [low-light photos] look better to me.\n
On lens flare:
\n\n\nApple also talks about how they addressed some of the lens flare that has been in some of their photography. Sometimes you\u2019ll see some reflective orbs floating around some of your shots; they\u2019re definitely less pronounced on the iPhone 15 cameras, but they\u2019re still visible here and there, and it\u2019s particularly noticeable still in night shots with bright lights.\n
Automatic Portrait Mode. I like how simply Dave describes it: It\u2019s the ability to just take a shot, not think about it, and the phone will capture the depth data, so you can adjust the focus later. And I agree with him, it\u2019s a cool feature. I used to use a couple of \u2018defocusing\u2019 photo apps on my iPhone 8 to achieve something similar, but of course the iPhone 15\u2019s image processing power guarantees a much faster, more accurate and effective result.
\nUpdate \u2014 22 Sept. \u2014 I was pretty sure I had seen a similar feature before, but couldn\u2019t recall where or when exactly. My friend Tony on Mastodon reminded me of Nokia Refocus (later renamed Lumia Refocus), an application Nokia presented at Nokia World 2013 \u2014 yes, ten years ago \u2014 that allowed you to take a shot and refocus later. In this article on Windows Central it is explained that
\n\nWhen snapping a shot, the Windows Phone will take numerous photos over the focus range. This makes it possible to simply hit the shutter button without messing around for three days to get the right object in focus. Think about this example: you take a self-shot and the background is in focus behind a blurry face. With Refocus you can select your own self and boom, the focus is now corrected. Alternatively, you can choose to have the entire shot in focus.
I\u2019ve linked to an archived version of the article because it preserves the video at the end, where you can see a live demonstration of how the feature works. There is also this article from The Verge, and the related YouTube video where Tom Warren demoes the feature.
\nAnd yes, of course it\u2019s faster and better on the new iPhones. But considering that the Nokia Lumia 1020 did the same thing with a dual core processor and 2 GB of RAM, the slight delay when capturing a photo with Refocus is forgivable.
\n
\nIt sounds like a lot, but if you zoom out and look at the evolution (or lack thereof) of the iPhone over the years, there\u2019s really nothing groundbreaking about these new iPhone models. Some reviewers have spent a considerable time talking about the new building materials of the iPhone 15 line, especially the use of titanium on the Pro iPhones. It\u2019s undoubtedly a cool detail, and it\u2019s great that it makes the phones lighter. But essentially what we got with the new iPhones was entirely within expectations and educated guesses. Faster devices with improved cameras. But \u2018faster\u2019 and \u2018improved\u2019 in an iterative fashion, not in a \u2018leaps and bounds\u2019 or \u2018night and day\u2019 fashion. Meaning that if you asked me, Should I really upgrade to the iPhone 15? I\u2019d tell you, If you currently own an iPhone older than the 12, sure. If you\u2019re hell-bent on always having the latest iPhone camera technology because it really matters to you, sure. Otherwise, I wouldn\u2019t bother.
Of course, at the end of the day, you do you. If you have money to burn, and love to get a new iPhone every year, here\u2019s a lighter. I simply encourage people to be smart and not wasteful, because there\u2019s too much waste today already. There are those telling you you should upgrade to the iPhone 15 Pro for the new titanium finish alone, because it makes for a svelter device that feels great in the hand. Do you know what feels even greater in the hand? Ten 100-dollar bills.
\nMy lack of excitement about the iPhone in general comes from the fact that for the past few years it hasn\u2019t really gone anywhere. I\u2019m not one who demands constant innovation, mind you, but at the same time you can\u2019t expect enthusiasm from me for any minor change or improvement. In technology there are occasional bumps of innovation, and inertial periods of iteration which can last a long time. The smartphone category as a whole has been stagnant for a while now. I\u2019m not really complaining about this \u2014 again, it\u2019s a necessary evil. But I can wish Apple showed more intent in thinking out of the box with the iPhone. Going foldable is what some wish for a future iPhone. But that isn\u2019t thinking out of the box \u2014 it\u2019s following a trend (and an uncertain one at that).
\nI know Apple is playing safe with the iPhone because it\u2019s a cash cow, but sometimes I wish they revisited the iPhone line by maybe offering one less \u2018safe\u2019 model and using that vacant slot to propose something different, quirkier. Something that could be niche for a couple of generations, just to see where it goes. A \u2018Special Edition\u2019 in the true sense of the word. And not just from a hardware standpoint, but also from an application/usage standpoint. An iPhone model perhaps with different ways of interfacing, even. I know what you\u2019re thinking. You\u2019re thinking, Apple is pursuing that with Vision Pro and visionOS, and I see your point. I just wish it weren\u2019t an AR headset. Something more in line with what Humane is headed towards. I want \u2018vision\u2019 without the impracticality and awkwardness of VR/AR goggles.
\n
\nI was forgetting the new Apple Watches \u2014 Well, again, iterative improvements all around. If you love the Watch, you\u2019ll love them. If you don\u2019t, you\u2019re probably shrugging as hard as I am. Neither its design nor its interface have ever really clicked with me. The general feeling I constantly get when I look at its UI is that it\u2019s too crowded and complicated, too dependent on gestures with mediocre discoverability. And the Watch as a whole simply feels too chock-full of stuff. And every year Apple seems to be adding more stuff to the Watch\u2019s capabilities. It feels like pure feature creep. (To be entirely fair, the competition isn\u2019t exactly doing a better job in this regard). Again, it depends on what you use a smartwatch for. I just want a bare-bones tracker that tells me the time and date, that shows me a step counter and a heart rate monitor. I don\u2019t need a miniature smartphone on my wrist, I already have one in my pocket.
This summer has been particularly hard on me. I don\u2019t handle heat and humidity very well, and July and August have been devastating in this regard where I live. Like I wrote in my previous article about a month ago, what little energy I could save was mainly devoted to work. But I had to take a break from that too, so I enjoyed some holiday time in August. I went to Madrid and Toledo, where the temperatures were even higher than in Valencia, often reaching 40\u201341 degrees Celsius, but at least there was little humidity. Dry heat is much more tolerable for me. So at least I had enough energies to take long walks, snap photos, and enjoy being a tourist with my wife.
\nIn this world, today so ever-obsessed with technology and productivity, when you complain of physical exhaustion some people will inevitably think you\u2019re kind of exaggerating; almost as if it were some lame, unimaginative excuse to justify your general poor performance. But the exhaustion caused by a very hot and suffocatingly humid climate can be something alarmingly draining. (If you have lived all your life in a country that has this kind of climate by default, all year round, it\u2019s clearly a different story, as you will be accustomed to it and you\u2019ll probably be able to function better in it). Worse, it often leads to mental exhaustion as well. Unless you find some form of protection against the heat and humidity (ventilation, air conditioning), your nights will likely be restless, with intermittent sleep; and we all know by now how important long hours of uninterrupted sleep are for our mental health and balance. Sadly, a lot of my days these past two months have been spent in a generally listless stupor, the sleep disruption of the night being deeply felt during the day, in a state resembling jet lag or mild drunkenness.
\nFor a creative person as myself, this is the stuff of nightmares. This is the worst kind of creative block: it has very little to do with what you\u2019re trying to create \u2014 it\u2019s a force majeure type of block stopping you in your tracks no matter what you were trying to do. Sure, you know it\u2019s not your fault, but that doesn\u2019t take anything away from the same resulting feeling of utter frustration and anger boiling inside of you. And you can\u2019t even act this frustration out because you\u2019re too fucking exhausted to do so. How ironic.
\nThere is also another depressing realisation sprinkled on top: that while you\u2019re suffering this kind of climate-induced physical and mental exhaustion, you\u2019re wasting a lot of your time. And this is not the productivity-obsessed mindset speaking. It\u2019s not like thinking, I\u2019m wasting all this time I could spend working or doing more soul-crushing grind. More simply, it\u2019s thinking, I\u2019m wasting all this time I could spend\u2026 truly living and having fun and being happy. When you\u2019re in your 20s or 30s, leaving a bunch of weeks behind where you couldn\u2019t do almost anything can surely be annoying. But when you\u2019re older and you\u2019re starting to enter that phase in your life where you realise time is a truly scarily finite resource and you should do the best you can to savour every moment, all the time you lose to exhaustion feels like a criminal waste and a horrible punishment at the same time.
\n
\nEvery time I go quieter on this site and on social media, I routinely receive little messages from concerned parties asking me\u2014 well, some of them at least start by asking how I\u2019m doing. Others are more interested in knowing why I haven\u2019t shared my opinion on the Hot Tech Topic Of The Day.
I have been able to keep up with the main tech news this summer, and honestly, that\u2019s the other layer of exhaustion I\u2019ve been experiencing. You see, I gladly analyse and criticise things in tech when there are interesting enough things to analyse and criticise. But tech news have felt so utterly samey for a while now. Rumours about the hardware Apple will introduce in September and October. Some new proposed law that\u2019s pissing off some tech company and all their fanpeople. Hackers doing more hacking. Some new apps \u2014 the flow of cool innovative apps is now sadly reduced to a trickle \u2014 which force subscription on you as the sole method of sustaining them. A new folding phone comes out, same as the old folding phone. And is the iPad capable of replacing a Mac? (Not again.) And where is the iPad headed? (Not again!) Is spatial computing The Future??? Blah blah blah.
\nTechnology today is in the boring part of the curve. The part where the curve is almost flat. The exhaustion part. There\u2019s the occasional spark, but the industry is at its most iterative at the moment, generally speaking. So I find increasingly hard to be excited about something in tech. The gaming world might be a small exception, but you really have to look for gems in a landscape that, here too, feels mostly iterative: hardware-wise, you get spec bumps that improve how games look and perform. Creatively, and when it comes to triple\u2011A titles, sometimes it feels just like Hollywood \u2014 a landscape dominated by franchises, sequels, and, uh, stuff designed to make you waste money.
\nChanging subject, another reason I\u2019ve been quieter on social media is because the situation couldn\u2019t be more fragmented. I\u2019m currently more active on Mastodon, where a fair amount of mutual friends and followers from my Twitter/X network of people have been landing since Elon Musk started actively destroying Twitter. But on that shipwreck of a platform there are still a lot of people I care about and want to interact with. I\u2019ve found this fracture to be very detrimental to the way I engage with social media on a daily basis. As I wrote on Mastodon, when Twitter was the platform everyone was on, it brought a positive flow in my day-to-day. It was quicker and easier to check on people, keep up with what they shared, interact. Now it\u2019s more like, Oh, let\u2019s have a quick look over there, see how everyone\u2019s doing. Everything is more sporadic and inertial. Attention is also a finite resource, and the more you disrupt and fragment it, the less you see of the overall picture.
\nTo circle back to the original subject, exhaustion, and conclude, at this point you might be wondering about coping mechanisms. The disarming truth is that I\u2019ve handled this exhaustion poorly. When you can\u2019t sleep well at night, and feel sleepy and tired during the day, when you can\u2019t concentrate and feel utterly useless, you really have very little energy left to muster any kind of meaningful reaction. I felt mostly resigned and finding a tiny tiny comfort in thinking that \u201cThis too shall pass\u201d, but the general anxiety coming from watching time melt away, drowned and drenched in days that felt almost more routine\u2011y than when I\u2019m knee-deep in work, was really overpowering.
\nAs for tech exhaustion\u2026 it\u2019s ultimately just a phase \u2014 which is lasting longer than in previous periods of time when innovation felt like an unstoppable force. In photography and music, there seems to be a trend where people are appreciating more and more a return to more \u2018analogue\u2019 habits, mindsets, and \u00e6sthetics. I\u2019ve been doing the same even before it was cool, because I basically never stopped listening and buying vinyl records, CDs, and MiniDiscs. And I never really stopped engaging in film photography with 40\u201350-year-old equipment. With writing, I\u2019m trying to go back to using pen & paper even more than before, as I found many many times that this really improves my creative process.
\nThe return to more analogue and tactile ways of enjoyment and creation isn\u2019t posturing for me, at all. Generally speaking, technology today wants to envelop us in immateriality. The more we are reduced to data, to numbers, to digital profiles, to code, the more we can be controlled and influenced. Material objects, and habits that can extract us from that sea of digital immateriality as frequently as possible, may be our most precious anchors against all this depersonalisation \u2014 which interestingly enough also appears at the intersection between technology and exhaustion.
\n", "content_text": "This summer has been particularly hard on me. I don\u2019t handle heat and humidity very well, and July and August have been devastating in this regard where I live. Like I wrote in my previous article about a month ago, what little energy I could save was mainly devoted to work. But I had to take a break from that too, so I enjoyed some holiday time in August. I went to Madrid and Toledo, where the temperatures were even higher than in Valencia, often reaching 40\u201341 degrees Celsius, but at least there was little humidity. Dry heat is much more tolerable for me. So at least I had enough energies to take long walks, snap photos, and enjoy being a tourist with my wife.\nIn this world, today so ever-obsessed with technology and productivity, when you complain of physical exhaustion some people will inevitably think you\u2019re kind of exaggerating; almost as if it were some lame, unimaginative excuse to justify your general poor performance. But the exhaustion caused by a very hot and suffocatingly humid climate can be something alarmingly draining. (If you have lived all your life in a country that has this kind of climate by default, all year round, it\u2019s clearly a different story, as you will be accustomed to it and you\u2019ll probably be able to function better in it). Worse, it often leads to mental exhaustion as well. Unless you find some form of protection against the heat and humidity (ventilation, air conditioning), your nights will likely be restless, with intermittent sleep; and we all know by now how important long hours of uninterrupted sleep are for our mental health and balance. Sadly, a lot of my days these past two months have been spent in a generally listless stupor, the sleep disruption of the night being deeply felt during the day, in a state resembling jet lag or mild drunkenness. \nFor a creative person as myself, this is the stuff of nightmares. This is the worst kind of creative block: it has very little to do with what you\u2019re trying to create \u2014 it\u2019s a force majeure type of block stopping you in your tracks no matter what you were trying to do. Sure, you know it\u2019s not your fault, but that doesn\u2019t take anything away from the same resulting feeling of utter frustration and anger boiling inside of you. And you can\u2019t even act this frustration out because you\u2019re too fucking exhausted to do so. How ironic.\nThere is also another depressing realisation sprinkled on top: that while you\u2019re suffering this kind of climate-induced physical and mental exhaustion, you\u2019re wasting a lot of your time. And this is not the productivity-obsessed mindset speaking. It\u2019s not like thinking, I\u2019m wasting all this time I could spend working or doing more soul-crushing grind. More simply, it\u2019s thinking, I\u2019m wasting all this time I could spend\u2026 truly living and having fun and being happy. When you\u2019re in your 20s or 30s, leaving a bunch of weeks behind where you couldn\u2019t do almost anything can surely be annoying. But when you\u2019re older and you\u2019re starting to enter that phase in your life where you realise time is a truly scarily finite resource and you should do the best you can to savour every moment, all the time you lose to exhaustion feels like a criminal waste and a horrible punishment at the same time.\n \n\n \nEvery time I go quieter on this site and on social media, I routinely receive little messages from concerned parties asking me\u2014 well, some of them at least start by asking how I\u2019m doing. Others are more interested in knowing why I haven\u2019t shared my opinion on the Hot Tech Topic Of The Day.\nI have been able to keep up with the main tech news this summer, and honestly, that\u2019s the other layer of exhaustion I\u2019ve been experiencing. You see, I gladly analyse and criticise things in tech when there are interesting enough things to analyse and criticise. But tech news have felt so utterly samey for a while now. Rumours about the hardware Apple will introduce in September and October. Some new proposed law that\u2019s pissing off some tech company and all their fanpeople. Hackers doing more hacking. Some new apps \u2014 the flow of cool innovative apps is now sadly reduced to a trickle \u2014 which force subscription on you as the sole method of sustaining them. A new folding phone comes out, same as the old folding phone. And is the iPad capable of replacing a Mac? (Not again.) And where is the iPad headed? (Not again!) Is spatial computing The Future??? Blah blah blah.\nTechnology today is in the boring part of the curve. The part where the curve is almost flat. The exhaustion part. There\u2019s the occasional spark, but the industry is at its most iterative at the moment, generally speaking. So I find increasingly hard to be excited about something in tech. The gaming world might be a small exception, but you really have to look for gems in a landscape that, here too, feels mostly iterative: hardware-wise, you get spec bumps that improve how games look and perform. Creatively, and when it comes to triple\u2011A titles, sometimes it feels just like Hollywood \u2014 a landscape dominated by franchises, sequels, and, uh, stuff designed to make you waste money.\nChanging subject, another reason I\u2019ve been quieter on social media is because the situation couldn\u2019t be more fragmented. I\u2019m currently more active on Mastodon, where a fair amount of mutual friends and followers from my Twitter/X network of people have been landing since Elon Musk started actively destroying Twitter. But on that shipwreck of a platform there are still a lot of people I care about and want to interact with. I\u2019ve found this fracture to be very detrimental to the way I engage with social media on a daily basis. As I wrote on Mastodon, when Twitter was the platform everyone was on, it brought a positive flow in my day-to-day. It was quicker and easier to check on people, keep up with what they shared, interact. Now it\u2019s more like, Oh, let\u2019s have a quick look over there, see how everyone\u2019s doing. Everything is more sporadic and inertial. Attention is also a finite resource, and the more you disrupt and fragment it, the less you see of the overall picture. \nTo circle back to the original subject, exhaustion, and conclude, at this point you might be wondering about coping mechanisms. The disarming truth is that I\u2019ve handled this exhaustion poorly. When you can\u2019t sleep well at night, and feel sleepy and tired during the day, when you can\u2019t concentrate and feel utterly useless, you really have very little energy left to muster any kind of meaningful reaction. I felt mostly resigned and finding a tiny tiny comfort in thinking that \u201cThis too shall pass\u201d, but the general anxiety coming from watching time melt away, drowned and drenched in days that felt almost more routine\u2011y than when I\u2019m knee-deep in work, was really overpowering.\nAs for tech exhaustion\u2026 it\u2019s ultimately just a phase \u2014 which is lasting longer than in previous periods of time when innovation felt like an unstoppable force. In photography and music, there seems to be a trend where people are appreciating more and more a return to more \u2018analogue\u2019 habits, mindsets, and \u00e6sthetics. I\u2019ve been doing the same even before it was cool, because I basically never stopped listening and buying vinyl records, CDs, and MiniDiscs. And I never really stopped engaging in film photography with 40\u201350-year-old equipment. With writing, I\u2019m trying to go back to using pen & paper even more than before, as I found many many times that this really improves my creative process. \nThe return to more analogue and tactile ways of enjoyment and creation isn\u2019t posturing for me, at all. Generally speaking, technology today wants to envelop us in immateriality. The more we are reduced to data, to numbers, to digital profiles, to code, the more we can be controlled and influenced. Material objects, and habits that can extract us from that sea of digital immateriality as frequently as possible, may be our most precious anchors against all this depersonalisation \u2014 which interestingly enough also appears at the intersection between technology and exhaustion.", "date_published": "2023-09-01T14:23:39+01:00", "date_modified": "2023-09-01T20:01:50+01:00", "authors": [ { "name": "Riccardo Mori", "url": "https://morrick.me/archives/author/admin", "avatar": "https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/ed738e1ed4787ff5636abfe6a6e39610?s=512&d=blank&r=g" } ], "author": { "name": "Riccardo Mori", "url": "https://morrick.me/archives/author/admin", "avatar": "https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/ed738e1ed4787ff5636abfe6a6e39610?s=512&d=blank&r=g" }, "tags": [ "English", "Self", "Social networks", "Writing", "Tech Life" ], "summary": "A personal update, after leaving a terrible summer behind." }, { "id": "https://morrick.me/?p=9756", "url": "https://morrick.me/archives/9756", "title": "Helvetica 12", "content_html": "I\u2019m late to the tech news party. The weather here in Valencia has been literal hell for the past month. Combine that with bad, short sleep nights and an aching right upper arm, and you\u2019ll understand just how poorly focused and barely functioning I have been lately. I\u2019ve had enough energies to work and keep up with the news, but not to react to them promptly.
\nSo, Microsoft is switching from Calibri to Aptos as their default font for Office documents. From their announcement blog post (curiously published on Medium):
\n\nFor 15 years, our beloved Calibri was Microsoft\u2019s default font and crown keeper of office communications, but as you know, our relationship has come to a natural end. We changed. The technology we use every day has changed. And so, our search of the perfect font for higher resolution screens began. The font needed to have sharpness, uniformity, and be great for display type. It was exciting at times, but also intimidating. How do you replace Calibri? How do you find that one true font that can take its place as the rightful default?
\nAs we shared before, Microsoft commissioned five new fonts: Bierstadt, Grandview, Seaford, Skeena, and Tenorite. It was our hope that one of them would be our next default font for Microsoft 365. All of them were added to the drop-down font picker. From there, as you got a chance to use them, we listened to your impassioned feedback and chose the one that resonated most which was Bierstadt. But as there was a change of guard so too the name. Bierstadt is now known as Aptos.\n
I got acquainted with Calibri when I started using Windows more frequently from 2016 onwards, both for work-related reasons, and because an old hardware interest \u2014 vintage ThinkPads \u2014 coincidentally rekindled around the same time. I\u2019ve found Calibri to be a good \u2018work font\u2019 \u2014 meaning I wouldn\u2019t use it in a book design project, or for some other project involving distinctive typography. But it is a font that works well on screen and it\u2019s easy enough on the eye when reading documents and at smaller font sizes.
\nI\u2019ve examined the five candidates Microsoft commissioned in search for a Calibri replacement and I found them all decent for the purpose, with the strong exception of Tenorite, which doesn\u2019t seem a good fit for the job. Remember, the purpose here is to provide a default document font that is a good workhorse for display type and text-oriented applications. It doesn\u2019t have to be a fancy font for artistic typographic projects. It has to be pleasant, neutral, possibly readable at all sizes (but especially smaller sizes, say 14 points and below), and as Microsoft\u2019s Si Daniels writes in the afore-linked post, have sharpness, uniformity, and be great for display type.
\nIf I had to choose my personal favourite among those candidates, I would have opted for Seaford. Aptos\u2019s character shapes have a roundness which I think works a bit against the font\u2019s legibility when you read big chunks of text. Seaford\u2019s character shapes have more movement and flow, and feel more airy when you read longer paragraphs. They hook your eye more as it parses the text, if you get my drift. But Aptos isn\u2019t a bad final choice by any means.
\nI learnt about this font change via this post by John Gruber, and while I understood his critique, I don\u2019t entirely agree with it, and especially his overall tone rubbed me up the wrong way. Remarks like, Companies that have taste do not conduct design via surveys or, But if Microsoft feels the need to chase fleeting fashion rather than timeless style, Aptos is the trendiest of the bunch are the typical jabs thrown at Microsoft I still sometimes hear from long-time Mac users who have been holding a grudge since the 1990s. Today\u2019s Microsoft isn\u2019t a tasteless company when it comes to hardware design. And you know what? They have been making interesting progress with regard to software design as well. It certainly feels Microsoft hasn\u2019t rested on their laurels \u2014 or even regressed in certain areas \u2014 as Apple has with Mac OS\u2019s UI.
\nBut I\u2019m digressing. Where I disagree most with Gruber is when he writes:
\n\n\nI don\u2019t know why Microsoft states as fact that Calibri somehow needed to be replaced as their default font just because it\u2019s 15 years old. A good default font should stand the test of time for decades, if not a literal lifetime.\n
And in the related footnote 3:
\n\n\nApple\u2019s default font (as seen today in apps like Pages, Numbers, and TextEdit, and in bygone times in apps like MacWrite and SimpleText) has been nearly unchanged since 1991 or so, switching only from Helvetica to its superior expanded sibling Helvetica Neue. Prior to Helvetica, the default font was Geneva, Susan Kare\u2019s pixel font homage to Helvetica. No one is going to make a movie about Aptos.\n
A good default font should stand the test of time for decades, if not a literal lifetime. \u2014 Yes, generally speaking this is true. But we are talking about computer fonts designed mainly for display work. What worked well on computer displays from 20 or 30 years ago may not work as well on current displays, especially considering just how much their technology has evolved over the past three decades. What once was the entire screen of a Macintosh computer, it\u2019s now as big as a postage stamp on the much bigger, much denser displays we use today. I don\u2019t think Microsoft is \u201cchasing fleeting fashion rather than timeless style\u201d. They have realised that Calibri, while still being a nice font for its intended purpose, may not be the optimal choice for current displays. For me, it makes sense that, as technology evolves, certain elements that go with it have to evolve as well.
\nHaving elegant, tasteful fonts in a computer system is certainly a good thing, but there\u2019s a strong element of pragmatism here that shouldn\u2019t be overlooked. These Office default fonts have to be \u2018work fonts\u2019. They have to keep working well in documents (especially on screen) as display technology evolves. Like system fonts. The system font of the original Macintosh was Chicago, which lasted until Mac OS 7.6. It was a great font that was very utilitarian and quite legible in the era of low-resolution displays and aliased fonts. But it definitely would not work in today\u2019s Macs and on current displays.
\nAfter Chicago, Mac OS\u2019s system font became Charcoal in Mac OS 8 and 9 (Charcoal\u2019s design was essentially a refresh of Chicago and worked better on the Mac displays of the mid- to late 1990s). With Mac OS X came Lucida Grande \u2014 still my favourite \u2014 which lasted a long time, from Mac OS Developer Preview 3 to Mac OS X 10.9 Mavericks included (about 13 years). Then we had an odd year, with Mac OS X 10.10 and Helvetica Neue as system font, to finally change with the Apple-designed San Francisco, appearing in Mac OS X 10.11 El Capitan.
\nWith that sore exception of Helvetica Neue, notice how all the changes in Mac OS\u2019s system fonts have been necessary steps to maintain good legibility and accessibility as computer displays have evolved. And while as a personal preference I think Lucida Grande would still look great on current Macs, San Francisco is perfect on retina displays. When it comes to system fonts, Apple hasn\u2019t \u201cchased fleeting fashion rather than timeless style\u201d, it has simply adapted as technology changed. It\u2019s essentially the same thing Microsoft is doing with the transition from Calibri to Aptos.
\nApple\u2019s default font (as seen today in apps like Pages, Numbers, and TextEdit, and in bygone times in apps like MacWrite and SimpleText) has been nearly unchanged since 1991 or so, switching only from Helvetica to its superior expanded sibling Helvetica Neue. Prior to Helvetica, the default font was Geneva, Susan Kare\u2019s pixel font homage to Helvetica. \u2014 Gruber here boasts Apple\u2019s choices as being smart and superior compared to Microsoft\u2019s. But while I agree that Geneva is a font that has aged incredibly well and is still very good and very legible at 12 points in TextEdit \u2014 unpopular opinion warning \u2014 I seriously question Apple\u2019s judgement in sticking with Helvetica and Helvetica Neue as default font in TextEdit and the iWork apps for so long.
\nI always found Helvetica to be a good typeface at 16\u201318 points and above, and definitely more in print than on screen. I guess that Helvetica worked as system font in iOS 6 and earlier because it was used in bold style in many parts of the system; and the portable nature of iOS devices means you typically kept them closer to your eyes than a laptop or desktop computer display, and that really helps with a font\u2019s legibility.
\nBut Helvetica at 12 points, which obstinately remains TextEdit and other Apple apps\u2019 default font after all these years, is not a good choice at all for reading and writing text on current displays. Even with the crispness of retina displays, it\u2019s just too small and has poor flow \u2014 the tight spacing between characters in Helvetica leads to what I non-professionally call \u2018type clumps\u2019, letter groupings that are a bit more difficult to parse when reading text at small sizes because there\u2019s simply too little space between them. At 8, 9, 10, 11, 12 points, Geneva is still a better font than Helvetica. Open TextEdit on your Mac and see for yourself.
\nHelvetica clearly didn\u2019t work as system font when Apple introduced it in Yosemite, and the fact it only lasted one year is quite telling. (I was vigorously critic of Helvetica Neue as system font at the time). That\u2019s why I find very curious that Apple keeps shoving Helvetica in our faces as default document font after all this time.
\nNo one is going to make a movie about Aptos. \u2014 What a stupid quip. Helvetica is a historically important typeface that has been used and abused for a very long time. Aptos is a computer font that\u2019s been essentially designed for a specific purpose. It\u2019s like comparing a classic car from Ferrari, Mercedes or Jaguar to a Chinese economy electric car.
\n", "content_text": "I\u2019m late to the tech news party. The weather here in Valencia has been literal hell for the past month. Combine that with bad, short sleep nights and an aching right upper arm, and you\u2019ll understand just how poorly focused and barely functioning I have been lately. I\u2019ve had enough energies to work and keep up with the news, but not to react to them promptly.\nSo, Microsoft is switching from Calibri to Aptos as their default font for Office documents. From their announcement blog post (curiously published on Medium):\nFor 15 years, our beloved Calibri was Microsoft\u2019s default font and crown keeper of office communications, but as you know, our relationship has come to a natural end. We changed. The technology we use every day has changed. And so, our search of the perfect font for higher resolution screens began. The font needed to have sharpness, uniformity, and be great for display type. It was exciting at times, but also intimidating. How do you replace Calibri? How do you find that one true font that can take its place as the rightful default?\nAs we shared before, Microsoft commissioned five new fonts: Bierstadt, Grandview, Seaford, Skeena, and Tenorite. It was our hope that one of them would be our next default font for Microsoft 365. All of them were added to the drop-down font picker. From there, as you got a chance to use them, we listened to your impassioned feedback and chose the one that resonated most which was Bierstadt. But as there was a change of guard so too the name. Bierstadt is now known as Aptos.\n\nI got acquainted with Calibri when I started using Windows more frequently from 2016 onwards, both for work-related reasons, and because an old hardware interest \u2014 vintage ThinkPads \u2014 coincidentally rekindled around the same time. I\u2019ve found Calibri to be a good \u2018work font\u2019 \u2014 meaning I wouldn\u2019t use it in a book design project, or for some other project involving distinctive typography. But it is a font that works well on screen and it\u2019s easy enough on the eye when reading documents and at smaller font sizes.\nI\u2019ve examined the five candidates Microsoft commissioned in search for a Calibri replacement and I found them all decent for the purpose, with the strong exception of Tenorite, which doesn\u2019t seem a good fit for the job. Remember, the purpose here is to provide a default document font that is a good workhorse for display type and text-oriented applications. It doesn\u2019t have to be a fancy font for artistic typographic projects. It has to be pleasant, neutral, possibly readable at all sizes (but especially smaller sizes, say 14 points and below), and as Microsoft\u2019s Si Daniels writes in the afore-linked post, have sharpness, uniformity, and be great for display type.\nIf I had to choose my personal favourite among those candidates, I would have opted for Seaford. Aptos\u2019s character shapes have a roundness which I think works a bit against the font\u2019s legibility when you read big chunks of text. Seaford\u2019s character shapes have more movement and flow, and feel more airy when you read longer paragraphs. They hook your eye more as it parses the text, if you get my drift. But Aptos isn\u2019t a bad final choice by any means.\nI learnt about this font change via this post by John Gruber, and while I understood his critique, I don\u2019t entirely agree with it, and especially his overall tone rubbed me up the wrong way. Remarks like, Companies that have taste do not conduct design via surveys or, But if Microsoft feels the need to chase fleeting fashion rather than timeless style, Aptos is the trendiest of the bunch are the typical jabs thrown at Microsoft I still sometimes hear from long-time Mac users who have been holding a grudge since the 1990s. Today\u2019s Microsoft isn\u2019t a tasteless company when it comes to hardware design. And you know what? They have been making interesting progress with regard to software design as well. It certainly feels Microsoft hasn\u2019t rested on their laurels \u2014 or even regressed in certain areas \u2014 as Apple has with Mac OS\u2019s UI. \nBut I\u2019m digressing. Where I disagree most with Gruber is when he writes:\n\nI don\u2019t know why Microsoft states as fact that Calibri somehow needed to be replaced as their default font just because it\u2019s 15 years old. A good default font should stand the test of time for decades, if not a literal lifetime.\n\nAnd in the related footnote 3:\n\nApple\u2019s default font (as seen today in apps like Pages, Numbers, and TextEdit, and in bygone times in apps like MacWrite and SimpleText) has been nearly unchanged since 1991 or so, switching only from Helvetica to its superior expanded sibling Helvetica Neue. Prior to Helvetica, the default font was Geneva, Susan Kare\u2019s pixel font homage to Helvetica. No one is going to make a movie about Aptos.\n\nA good default font should stand the test of time for decades, if not a literal lifetime. \u2014 Yes, generally speaking this is true. But we are talking about computer fonts designed mainly for display work. What worked well on computer displays from 20 or 30 years ago may not work as well on current displays, especially considering just how much their technology has evolved over the past three decades. What once was the entire screen of a Macintosh computer, it\u2019s now as big as a postage stamp on the much bigger, much denser displays we use today. I don\u2019t think Microsoft is \u201cchasing fleeting fashion rather than timeless style\u201d. They have realised that Calibri, while still being a nice font for its intended purpose, may not be the optimal choice for current displays. For me, it makes sense that, as technology evolves, certain elements that go with it have to evolve as well.\nHaving elegant, tasteful fonts in a computer system is certainly a good thing, but there\u2019s a strong element of pragmatism here that shouldn\u2019t be overlooked. These Office default fonts have to be \u2018work fonts\u2019. They have to keep working well in documents (especially on screen) as display technology evolves. Like system fonts. The system font of the original Macintosh was Chicago, which lasted until Mac OS 7.6. It was a great font that was very utilitarian and quite legible in the era of low-resolution displays and aliased fonts. But it definitely would not work in today\u2019s Macs and on current displays. \nAfter Chicago, Mac OS\u2019s system font became Charcoal in Mac OS 8 and 9 (Charcoal\u2019s design was essentially a refresh of Chicago and worked better on the Mac displays of the mid- to late 1990s). With Mac OS X came Lucida Grande \u2014 still my favourite \u2014 which lasted a long time, from Mac OS Developer Preview 3 to Mac OS X 10.9 Mavericks included (about 13 years). Then we had an odd year, with Mac OS X 10.10 and Helvetica Neue as system font, to finally change with the Apple-designed San Francisco, appearing in Mac OS X 10.11 El Capitan.\nWith that sore exception of Helvetica Neue, notice how all the changes in Mac OS\u2019s system fonts have been necessary steps to maintain good legibility and accessibility as computer displays have evolved. And while as a personal preference I think Lucida Grande would still look great on current Macs, San Francisco is perfect on retina displays. When it comes to system fonts, Apple hasn\u2019t \u201cchased fleeting fashion rather than timeless style\u201d, it has simply adapted as technology changed. It\u2019s essentially the same thing Microsoft is doing with the transition from Calibri to Aptos.\nApple\u2019s default font (as seen today in apps like Pages, Numbers, and TextEdit, and in bygone times in apps like MacWrite and SimpleText) has been nearly unchanged since 1991 or so, switching only from Helvetica to its superior expanded sibling Helvetica Neue. Prior to Helvetica, the default font was Geneva, Susan Kare\u2019s pixel font homage to Helvetica. \u2014 Gruber here boasts Apple\u2019s choices as being smart and superior compared to Microsoft\u2019s. But while I agree that Geneva is a font that has aged incredibly well and is still very good and very legible at 12 points in TextEdit \u2014 unpopular opinion warning \u2014 I seriously question Apple\u2019s judgement in sticking with Helvetica and Helvetica Neue as default font in TextEdit and the iWork apps for so long. \nI always found Helvetica to be a good typeface at 16\u201318 points and above, and definitely more in print than on screen. I guess that Helvetica worked as system font in iOS 6 and earlier because it was used in bold style in many parts of the system; and the portable nature of iOS devices means you typically kept them closer to your eyes than a laptop or desktop computer display, and that really helps with a font\u2019s legibility.\nBut Helvetica at 12 points, which obstinately remains TextEdit and other Apple apps\u2019 default font after all these years, is not a good choice at all for reading and writing text on current displays. Even with the crispness of retina displays, it\u2019s just too small and has poor flow \u2014 the tight spacing between characters in Helvetica leads to what I non-professionally call \u2018type clumps\u2019, letter groupings that are a bit more difficult to parse when reading text at small sizes because there\u2019s simply too little space between them. At 8, 9, 10, 11, 12 points, Geneva is still a better font than Helvetica. Open TextEdit on your Mac and see for yourself. \nHelvetica clearly didn\u2019t work as system font when Apple introduced it in Yosemite, and the fact it only lasted one year is quite telling. (I was vigorously critic of Helvetica Neue as system font at the time). That\u2019s why I find very curious that Apple keeps shoving Helvetica in our faces as default document font after all this time. \nNo one is going to make a movie about Aptos. \u2014 What a stupid quip. Helvetica is a historically important typeface that has been used and abused for a very long time. Aptos is a computer font that\u2019s been essentially designed for a specific purpose. It\u2019s like comparing a classic car from Ferrari, Mercedes or Jaguar to a Chinese economy electric car.", "date_published": "2023-08-04T02:08:07+01:00", "date_modified": "2023-08-04T02:08:38+01:00", "authors": [ { "name": "Riccardo Mori", "url": "https://morrick.me/archives/author/admin", "avatar": "https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/ed738e1ed4787ff5636abfe6a6e39610?s=512&d=blank&r=g" } ], "author": { "name": "Riccardo Mori", "url": "https://morrick.me/archives/author/admin", "avatar": "https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/ed738e1ed4787ff5636abfe6a6e39610?s=512&d=blank&r=g" }, "tags": [ "Apple", "Design", "English", "Type", "UX", "Handpicked" ], "summary": "Comparing Microsoft's and Apple's font choices, and commenting on Gruber's insipid criticism." }, { "id": "https://morrick.me/?p=9751", "url": "https://morrick.me/archives/9751", "title": "It\u2019s increasingly hard to be critical in tech", "content_html": "A couple of weeks ago I published two articles about Apple Vision Pro, the AR/VR headset Apple presented at WWDC23 at the beginning of June. In those articles I expressed and explained my general scepticism towards the product, but mostly towards the vision behind it, which I find \u2014 at least currently \u2014 lacking and unconvincing.
\nThat\u2019s not the first time I\u2019ve criticised Apple, far from it, and therefore it\u2019s not the first time I have had to deal with the subsequent backlash via email and private messages. I can deal with disagreements. I don\u2019t expect every one of my readers (usual or new) to agree with me all the time. When the person who took the time to write me expresses their disagreement in a cogent, articulate manner, I\u2019m very eager to listen. I\u2019m not infallible and I might have missed some huge things in my analyses. It happens, and I can change my mind and opinions on something. If you write me to insult me or to say dumb things at me, you\u2019re wasting your time, you\u2019re showing me your colours, and the impact of what you say is less than zero.
\nBut the negative emails and messages I\u2019ve received after speaking my mind about Vision Pro are worth mentioning. Not because they\u2019re particularly intelligent or articulate (most aren\u2019t, I\u2019m sorry to report), but because they\u2019re emblematic of the way certain tech discourse is degrading nowadays.
\nI have used Apple products since the late 1980s. Back then, Apple wasn\u2019t a giant, but an underdog, and I\u2019ve experienced some of the worst moments in Apple\u2019s history, when the company was actually doomed. Being a Mac user back then, when the platform was truly niche in a world surrounded by Windows and IBM PC-compatible hardware, was an interesting experience for sure. It created a strong community culture, because every time there was debate, we were always on the defensive. It was often frustrating, because back then the Mac was a demonstrably better platform, but convincing people to adopt it over the path of least resistance (Windows and the PC) was hard.
\nThis, I think, created the basis of a \u2018defence culture\u2019 when it comes to Apple. The \u2018other side\u2019 called us zealots, drew religious parallelisms, called us a \u2018cult\u2019, and so forth. And sure, there were Mac users who really displayed a nasty, prejudiced, and even combative attitude towards the \u2018PC Windows guys\u2019, but for the most part (at least in my experience) Mac User Groups were occasions for like-minded people to meet and help one another, sharing tips and experiences, pointing people to certain software applications that might fit their needs and that they were unaware of. And the banter with Windows users was generally non-toxic (again, in my experience). And while I myself have been a so-called \u2018Apple evangelist\u2019 for a few years in the 1990s, my approach in trying to make the Mac platform more known and appreciated wasn\u2019t blunt or confrontational. I always tried to demonstrate how certain tasks could be carried out more efficiently with a Mac, and how so many myths about incompatibilities between the Mac and the PC were indeed myths. But if someone was not convinced or simply could not afford to switch their entire business to the Mac (especially in the 1990s, where there was great uncertainty about the future of Apple as a company), I didn\u2019t think less of them; I didn\u2019t look down on them; and I certainly didn\u2019t storm out of their offices insulting them for using Windows and PCs.
\nBut that defence culture I mentioned before \u2014 it persisted over the years and grew stronger, layer after layer. And today we can see it at work every time there\u2019s any kind of criticism or scepticism towards Apple or any of their products. A lot of die-hard Apple fans today display a level of close-mindedness and zealotry that sometimes is downright concerning. I\u2019ve had interactions with some fans who literally represent the dictionary definition of fanatic (\u201ca person filled with excessive and single-minded zeal, especially for an extreme religious or political cause\u201d). People who will defend Apple no matter what, even when certain Apple practices can be consumer-hostile; even when certain design decisions (in hardware and software) are demonstrably misguided. People who consider whatever Apple makes to be the best product, the right product. People who essentially consider Apple a sort of infallible entity even when faced with obvious Apple screw-ups like bending iPhones or atrocious laptop keyboard design. They act like those religious fundamentalists who justify the evil in this world by telling you that their God operates in mysterious ways we mere mortals cannot comprehend, and that it\u2019s all part of the plan.
\nThis fanaticism and the toxicity it brings, this impoverishment of intelligent discourse in tech (in general, but especially when Apple is concerned) is extremely tiring and unproductive. Back to certain feedback I received about my articles on Vision Pro, let\u2019s observe a couple of examples.
\nThe first trend in some of the responses is people who are offended because they think that, in criticising Vision Pro, I want to put myself in a holier-than-thou position. One wrote me: It\u2019s like telling me I\u2019m a moron for loving Vision Pro and for thinking AR is the future. In this case, I wrote back: If this is your sole takeaway from my articles, then yes, you\u2019re kind of a moron.
\nNow, wisecracking remarks apart, it\u2019s fascinating to me how these people are projecting my criticism towards a product and transforming it into a criticism towards their personal choices and towards them as people. It\u2019s as if they\u2019re worried that, by criticising a product they love, you (and others who criticise it) directly hurt the enjoyment they get out of it, or even contribute to its future failure or disappearance. I hope you realise how this kind of reaction strongly reminds of children\u2019s behaviour.
\nI always tend to be specific and explicit in my analyses. If I had wanted to criticise or mock those who unconditionally love Vision Pro and the idea behind it, I would have clearly done so. My doubts about Vision Pro are mine and mine only. The fact that this thing, and the \u2018vision\u2019 behind it, has yet to convince me is something entirely subjective. But at least I have tried to analyse and express why I find it lacking and unconvincing. Instead, all the negative reactions to my criticism have been simplistic, dogmatic, aggressive, black-or-white stances.
\nAnd we come to the second trend in such responses, exemplified by what another guy wrote me: How can you be so sure Vision Pro\u2019s gonna be a flop? Note, I never wrote or implied that Vision Pro is going to be a flop. But I appreciate the doubting attitude and the search for an honest exchange of views. The problem is his next sentence: Vision Pro will definitely be a success like the iPhone. You see what the problem is here, right? I am not allowed to be \u2018so sure\u2019 about something (I\u2019m not, by the way), but this guy, oh he is certain Vision Pro will be a success. It feels indeed like arguing with a member of a cult. There is no further elaboration past the dogmatic stance. You\u2019re interacting with someone who\u2019s covering their ears and going la-la-la while you\u2019re trying to have a discussion.
\nTech discourse today is progressively going down the drain, and for many reasons. Here are a few I have noticed, in no particular order of importance:
\nBack to point 2 above, and back to Vision Pro specifically, another type of feedback I received about my criticism of the headset is from people who sort of want to defuse the whole discussion by saying essentially that any criticism towards Vision Pro is moot. Why? They cite past Apple products that were initially criticised for this or that reason, and say that such products became huge successes anyway, so the pattern is bound to repeat once again for Vision Pro. Remember the reactions and the criticism when the first Mac was introduced? Remember what journalists and the competition said about the first iPod? Remember those fools who criticised the iPhone for not having a physical keyboard? \u2014 they say \u2014 Haha, where are those people now?
\nThis is a shallow and childish stance. It\u2019s like starting to watch a superhero movie, then quickly skipping to the end and declaring See? The good guys won anyway, eventually. Yeah, they did. But what about the characters\u2019 development? What about the choices they made? What about their flaws? A hero can win in the end, but their character\u2019s flaws remain. A product can be a huge success eventually, or even relatively quickly, but that doesn\u2019t mean it\u2019s flawless.
\nAgain, I\u2019ve owned Apple products since the late 1980s, and I had used Apple products even before that. I read negative articles about the first Mac, the first portable Mac, the first RISC Mac, the iMac G3 (which was the first Mac after Steve Jobs returned to Apple in 1997), the first iPod, the first iPhone, the first iPad, the first Apple Watch\u2026 Some criticism was indeed superficial, uninformed, misguided and even downright trollish. But some critics also made valid points. The fact that those Apple products became successful later doesn\u2019t make such points less valid.
\nCriticism isn\u2019t a zero-sum game. It\u2019s not a matter of winning and losing. A successful product may be successful despite having some design flaws. Its success may make some of such flaws less relevant, but it doesn\u2019t make them disappear. And pointing out those flaws doesn\u2019t make someone \u2018wrong\u2019. And pointing out those flaws doesn\u2019t mean someone \u2018doesn\u2019t get technology\u2019.
\nPeople also often react to criticism as if the critic were just posturing and taking a contrarian stance simply for the sake of sounding different than the mainstream choir of opinions. And while it\u2019s true that there are quite the contrarians out there who share their hot takes betting on the chance that a product might actually fail, to then gloat and bask in their I\u2011told-you-so attitude, there are also people \u2014 like yours truly \u2014 who prefer to share their doubts and criticism towards what they have before their eyes right now, and aren\u2019t even concerned whether the product will be a success or not.
\nExample 1: When the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus were announced, I criticised them for being too big. I thought their size would make them more difficult to handle, and the interface more awkward for one-hand use. Those iPhones were a huge success commercially, and initiated the unstoppable trend of big iPhones that continues to this day. And big iPhones are still a success, but that doesn\u2019t invalidate my initial criticism directed at the iPhone 6 and especially at the 6 Plus. The iPhone 14 Pro and Pro Max are still difficult to handle, and their interface remains awkward for one-hand use. You can barely take a photo using just one hand with these beasts.
\nExample 2: The notch, both on iPhones and especially MacBooks, is a terrible design element and a terrible design decision (as I pointed out here and here). No one denies the great success both notched phones and laptops have had, but that doesn\u2019t automatically make their notch a good design element or decision. The Dynamic Island is an ingenious workaround for sure, but I\u2019d vastly prefer to see and interact with a display devoid of interfering elements.
\nAnd another thing: criticism \u2014 as far as I\u2019m concerned, and especially when writing about Apple stuff \u2014 is never intended to be an attack against what you like, or your preferences, or you as a person. Usually the subject of my criticism is specified right there in the article I\u2019m writing, without subterfuge or intellectual dishonesty. When I wrote those aforementioned pieces criticising the notch in MacBooks, I remember getting some feedback like this: Your piece sort of makes me feel judged by deciding to purchase a MacBook with a notch, almost as if I were told that I have bad taste when it comes to design. I can understand that someone might feel like this, but in cases like this, if you stop and think about it, it\u2019s clear that the sole target of my criticism is Apple. It\u2019s their design decision. It\u2019s they who force their design choices on customers in a take-it-or-leave-it fashion.
\nIn a recent conversation with a friend, he asked me tongue-in-cheek, Aren\u2019t you tired of being a tech critic? And I jokingly replied that It\u2019s a dirty job, but someone has to do it. On a more serious note, it\u2019s not that I love to always look for something to criticise and I still do enjoy technology and tech gadgets. I\u2019m very happy with my new M2 Pro Mac mini, and just the other day I\u2019ve finally upgraded my Sony WH-1000MX3 noise-cancelling headphones by getting the WH-1000MX5 \u2014 and I\u2019m really satisfied with them: they\u2019re a noticeable improvement over the MX3 with regard to noise-cancelling technology and sound quality.
\nHowever, what I\u2019m noticing nowadays more and more frequently is just how uncritically accepting so many people are when it comes to technology and tech products/services. I personally feel it\u2019s a dangerous attitude that leads to technology and big tech companies controlling our lives, where the opposite should be true (that\u2019s why I\u2019m generally in favour of legislation regulating what tech companies are allowed to do). And before we get to yet another misunderstanding: no, I\u2019m not judging you and your love for all kind of tech gadgets. But if your position is to tell me I should just \u2018enjoy life\u2019 and approach these things in the same uncritical way as you do, then I\u2019m afraid we\u2019ll have to agree to disagree.
\n", "content_text": "A couple of weeks ago I published two articles about Apple Vision Pro, the AR/VR headset Apple presented at WWDC23 at the beginning of June. In those articles I expressed and explained my general scepticism towards the product, but mostly towards the vision behind it, which I find \u2014 at least currently \u2014 lacking and unconvincing.\nThat\u2019s not the first time I\u2019ve criticised Apple, far from it, and therefore it\u2019s not the first time I have had to deal with the subsequent backlash via email and private messages. I can deal with disagreements. I don\u2019t expect every one of my readers (usual or new) to agree with me all the time. When the person who took the time to write me expresses their disagreement in a cogent, articulate manner, I\u2019m very eager to listen. I\u2019m not infallible and I might have missed some huge things in my analyses. It happens, and I can change my mind and opinions on something. If you write me to insult me or to say dumb things at me, you\u2019re wasting your time, you\u2019re showing me your colours, and the impact of what you say is less than zero.\nBut the negative emails and messages I\u2019ve received after speaking my mind about Vision Pro are worth mentioning. Not because they\u2019re particularly intelligent or articulate (most aren\u2019t, I\u2019m sorry to report), but because they\u2019re emblematic of the way certain tech discourse is degrading nowadays.\nI have used Apple products since the late 1980s. Back then, Apple wasn\u2019t a giant, but an underdog, and I\u2019ve experienced some of the worst moments in Apple\u2019s history, when the company was actually doomed. Being a Mac user back then, when the platform was truly niche in a world surrounded by Windows and IBM PC-compatible hardware, was an interesting experience for sure. It created a strong community culture, because every time there was debate, we were always on the defensive. It was often frustrating, because back then the Mac was a demonstrably better platform, but convincing people to adopt it over the path of least resistance (Windows and the PC) was hard.\nThis, I think, created the basis of a \u2018defence culture\u2019 when it comes to Apple. The \u2018other side\u2019 called us zealots, drew religious parallelisms, called us a \u2018cult\u2019, and so forth. And sure, there were Mac users who really displayed a nasty, prejudiced, and even combative attitude towards the \u2018PC Windows guys\u2019, but for the most part (at least in my experience) Mac User Groups were occasions for like-minded people to meet and help one another, sharing tips and experiences, pointing people to certain software applications that might fit their needs and that they were unaware of. And the banter with Windows users was generally non-toxic (again, in my experience). And while I myself have been a so-called \u2018Apple evangelist\u2019 for a few years in the 1990s, my approach in trying to make the Mac platform more known and appreciated wasn\u2019t blunt or confrontational. I always tried to demonstrate how certain tasks could be carried out more efficiently with a Mac, and how so many myths about incompatibilities between the Mac and the PC were indeed myths. But if someone was not convinced or simply could not afford to switch their entire business to the Mac (especially in the 1990s, where there was great uncertainty about the future of Apple as a company), I didn\u2019t think less of them; I didn\u2019t look down on them; and I certainly didn\u2019t storm out of their offices insulting them for using Windows and PCs.\nBut that defence culture I mentioned before \u2014 it persisted over the years and grew stronger, layer after layer. And today we can see it at work every time there\u2019s any kind of criticism or scepticism towards Apple or any of their products. A lot of die-hard Apple fans today display a level of close-mindedness and zealotry that sometimes is downright concerning. I\u2019ve had interactions with some fans who literally represent the dictionary definition of fanatic (\u201ca person filled with excessive and single-minded zeal, especially for an extreme religious or political cause\u201d). People who will defend Apple no matter what, even when certain Apple practices can be consumer-hostile; even when certain design decisions (in hardware and software) are demonstrably misguided. People who consider whatever Apple makes to be the best product, the right product. People who essentially consider Apple a sort of infallible entity even when faced with obvious Apple screw-ups like bending iPhones or atrocious laptop keyboard design. They act like those religious fundamentalists who justify the evil in this world by telling you that their God operates in mysterious ways we mere mortals cannot comprehend, and that it\u2019s all part of the plan.\nThis fanaticism and the toxicity it brings, this impoverishment of intelligent discourse in tech (in general, but especially when Apple is concerned) is extremely tiring and unproductive. Back to certain feedback I received about my articles on Vision Pro, let\u2019s observe a couple of examples.\nThe first trend in some of the responses is people who are offended because they think that, in criticising Vision Pro, I want to put myself in a holier-than-thou position. One wrote me: It\u2019s like telling me I\u2019m a moron for loving Vision Pro and for thinking AR is the future. In this case, I wrote back: If this is your sole takeaway from my articles, then yes, you\u2019re kind of a moron. \nNow, wisecracking remarks apart, it\u2019s fascinating to me how these people are projecting my criticism towards a product and transforming it into a criticism towards their personal choices and towards them as people. It\u2019s as if they\u2019re worried that, by criticising a product they love, you (and others who criticise it) directly hurt the enjoyment they get out of it, or even contribute to its future failure or disappearance. I hope you realise how this kind of reaction strongly reminds of children\u2019s behaviour.\nI always tend to be specific and explicit in my analyses. If I had wanted to criticise or mock those who unconditionally love Vision Pro and the idea behind it, I would have clearly done so. My doubts about Vision Pro are mine and mine only. The fact that this thing, and the \u2018vision\u2019 behind it, has yet to convince me is something entirely subjective. But at least I have tried to analyse and express why I find it lacking and unconvincing. Instead, all the negative reactions to my criticism have been simplistic, dogmatic, aggressive, black-or-white stances.\nAnd we come to the second trend in such responses, exemplified by what another guy wrote me: How can you be so sure Vision Pro\u2019s gonna be a flop? Note, I never wrote or implied that Vision Pro is going to be a flop. But I appreciate the doubting attitude and the search for an honest exchange of views. The problem is his next sentence: Vision Pro will definitely be a success like the iPhone. You see what the problem is here, right? I am not allowed to be \u2018so sure\u2019 about something (I\u2019m not, by the way), but this guy, oh he is certain Vision Pro will be a success. It feels indeed like arguing with a member of a cult. There is no further elaboration past the dogmatic stance. You\u2019re interacting with someone who\u2019s covering their ears and going la-la-la while you\u2019re trying to have a discussion.\nTech discourse today is progressively going down the drain, and for many reasons. Here are a few I have noticed, in no particular order of importance:\n\nMany tech pundits aren\u2019t candid or candid enough in their observations because they don\u2019t want to lose access with big tech companies. They tread carefully. While I understand this to an extent, on the other hand it\u2019s not helpful or conducive to a healthy debate. Prominent tech pundits are read and followed by many people, and whether they like it or not, they\u2019re influencers. And if a company \u2014 especially Apple \u2014 introduces questionable changes in its hardware or software, such issues have to be surfaced and criticised. Instead, it\u2019s not infrequent that I read opinion pieces where the pundit of the day basically makes excuses for the company. When some aspects of a product aren\u2019t particularly strong, the pundit will often observe that the company knows what they\u2019re doing, and that they\u2019ll straighten things out eventually.\nSome tech pundits also tend to avoid making certain critiques that sound too stark and countercurrent because they don\u2019t want to look like fools when they later find themselves on the wrong side of history. So, instead of openly calling bullshit on certain things, they prefer a more concessive approach. \u201cI\u2019m not much of a fan of this new feature, change, etc., but it\u2019s no big deal and I can adapt\u201d, \u201cWe have to remember that this is just beta software / a first-generation product, and surely it\u2019ll get better with time\u201d, and so forth. So, when design atrocities like the notch on the iPhone or on MacBooks become non-issues because the public largely doesn\u2019t care (and even if customers cared the only option for them would be to not purchase the product \u2014 and many people just cave when faced with this all-or-nothing proposition), they can say I told you it wasn\u2019t a big deal. Hey, good job pundit, here\u2019s the medal you wanted so badly. I\u2019ll get back to this point later.\nAs Josh Calvetti quite aptly put it in a Mastodon reply, people assume opinions are inherently an attack on their preferences, and thus them. This reflects an even bigger problem \u2014 the inability to engage in critical thinking, which starts by taking the time to read and understand what\u2019s in front of you before broadcasting your knee-jerk reaction. I\u2019m not a sociologist, I don\u2019t know if this problem is connected with the fact that today the way people consume content and the way their attention is constantly fragmented leads them to favour shorter and simpler stuff that is easy to digest and therefore easy to react to in a similarly superficial way, but I\u2019ve been noticing an increasing avoidance of deeper discussions or deeper conversations. Long-form pieces are a bore \u2014 hence the infamous TL;DR (Too Long; Didn\u2019t Read) acronym \u2014 so people seem to always want the Cliff\u2019s Notes version. There can\u2019t be meaningful debate when one part doesn\u2019t even want to actually listen to the other. Put simply, it\u2019s tribalism.\n\nBack to point 2 above, and back to Vision Pro specifically, another type of feedback I received about my criticism of the headset is from people who sort of want to defuse the whole discussion by saying essentially that any criticism towards Vision Pro is moot. Why? They cite past Apple products that were initially criticised for this or that reason, and say that such products became huge successes anyway, so the pattern is bound to repeat once again for Vision Pro. Remember the reactions and the criticism when the first Mac was introduced? Remember what journalists and the competition said about the first iPod? Remember those fools who criticised the iPhone for not having a physical keyboard? \u2014 they say \u2014 Haha, where are those people now? \nThis is a shallow and childish stance. It\u2019s like starting to watch a superhero movie, then quickly skipping to the end and declaring See? The good guys won anyway, eventually. Yeah, they did. But what about the characters\u2019 development? What about the choices they made? What about their flaws? A hero can win in the end, but their character\u2019s flaws remain. A product can be a huge success eventually, or even relatively quickly, but that doesn\u2019t mean it\u2019s flawless. \nAgain, I\u2019ve owned Apple products since the late 1980s, and I had used Apple products even before that. I read negative articles about the first Mac, the first portable Mac, the first RISC Mac, the iMac G3 (which was the first Mac after Steve Jobs returned to Apple in 1997), the first iPod, the first iPhone, the first iPad, the first Apple Watch\u2026 Some criticism was indeed superficial, uninformed, misguided and even downright trollish. But some critics also made valid points. The fact that those Apple products became successful later doesn\u2019t make such points less valid. \nCriticism isn\u2019t a zero-sum game. It\u2019s not a matter of winning and losing. A successful product may be successful despite having some design flaws. Its success may make some of such flaws less relevant, but it doesn\u2019t make them disappear. And pointing out those flaws doesn\u2019t make someone \u2018wrong\u2019. And pointing out those flaws doesn\u2019t mean someone \u2018doesn\u2019t get technology\u2019. \nPeople also often react to criticism as if the critic were just posturing and taking a contrarian stance simply for the sake of sounding different than the mainstream choir of opinions. And while it\u2019s true that there are quite the contrarians out there who share their hot takes betting on the chance that a product might actually fail, to then gloat and bask in their I\u2011told-you-so attitude, there are also people \u2014 like yours truly \u2014 who prefer to share their doubts and criticism towards what they have before their eyes right now, and aren\u2019t even concerned whether the product will be a success or not. \nExample 1: When the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus were announced, I criticised them for being too big. I thought their size would make them more difficult to handle, and the interface more awkward for one-hand use. Those iPhones were a huge success commercially, and initiated the unstoppable trend of big iPhones that continues to this day. And big iPhones are still a success, but that doesn\u2019t invalidate my initial criticism directed at the iPhone 6 and especially at the 6 Plus. The iPhone 14 Pro and Pro Max are still difficult to handle, and their interface remains awkward for one-hand use. You can barely take a photo using just one hand with these beasts. \nExample 2: The notch, both on iPhones and especially MacBooks, is a terrible design element and a terrible design decision (as I pointed out here and here). No one denies the great success both notched phones and laptops have had, but that doesn\u2019t automatically make their notch a good design element or decision. The Dynamic Island is an ingenious workaround for sure, but I\u2019d vastly prefer to see and interact with a display devoid of interfering elements.\nAnd another thing: criticism \u2014 as far as I\u2019m concerned, and especially when writing about Apple stuff \u2014 is never intended to be an attack against what you like, or your preferences, or you as a person. Usually the subject of my criticism is specified right there in the article I\u2019m writing, without subterfuge or intellectual dishonesty. When I wrote those aforementioned pieces criticising the notch in MacBooks, I remember getting some feedback like this: Your piece sort of makes me feel judged by deciding to purchase a MacBook with a notch, almost as if I were told that I have bad taste when it comes to design. I can understand that someone might feel like this, but in cases like this, if you stop and think about it, it\u2019s clear that the sole target of my criticism is Apple. It\u2019s their design decision. It\u2019s they who force their design choices on customers in a take-it-or-leave-it fashion. \nIn a recent conversation with a friend, he asked me tongue-in-cheek, Aren\u2019t you tired of being a tech critic? And I jokingly replied that It\u2019s a dirty job, but someone has to do it. On a more serious note, it\u2019s not that I love to always look for something to criticise and I still do enjoy technology and tech gadgets. I\u2019m very happy with my new M2 Pro Mac mini, and just the other day I\u2019ve finally upgraded my Sony WH-1000MX3 noise-cancelling headphones by getting the WH-1000MX5 \u2014 and I\u2019m really satisfied with them: they\u2019re a noticeable improvement over the MX3 with regard to noise-cancelling technology and sound quality.\nHowever, what I\u2019m noticing nowadays more and more frequently is just how uncritically accepting so many people are when it comes to technology and tech products/services. I personally feel it\u2019s a dangerous attitude that leads to technology and big tech companies controlling our lives, where the opposite should be true (that\u2019s why I\u2019m generally in favour of legislation regulating what tech companies are allowed to do). And before we get to yet another misunderstanding: no, I\u2019m not judging you and your love for all kind of tech gadgets. But if your position is to tell me I should just \u2018enjoy life\u2019 and approach these things in the same uncritical way as you do, then I\u2019m afraid we\u2019ll have to agree to disagree.", "date_published": "2023-07-05T15:03:01+01:00", "date_modified": "2023-07-05T15:15:24+01:00", "authors": [ { "name": "Riccardo Mori", "url": "https://morrick.me/archives/author/admin", "avatar": "https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/ed738e1ed4787ff5636abfe6a6e39610?s=512&d=blank&r=g" } ], "author": { "name": "Riccardo Mori", "url": "https://morrick.me/archives/author/admin", "avatar": "https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/ed738e1ed4787ff5636abfe6a6e39610?s=512&d=blank&r=g" }, "tags": [ "Apple", "English", "Self", "Writing", "Tech Life" ], "summary": "Tech discourse is getting worse, especially when talking about Apple." }, { "id": "https://morrick.me/?p=9743", "url": "https://morrick.me/archives/9743", "title": "First impressions of my new Mac setup", "content_html": "On 21 June I finally updated my main Mac workstation. That \u2018finally\u2019 is mostly work-related. My Intel 2017 21.5\u2011inch iMac still running Mac OS X 10.13 High Sierra remains a very capable workhorse, a Mac I still enjoy using, and a Mac that \u2014 up to a couple of months ago \u2014 still allowed me to do 100% of the things I needed to do. Now that percentage is more like 95%, but that 5% is important. In recent times, in order to carry out certain translation/localisation work, I needed to run Mac apps requiring Mac OS Ventura, and none of my Macs was supported by Ventura (apart from the iMac, which I didn\u2019t want to update, to preserve compatibility with other apps and games).
\nSo here we are.
\n\n
The new Mac is a Mac mini with an M2 Pro chip, in the standard configuration Apple provides on their site, i.e. with a 10-core CPU, a 16-core GPU, 16 GB of RAM, and a 512 GB SSD. Unlike other Macs, whose base configuration always feels a bit lacking, this was actually perfectly adequate for my needs. I briefly considered a built-to-order option with either 32 GB of RAM or 1 TB of storage, but for such modest upgrades Apple wants too much money. With the \u20ac230 I saved for not choosing a 1 TB internal SSD, I can easily buy a good 2 TB external NVMe SSD.
\nChoosing a stock configuration also made me save time. I purchased the Mac mini in the early afternoon, and shortly after it was available for pickup at the local Apple Store.
\nThe display is an LG 28-inch DualUp Monitor with Ergo Stand and USB Type\u2011C. As you can see, it\u2019s a portrait display with an aspect ratio of 16:18. If you want to know more, The Verge published a good review last year. I\u2019ll add a few remarks later.
\nThe keyboard is a Razer Blackwidow V3 Mini Hyperspeed, with Razer\u2019s yellow switches, which are linear and silent. I\u2019ve had a remarkable experience with the Razer Blackwidow Elite (a full-size, wired model featuring Razer\u2019s green switches, which are clicky and similar in feel to the classic Cherry MX Blue switches), and when my wife needed a more compact, wireless keyboard, I found the Blackwidow V3 Mini Hyperspeed for her. As soon as she let me try it, I knew I wanted one for myself.
\nThe mouse is a Razer Basilisk V3 X Hyperspeed. When I was looking for a mouse for my Legion 7i gaming laptop, I found this at a local department store at a good discounted price. I very much enjoyed its ergonomics and the overall experience, so I got another one for my Mac mini setup.
\nOne feature I really like in both Razer products is that they have multiple connectivity. Both mouse and keyboard have Bluetooth and a Wireless 2.4 GHz connection. Both come with a USB\u2011A dongle, but you can use just one dongle to connect both devices to the computer via Wireless(*). The keyboard also comes with a USB\u2011C cable to connect it to the computer when you need to charge the internal battery.
\n(*) After checking the Razer website, I don\u2019t think this is going to be possible if you\u2019re using a Mac. The software that enables this functionality appears to be Windows-only.
\nSince I\u2019m not writing a review for a tech website or magazine, I haven\u2019t conducted any meaningful tests to assess the Mac mini\u2019s performance. But in normal use, you can instantly feel it\u2019s a quiet beast. Everything is instant, everything is effortless. The Mac mini remains cool no matter what I throw at it. I was already accustomed to fast boot times ever since I updated all my Macs to solid-state drives, but the Mac mini managed to surprise me all the same. It cold boots in probably about 15 seconds, and restarts are even faster. Restarting is so fast I basically don\u2019t even see the Apple logo. In the time my iMac performs a complete logout, I could probably restart the mini twice. When you upgrade often, these performance leaps are less noticeable, but coming from a quad-core i5 Intel Mac, the leap to a 10-core Apple Silicon M2 Pro is exhilarating. Apple hardware is as impressive as Apple software is disappointing.
\nWhat about Mac OS Ventura? I haven\u2019t dug deep so far, but on the surface it\u2019s\u2026 tolerable. I am especially glad Stage Manager is off by default. System Settings is cause of continued frustration, however, and every time I open it, it\u2019s like visiting your favourite supermarket or shopping mall and finding out they have rearranged everything, and not very logically either. In the previous System Preferences app, I may have used the Search function two or three times in fifteen years. In System Settings it\u2019s a constant trip to the Search field. When I initially complained about this unnecessary reshuffling of preference panes that is System Settings, so many people wrote me saying they were glad Apple reorganised it because they \u201cnever found anything at a glance\u201d in the old System Preferences app, something I frankly find hard to believe. System Preferences was not perfect, but many panes were grouped together more logically. I know Apple insists on this homogenisation between iOS, iPadOS, and Mac OS\u2019s UI (which, again, isn\u2019t really necessary because people today aren\u2019t tech illiterate like they were in the 1980s), but the fundamental problem with this is that, well, Mac OS is not iOS and a Mac is not a phone or a tablet.
\nThis new Mac mini will mostly be used for work, but I installed Steam anyway just to see how dire the situation was for games, compatibility-wise. I have a total of 84 games in my library. 44 have the ? symbol next to them, meaning they won\u2019t work (they still require a 32-bit compatible machine). Of the remaining 40, 26 are Windows-only titles. I\u2019m left with 14 games that *should* work fine under Apple Silicon. And that\u2019s why I got a gaming laptop a few months ago\u2026
\nBack to the display. The reason I chose it over more predictable candidates of the 4K/5K widescreen variety is that I wanted something more in line with my work, and since I work a lot with text and documents, a portrait display was the obvious choice. With the LG DualUp, it\u2019s like having two 21.5\u2011inch displays stacked on top of each other. Which means that when I visit a website or open a PDF, now I can see double the contents I see on my iMac.
\nOther features I like about the LG DualUp. First, it comes with a generous amount of ports. Second, it has a built-in KVM switch, meaning you can connect two computers to the display and control them both with one mouse and keyboard. Quoting the aforementioned Verge review:
\n\nThe DualUp has two HDMI 2.0 ports, one DisplayPort v1.4 port, a USB\u2011C port with video and 90W of passthrough power, a headphone jack (to use in place of its passable but not fantastic built-in speakers), and two USB\u2011A 3.0 downstream ports for accessories. Additionally, the DualUp has a built-in KVM switch, allowing one keyboard and mouse to control two computers connected to the monitor via USB\u2011C and DisplayPort (with the included USB upstream cable tethered to the computer connected via DisplayPort). After installing the Dual Controller software and configuring my work MacBook Pro and a Dell laptop to connect via IP address, going between the two inputs in picture-by-picture mode was essentially seamless. Mousing over to the dividing line switches the computer that I was controlling. There\u2019s also a keyboard shortcut that can swap the source that you\u2019re controlling. You can transfer up to 10 files (no greater than 2GB) between sources at one time in this mode as well.
I would have preferred trying out the display in person before purchasing it, but no local shop had it available, so I had to trust a few reviews on the Web and YouTube. One minor concern I had was the resolution. Coming from a smaller but retina 4K display that provides amazing text sharpness and legibility, I wondered how the LG \u2014 with its default resolution of 2560\u00d72880 \u2014would fare. It turns out that it\u2019s quite fine anyway. The display is bright and, sure, if I get very close to it, I can see the pixels and what\u2019s displayed doesn\u2019t have the same sharpness of my iMac\u2019s retina display. But I managed to adjust the display to just the right spot where reading/writing is very pleasant.
\nAnd I even had to scale the resolution down a notch. At its native resolution, UI elements like the menu bar, and icons and text within Finder windows, were just too small to be comfortable. So I switched to 2048\u00d72304 and I also went to System Settings > Accessibility > Display and selected Menu bar size: Large, so that the end result size-wise was more or less similar to what I was seeing on my iMac.
\nYet another feature of this display worth mentioning is its Ergo stand. It\u2019s easy to install, it\u2019s very robust, and it\u2019s impressively flexible. Quoting again the Verge review:
\n\n\n\n
\n- It can be pulled forward or pushed back a total of 210mm.
\n- It can be swiveled nearly 360 degrees to the left or right.
\n- It can be lowered by 35mm to bring it closer to your desk.
\n- It allows for 90 degrees of counterclockwise rotation.
\n- It can be tilted up or down by 25 degrees.
\nThe monitor arm\u2019s flexibility allows for more adjustments than many aftermarket monitor arms. So, having it included with the DualUp helps to justify its high sticker price.
Speaking of price, I got the display for \u20ac599, which I believe is about \u20ac100 less its original price. I think it\u2019s good value for what it offers.
\nBack to the keyboard. To anticipate possible enquiries, yes, Razer products aren\u2019t particularly Mac-friendly in general. The keyboard layout is for Windows PCs, and so is 99% of Razer software. How\u2019s the compatibility with a Mac? I\u2019d say it\u2019s 97\u201398% compatible.
\n.bundle
file. Double-clicking on the file opened a System utility called Keyboard Installer, which installed the layout in (user)/Library/Keyboard Layouts
. I then restarted the Mac, went to System Settings > Keyboard > Input Sources > Edit, and in the pane that appears, after pressing [+] on the bottom left to add a new input source, the new layout was available under the Others category at the bottom of the languages list.As I said, these are really non-issues for me, and are vastly outweighed by the main upside: Razer keyboards are good-quality mechanical keyboards. And they represent a good ready-to-use solution for those who, like me, are into mechanical keyboards but not to a nerdy extreme (meaning you don\u2019t really want to build custom keyboards by sourcing every single component needed for the job). And this particular key mismatch problem seems to be limited to this keyboard (or maybe they changed something in how Mac OS Ventura recognises third-party keyboards, I don\u2019t know). The older Blackwidow Elite connected to my iMac is fully recognised by High Sierra, including the dedicated media keys and the volume wheel.
\nOverall, after a week, I\u2019m very satisfied with this new setup. It didn\u2019t cost me a fortune (less than a similarly-specced 14-inch MacBook Pro) and I feel I\u2019ve got a good bang for the buck, so to speak. This setup is also rather compact and saves space in my otherwise cramped desk. And this M2 Pro Mac mini is probably one of the most balanced Mac Apple has produced in years, when it comes to capabilities and features. It is a very good middle ground between a consumer and pro computer; it has a useful array of ports; and it\u2019s powerful enough for my needs to last me a good while. Certainly until Apple decides to remove that goddamn notch from all of their laptops.
\n", "content_text": "On 21 June I finally updated my main Mac workstation. That \u2018finally\u2019 is mostly work-related. My Intel 2017 21.5\u2011inch iMac still running Mac OS X 10.13 High Sierra remains a very capable workhorse, a Mac I still enjoy using, and a Mac that \u2014 up to a couple of months ago \u2014 still allowed me to do 100% of the things I needed to do. Now that percentage is more like 95%, but that 5% is important. In recent times, in order to carry out certain translation/localisation work, I needed to run Mac apps requiring Mac OS Ventura, and none of my Macs was supported by Ventura (apart from the iMac, which I didn\u2019t want to update, to preserve compatibility with other apps and games).\nSo here we are.\nThe setup\n\n \nThe new Mac is a Mac mini with an M2 Pro chip, in the standard configuration Apple provides on their site, i.e. with a 10-core CPU, a 16-core GPU, 16 GB of RAM, and a 512 GB SSD. Unlike other Macs, whose base configuration always feels a bit lacking, this was actually perfectly adequate for my needs. I briefly considered a built-to-order option with either 32 GB of RAM or 1 TB of storage, but for such modest upgrades Apple wants too much money. With the \u20ac230 I saved for not choosing a 1 TB internal SSD, I can easily buy a good 2 TB external NVMe SSD.\nChoosing a stock configuration also made me save time. I purchased the Mac mini in the early afternoon, and shortly after it was available for pickup at the local Apple Store.\nThe display is an LG 28-inch DualUp Monitor with Ergo Stand and USB Type\u2011C. As you can see, it\u2019s a portrait display with an aspect ratio of 16:18. If you want to know more, The Verge published a good review last year. I\u2019ll add a few remarks later.\nThe keyboard is a Razer Blackwidow V3 Mini Hyperspeed, with Razer\u2019s yellow switches, which are linear and silent. I\u2019ve had a remarkable experience with the Razer Blackwidow Elite (a full-size, wired model featuring Razer\u2019s green switches, which are clicky and similar in feel to the classic Cherry MX Blue switches), and when my wife needed a more compact, wireless keyboard, I found the Blackwidow V3 Mini Hyperspeed for her. As soon as she let me try it, I knew I wanted one for myself.\nThe mouse is a Razer Basilisk V3 X Hyperspeed. When I was looking for a mouse for my Legion 7i gaming laptop, I found this at a local department store at a good discounted price. I very much enjoyed its ergonomics and the overall experience, so I got another one for my Mac mini setup.\nAssorted remarks\n1.\nOne feature I really like in both Razer products is that they have multiple connectivity. Both mouse and keyboard have Bluetooth and a Wireless 2.4 GHz connection. Both come with a USB\u2011A dongle, but you can use just one dongle to connect both devices to the computer via Wireless(*). The keyboard also comes with a USB\u2011C cable to connect it to the computer when you need to charge the internal battery.\n(*) After checking the Razer website, I don\u2019t think this is going to be possible if you\u2019re using a Mac. The software that enables this functionality appears to be Windows-only.\n2.\nSince I\u2019m not writing a review for a tech website or magazine, I haven\u2019t conducted any meaningful tests to assess the Mac mini\u2019s performance. But in normal use, you can instantly feel it\u2019s a quiet beast. Everything is instant, everything is effortless. The Mac mini remains cool no matter what I throw at it. I was already accustomed to fast boot times ever since I updated all my Macs to solid-state drives, but the Mac mini managed to surprise me all the same. It cold boots in probably about 15 seconds, and restarts are even faster. Restarting is so fast I basically don\u2019t even see the Apple logo. In the time my iMac performs a complete logout, I could probably restart the mini twice. When you upgrade often, these performance leaps are less noticeable, but coming from a quad-core i5 Intel Mac, the leap to a 10-core Apple Silicon M2 Pro is exhilarating. Apple hardware is as impressive as Apple software is disappointing.\n3.\nWhat about Mac OS Ventura? I haven\u2019t dug deep so far, but on the surface it\u2019s\u2026 tolerable. I am especially glad Stage Manager is off by default. System Settings is cause of continued frustration, however, and every time I open it, it\u2019s like visiting your favourite supermarket or shopping mall and finding out they have rearranged everything, and not very logically either. In the previous System Preferences app, I may have used the Search function two or three times in fifteen years. In System Settings it\u2019s a constant trip to the Search field. When I initially complained about this unnecessary reshuffling of preference panes that is System Settings, so many people wrote me saying they were glad Apple reorganised it because they \u201cnever found anything at a glance\u201d in the old System Preferences app, something I frankly find hard to believe. System Preferences was not perfect, but many panes were grouped together more logically. I know Apple insists on this homogenisation between iOS, iPadOS, and Mac OS\u2019s UI (which, again, isn\u2019t really necessary because people today aren\u2019t tech illiterate like they were in the 1980s), but the fundamental problem with this is that, well, Mac OS is not iOS and a Mac is not a phone or a tablet.\n4.\nThis new Mac mini will mostly be used for work, but I installed Steam anyway just to see how dire the situation was for games, compatibility-wise. I have a total of 84 games in my library. 44 have the ? symbol next to them, meaning they won\u2019t work (they still require a 32-bit compatible machine). Of the remaining 40, 26 are Windows-only titles. I\u2019m left with 14 games that *should* work fine under Apple Silicon. And that\u2019s why I got a gaming laptop a few months ago\u2026\n5.\nBack to the display. The reason I chose it over more predictable candidates of the 4K/5K widescreen variety is that I wanted something more in line with my work, and since I work a lot with text and documents, a portrait display was the obvious choice. With the LG DualUp, it\u2019s like having two 21.5\u2011inch displays stacked on top of each other. Which means that when I visit a website or open a PDF, now I can see double the contents I see on my iMac.\nOther features I like about the LG DualUp. First, it comes with a generous amount of ports. Second, it has a built-in KVM switch, meaning you can connect two computers to the display and control them both with one mouse and keyboard. Quoting the aforementioned Verge review:\nThe DualUp has two HDMI 2.0 ports, one DisplayPort v1.4 port, a USB\u2011C port with video and 90W of passthrough power, a headphone jack (to use in place of its passable but not fantastic built-in speakers), and two USB\u2011A 3.0 downstream ports for accessories. Additionally, the DualUp has a built-in KVM switch, allowing one keyboard and mouse to control two computers connected to the monitor via USB\u2011C and DisplayPort (with the included USB upstream cable tethered to the computer connected via DisplayPort). After installing the Dual Controller software and configuring my work MacBook Pro and a Dell laptop to connect via IP address, going between the two inputs in picture-by-picture mode was essentially seamless. Mousing over to the dividing line switches the computer that I was controlling. There\u2019s also a keyboard shortcut that can swap the source that you\u2019re controlling. You can transfer up to 10 files (no greater than 2GB) between sources at one time in this mode as well.\nI would have preferred trying out the display in person before purchasing it, but no local shop had it available, so I had to trust a few reviews on the Web and YouTube. One minor concern I had was the resolution. Coming from a smaller but retina 4K display that provides amazing text sharpness and legibility, I wondered how the LG \u2014 with its default resolution of 2560\u00d72880 \u2014would fare. It turns out that it\u2019s quite fine anyway. The display is bright and, sure, if I get very close to it, I can see the pixels and what\u2019s displayed doesn\u2019t have the same sharpness of my iMac\u2019s retina display. But I managed to adjust the display to just the right spot where reading/writing is very pleasant.\nAnd I even had to scale the resolution down a notch. At its native resolution, UI elements like the menu bar, and icons and text within Finder windows, were just too small to be comfortable. So I switched to 2048\u00d72304 and I also went to System Settings > Accessibility > Display and selected Menu bar size: Large, so that the end result size-wise was more or less similar to what I was seeing on my iMac.\nYet another feature of this display worth mentioning is its Ergo stand. It\u2019s easy to install, it\u2019s very robust, and it\u2019s impressively flexible. Quoting again the Verge review:\n\n\nIt can be pulled forward or pushed back a total of 210mm.\nIt can be swiveled nearly 360 degrees to the left or right.\nIt can be lowered by 35mm to bring it closer to your desk.\nIt allows for 90 degrees of counterclockwise rotation.\nIt can be tilted up or down by 25 degrees.\n\nThe monitor arm\u2019s flexibility allows for more adjustments than many aftermarket monitor arms. So, having it included with the DualUp helps to justify its high sticker price.\nSpeaking of price, I got the display for \u20ac599, which I believe is about \u20ac100 less its original price. I think it\u2019s good value for what it offers.\n6.\nBack to the keyboard. To anticipate possible enquiries, yes, Razer products aren\u2019t particularly Mac-friendly in general. The keyboard layout is for Windows PCs, and so is 99% of Razer software. How\u2019s the compatibility with a Mac? I\u2019d say it\u2019s 97\u201398% compatible.\n\nYou can\u2019t install the latest version of Razer\u2019s Synapse software to have fine-grained control over the RGB lighting effects, but there\u2019s an open source application for Mac, called Razer macOS that is a good-enough alternative. And the keyboard has some built-in shortcuts to quickly switch through various lighting effects and colours.\nDespite having some modifier keys in different locations compared to a native Mac keyboard, they are correctly recognised by the OS. So, while on a Mac keyboard you have the sequence Fn \u2014 Control \u2014 Alt/Option \u2014 Command keys to the left of the Space bar, and on this keyboard you have Control \u2014 Windows \u2014 Alt keys, by pressing them you get exactly their corresponding function (obviously the Windows key acts as Command key). I have no real issues going from these keyboards to Mac keyboards and back. My muscle memory is not as rudimentary as I thought, heh.\nThe only issue I had, layout-wise, was that pressing the \u2018<\u2019 key to the right of the left Shift returned a completely different character (\u2018\u00ba\u2019). This was the only mismatch between the keyboard and Mac OS\u2019s Spanish ISO layout. Since I use \u2018<\u2019 and \u2018>\u2019 very often, and \u2018\u00ba\u2019 and \u2018\u00aa\u2019 almost never, I immediately went on the hunt for an app to remap such key. I remembered Karabiner, but it turned out to be too complicated to achieve what I wanted, and the whole package felt a bit overkill. I found a much simpler, more elegant solution: Ukelele. The app is not super-intuitive (but thankfully it comes with a very useful manual), but after learning the basics I was able to simply create a copy of the Spanish keyboard layout, drag and drop the \u2018<\u2019 and \u2018>\u2019 symbols on the key that wasn\u2019t correctly recognised, and save the modified keyboard layout in a .bundle file. Double-clicking on the file opened a System utility called Keyboard Installer, which installed the layout in (user)/Library/Keyboard Layouts. I then restarted the Mac, went to System Settings > Keyboard > Input Sources > Edit, and in the pane that appears, after pressing [+] on the bottom left to add a new input source, the new layout was available under the Others category at the bottom of the languages list.\n\nAs I said, these are really non-issues for me, and are vastly outweighed by the main upside: Razer keyboards are good-quality mechanical keyboards. And they represent a good ready-to-use solution for those who, like me, are into mechanical keyboards but not to a nerdy extreme (meaning you don\u2019t really want to build custom keyboards by sourcing every single component needed for the job). And this particular key mismatch problem seems to be limited to this keyboard (or maybe they changed something in how Mac OS Ventura recognises third-party keyboards, I don\u2019t know). The older Blackwidow Elite connected to my iMac is fully recognised by High Sierra, including the dedicated media keys and the volume wheel.\n7.\nOverall, after a week, I\u2019m very satisfied with this new setup. It didn\u2019t cost me a fortune (less than a similarly-specced 14-inch MacBook Pro) and I feel I\u2019ve got a good bang for the buck, so to speak. This setup is also rather compact and saves space in my otherwise cramped desk. And this M2 Pro Mac mini is probably one of the most balanced Mac Apple has produced in years, when it comes to capabilities and features. It is a very good middle ground between a consumer and pro computer; it has a useful array of ports; and it\u2019s powerful enough for my needs to last me a good while. Certainly until Apple decides to remove that goddamn notch from all of their laptops.", "date_published": "2023-06-28T13:40:34+01:00", "date_modified": "2023-06-28T13:40:34+01:00", "authors": [ { "name": "Riccardo Mori", "url": "https://morrick.me/archives/author/admin", "avatar": "https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/ed738e1ed4787ff5636abfe6a6e39610?s=512&d=blank&r=g" } ], "author": { "name": "Riccardo Mori", "url": "https://morrick.me/archives/author/admin", "avatar": "https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/ed738e1ed4787ff5636abfe6a6e39610?s=512&d=blank&r=g" }, "tags": [ "English", "Mac OS", "Self", "Setup", "UX", "Writing", "Tech Life" ], "summary": "I've purchased my first Apple Silicon Mac. And since it's a Mac mini, I updated my whole setup by also getting a new display, keyboard, and mouse." } ] }