Riccardo Mori

Where are we going? — Notes gathered over a 2-month tech detox period

May 18, 2023

Where have I been?

This is probably one of the longest hiatuses I’ve taken from updating this blog. Over the years the frequency of my articles has indeed been decreasing, but I typically managed to write at least a couple of pieces per month. I’m surely stating the obvious, but for an article to appear here, three main conditions have to be fulfilled:

I have something to talk about, something to say. Ever since I started writing online, this has been a guiding principle for me. I don’t like filler content. I don’t like updating for updating’s sake. If I have to link to some other content and throw a one-line comment, I’ll just use social media.
I feel I have something useful to add to the conversation. Having a subject or an idea for an article isn’t enough for me. I also need to feel that my opinion or perspective on a certain topic is worth sharing. Half-hidden by the huge amount of chaff in the tech world, one can find some brilliant tech writers and commenters out there. I read them before thinking about adding my contribution. I often agree with them, and on many occasions I think they’ve already said what I wanted to say more effectively and succinctly than I could possibly convey. When that happens, I usually refrain from posting.
I have time and will to commit to writing and publishing a piece. I’ll briefly remind you that English isn’t my first language, and while I’m very fluent and while I ‘think in English’ when I’m writing, the time I’ll spend writing and editing a 2,000-word article is likely to be longer than what it would take an English-speaking tech writer to accomplish the same task.

During this hiatus, that has lasted all March, all April, and half of May, none of these conditions was fulfilled. An unexpected surge in my workload, combined with days of illness (nothing too serious, just a prolonged flu-like cold and cough), took all my time and energies. I also had to take care of some personal business that involved a quick yet exhausting trip abroad, so there was that as well.

But there was also another important factor in the mix — a general sense of ‘tech fatigue’ and lack of enthusiasm towards tech-oriented topics. For the first time in years, I also stopped reading tech stuff, letting my feed reader accumulate dozens of unread posts.

This period of tech detox wasn’t planned or sought after, at all. It just happened — and frankly, I’m glad it did.

Really, nothing more than notes

Sometimes, when choosing a title for an article, I’ll use the term ‘note’ as synonym for observation, opinion, remark, implying that there’s something organic and organised tying all these notes and observations together. But in this instance, what follows are nothing more than quick thoughts hastily recorded during spare moments. They’re impressions. Fragments. Feelings I wanted to share, not observations of a tech expert assembling a careful, well-documented essay. Keep this in mind as you read along.

Lack of real forward movement

Lack of enthusiasm for technology lately seems to be connected to the feeling that general progress — true progress, not what headlines scream at you — has slowed down to a crawl. I’m Gen X, so I have lived the transition between pre-Web world and what we have today. The 15 years between 1993 and 2008 were wild compared with the 15 years between 2008 and 2023. I know you can point at many awesome things that have appeared in the last fifteen years, but so many things happened between 1993 and 2008 that were or felt like huge breakthroughs, while a lot of stuff between 2008 and 2023, as great as it is, feels mostly iterative.

I don’t expect leaps and bounds everywhere all the time, of course. I actually believe that tech today needs more periods of lull, so that existing hardware and software can (ideally!) be perfected and improved upon. But what bores me to no end as of late is all this buzz around certain trends that are advertised as ‘progress’ and ‘the future’ — augmented reality and artificial intelligence, to name just two — which I think are way overblown. Little substance, lots of fanfare.

Digital toys

A tweet from back in March — So much tech today feels more focused on the creation of ‘digital toys’ more than on innovation that can actually, unequivocally positively help and advance humankind. And [I feel] that a lot of resources are being wasted on things whose real usefulness is debatable, e.g. self-driving cars.

A lot of unease I’ve been feeling in recent times boils down to what I perceive to be a widening disconnect between the tech sphere and the world at large, the real world that is going to shit and down the drain day after day.

The tech sphere looks more and more like a sandbox for escapism. Don’t get me wrong, some escapism is always good and healthy as a coping mechanism, because otherwise we would be in a constant state of depression. But — and I may be wrong here — the kind of escapism I feel coming from the tech world is the sort of ‘bury your head in the sand’, ‘stay entertained and don’t worry about anything else’ escapism that want people to remained hooked to gadgets and digital toys in ways that at times feel almost sedative.

Frictionless at all costs

Recently I wrote on Mastodon — We are so hell-bent on eliminating friction in everything that anything with any trace of friction is considered ‘difficult’, ‘complex’, ‘unintuitive’. An acquaintance recently told me that they tried to open an account on Mastodon and found the process ‘daunting’. I’m all for removing friction when it comes to repetitive, mindless tasks or unnecessarily straining labour. But some friction that stimulates your brain, your thinking process and acuity should always be welcome.

I’ve often seen the smartphone described as an extension of our brain because it gives us instant access to all kind of information. Just don’t confuse ‘extension’ with ‘expansion’. Don’t get me wrong, smartphones and their multitude of apps are undeniably useful for retrieving information on the spot: you’re watching a TV series and you recognise one of the actors, but can’t remember their name or which film or series you saw them previously. You open the IMDb app and quickly look that up. You can also search Wikipedia; you can access several different dictionaries and thesauri for terms you encounter and don’t know; you can use translation apps and services to have a quick and dirty translation when you encounter something in a foreign language you need or want to understand; and so on and so forth, you get the idea. Maps and turn-by-turn directions are something I myself heavily use on a frequent basis, and have been a godsend whenever visiting new places.

But all this isn’t really an expansion of our brain. We may indeed retain some of the notions we’ve searched, but otherwise it’s mostly a flow. We’ll forget about that actor again and we’ll look IMDb up again. Our sense of direction won’t really be improved and we’ll check Google Maps or Apple Maps again for places we already went through. It’s an accumulation of trivia, not knowledge. Smartphones and this kind of ever-ready access are like eating out every day: extremely convenient, but you won’t learn to cook.

Self-driving cars: tons of spaghetti thrown at the wall, and nothing sticks

I have this perspective on the idea of self-driving cars, and nothing so far has made me change my mind — they’re emblematic of everything that is misguided about tech today. This mentality of wanting to ‘solve’ a problem that really didn’t need a solution (or didn’t need a high-tech solution) by throwing an outlandish amount of technology at it, and solving very little in the process. While any step further introduces a whole new set of problems that need to be addressed. How? Why, by throwing even more technology at them, of course. Self-driving cars advocates will tell you that the noble goal is to reduce car accidents and make people safer on the road. That’s nice and all, but I think a more pragmatic (and cost-effective) solution would be to educate drivers better.

Getting a driver’s licence should be a stricter process instead of what amounts to a quick tutorial on the basics of driving and traffic rules. And people should really get rid of nasty habits while driving, like checking their smartphones all the time. Speaking of, I can’t shake the idea that a lot of tech bros just want self-driving cars to entirely eliminate the friction of having to drive themselves, so they can go places while fiddling with their smartphones, tablets, laptops, what have you. Just call an Uber, dude.

As for making people safer on the road, for now, just open a browser and search for “Tesla autopilot”…

AI and drinking the Kool-AI

There is nothing magic about AI, ChatGPT, and all this stuff that’s popping up everywhere like mushrooms. Computers were invented to process data faster. With time, computers have been getting faster and faster, and we have fed them more and more and more and more and more and more and more data. The result is that anything would seem ‘intelligent’ after such treatment. Once again, there may be truly good and useful use cases for AI, but so far I see a lot of people who seem happy to have a tool they can use to think less. Another shortcut that eliminates friction in ways that don’t look healthy to me. I’m not averse to technology or the many conveniences it affords today, but again, I firmly believe we shouldn’t remove that particular kind of friction that stimulates us to use our head and think for ourselves. Do we really need an AI assistant to search the Web, when we can basically find anything by simply using natural language in a query? Are we becoming this lazy and apathetic? One of the worst dystopian illustrations I’ve seen in recent years are the humans in WALL•E (watch the film if you still haven’t, it’s both really entertaining and edifying).

Augmented Reality: mind-goggling!

Do you see AR goggles or glasses in your future? Not really, as far as I’m concerned. I am indeed curious to see how Apple is going to introduce their AR goggles and what kind of picture they’re going to paint to pique people’s interest. I’m very sceptical overall. While I don’t entirely exclude the possibility of purchasing an AR or VR set in the future, I know it’s going to be for very delimited, specific applications. VR gaming is making decent progress finally, and that’s something I’m interested in exploring. But what Facebook/Meta and Apple (judging from the rumours, at least) seem interested in is to promote use cases that are more embedded in the day to day.

Everything I’ve read so far points to ridiculous stuff, however. This idea of people wearing AR goggles to engage in videoconferences set in virtual shared spaces with hyper-realistic avatars of themselves is, again, one example of needless tech nerdification of something that can already be done without throwing additional technology at it: regular videoconferences where people can look at their real selves as they talk with one another! It can’t get more realistic than this, and no one needs to buy an expensive appendage to achieve the same task! Seriously, I can’t wait to see what kind of use cases Apple will promote to make their AR goggles a compelling product. I still think the whole Google Glass fiasco has been an excellent example of the line people draw when it comes to wearable technology in an everyday setting. Ten years have passed since, and I don’t think anything has really changed in this regard from a social standpoint.

Coda: How have I been?

Apart from a period of illness, I’ve been fine. Like I said, this hiatus and tech detox interval wasn’t planned at all, and while I hated not having the time to write and publish anything here, I enjoyed being busy elsewhere and ignoring tech news and the Latest Hyped-up Thing for a while. There was work to do, books to continue reading, music to listen to, a novel to continue writing, and a chapter in my life to finally close after many bittersweet and some painful memories. Many thanks to all who reached out to ask me how I was, and apologies if my silence here made you worry. I’m back, and as sceptical as before, if not more.

Subscription fatigue and related musings

February 26, 2023

by Riccardo Mori

Software

I’m still using the previous version. I really love its design and functionality, but no more subscriptions for me, sorry.

This is an App Store review of an app I, too, have been using on my iOS devices for years. I have translated the review because it only appears on the Spanish App Store. The ‘previous version’ the reviewer refers to is the last version of the app to use the ‘free with in-app purchases’ model. Since then, the developer has switched to a ‘free with strict limitations unless you subscribe’ model.

(In this piece I won’t mention any app or developer specifically because I don’t want to point fingers and single out people or apps. My criticism is focused on certain practices, and I simply want to look at things from a customer’s perspective.)

For the past few years, my purchases in the App Stores (iOS and Mac) have been rapidly slowing down to a trickle. The main reason is saturation. I’ve been using iPhones since 2008, and the first years since the App Store started operations were rather wild. I remember constantly hunting for cool apps to add to my device, especially photo apps. I remember getting to a point where I had more than 40 different photo apps, and sometimes I was missing a crucial snapshot because I couldn’t decide which photo app to shoot with.

But obviously, sooner or later, we all reach a stage where we feel we have all the apps we need. Occasionally there’s a new entry in a certain category which looks and feels better than one of our favourite apps, and so we try it out and stick with it if it’s worthwhile. Other times something happens in the tech world that creates an interest in a new area, like what’s happening now with [airquote] AI [airquote], which spawns a new category of apps to check out. Or a particular platform loses popularity (Twitter) and another gains interest (Mastodon) and we see dozens of new clients pop up everywhere. And so forth. You get the idea: I still browse the App Store every so often, but the platform is quite mature now in terms of app selection, so I’m not constantly looking for something new like I used to back in, say, 2010–2012.

But I do routinely check the App Store. And today, whenever I find something of interest, 8 times out of 10 the app requires a subscription to function at its best, or even to function at all.

If you’ve been visiting the App Store for as long as I have, you’ll certainly be familiar with the expression race to the bottom. If you look for the definition on the Web, you’ll likely encounter serious economic explanations like this one from Investopedia: The race to the bottom refers to a competitive situation where a company, state, or nation attempts to undercut the competition’s prices by sacrificing quality standards or worker safety (often defying regulation), or reducing labor costs. A race to the bottom can also [occur] between governments to attract industry or tax revenues.

What happened in the App Store that created a ‘crisis’ in the pre-in-app purchases and pre-subscriptions era wasn’t so stark; the race to the bottom there simply meant that, in an effort to be competitive and drive purchases, developers kept lowering the price of their apps to an unsustainable level (for the developers). Customers were happily buying apps priced at $1.99 or $0.99, but in the medium-to-long term it wasn’t really sustainable for the developers, except for those rare exceptions where an app sold literally millions of copies. Smaller developers with more modest success were finding themselves in a bit of a predicament. Sure, their app’s low price had attracted enough customers to make a good launch in the App Store, but as interest and visibility waned, and with Apple taking its 30% cut of the pie, they realised that what was gained barely covered the cost of development (at best). Plus, the app may need further adjustments and fixes, as bugs and issues could appear down the road. And for how the App Store works, customers sort of expected free updates.

The most deleterious effect of this race to the bottom within the App Store has been software depreciation. If you accustom people to obtain great-quality apps for a couple of dollars or less, many customers will keep expecting the price of most software and apps to be this low. It’s a vicious circle that’s hard to free yourself from.

Again, before in-app purchases and subscriptions, if a small developer wanted to try and return to a more sustainable situation, at that point their options were quite limited — also due to the App Store’s inherent rigidity:

Raise the price of the app for new customers.
Release a paid major update of the app.

In an ideal world, both sound like reasonable options, and I saw a few developers choose either of them. But it was hard. Hard because in a sea of $0.99 apps, your app that now costs e.g. $6.99 makes people raise an eyebrow and go, What’s so special about this one? I’m sure I can find an alternative for less money. Hard because, in the case of the paid major update, most people’s attention stops at paid instead of at major update. So, unless the paid major update was accompanied by verbose release notes or blog posts on the developer’s website explaining all the new features in detail, and explaining why it was worth the money and the new asking price, people were averse to the proposition. All too often, developers choosing this path were considered ‘greedy’. Not by tech enthusiasts or pundits, who better understood what was happening behind the scenes, but by the general public, which by then was accustomed to having great apps on their devices for pennies, and updated for free.

In-app purchases and now subscriptions have seemingly managed to make the situation for developers better than it used to be back in the era of the ‘race to the bottom’, and part of me is okay with that, because I know and understand that developing a good-quality app for any platform today is no small feat.

But as of late I keep seeing a significant abuse of the in-app purchase and subscription systems, to the point of becoming a customer-hostile and extortionate practice.

For certain apps, the situation is almost completely opposite to what it was back in the ‘race to the bottom’ era: we have mediocre or good-enough apps asking $5 to $10 monthly subscription fees. We have apps that, while good, still ask steep monthly or yearly fees without offering a paid-upfront option. Then we have apps that do provide reasonable subscription fees, but punish customers who would prefer a one-time payment option by offering one-time prices that are so artificially high that you’ll want to opt for a subscription. Again, I understand the costs of development, but eighty euros as a one-time purchase option for a photo app with basic editing features and a bunch of filters? Come on. Maybe some people will cave and give you the 5.99 euros/month you’re asking. Me, I’ll look elsewhere. Not because I’m a cheapskate, because I really am not — I’ve been paying for software since it came in boxes and physical media — but because I truly despise these tactics. It’s like we’ve gone from a race to the bottom to a race to the top.

I am actually surprised that the subscription method has worked so well for many developers. Maybe this is really working for that selection of ‘good guys’ providing truly essential apps for reasonable subscription fees. And I’m happy for them, of course. But I genuinely don’t know for how long subscriptions in general will remain successful:

For one, subscription fatigue is real. A lot of people already pay monthly fees for several services that may be considered ‘essential’ today, like cloud services, music streaming services, entertainment channels. Now that an increasing number of apps — sometimes even one-purpose little utilities — offer no other choice than a subscription, a lot of people are realising that they simply can’t afford to subscribe to everything. Sure, there are a lot of apps asking very reasonable monthly fees, and that’s fine when taken individually, but cumulatively this becomes unsustainable for the regular customer rather quickly.
Secondly, but not less important, all those developers (and let’s don’t mince words, all those scammers) who are abusing the in-app purchase and subscription systems with extortionate prices in exchange for basic, mediocre features, are ultimately giving subscriptions a bad reputation. And I hope this doesn’t end up hurting all the good and honest developers out there. There are still people falling for App Store scams, but there’s also an increasing number of people who are getting suspicious of subscriptions on principle (I’ve been getting a lot of emails in recent times from people asking me things like, I’d like to get this app but it’s subscription-only. Do you know this dev? Should I trust them? or I want to try this app, but I don’t want to be scammed. They offer a free trial period. Is it easy to cancel everything if I don’t want to commit?)
Thirdly, there’s another thing I’ve noticed. And it got my attention only because of some feedback received via email, so I don’t think it’s a widespread issue, but I feel it’s still worth a mention. In a few emails I received from readers of my blog or followers on social media, I was told that they were considering cancelling their subscriptions to certain apps because — after a year or more — they didn’t feel that the developer had made good on their initial promise of keeping the app bug-free or adding ‘new exciting features’ down the road. In one particular case, my interlocutor was rather upset that, and I quote, for the past 14 months the only new thing I’ve seen from this app was a .0.1 update with minor cosmetic fixes and pretty much nothing else. I kinda feel robbed even if it’s not one of those fraudulent apps I sometimes read in the tech news.

Late last year I exchanged a few emails with a developer I collaborated with by helping out with their app’s localisation. On the subject of subscriptions (they have subscription plans, rather fair for what they offer), they told me something along the lines of, Well, at least now consumers have a clearer idea when it comes to software value… And my reaction was, Do they, really? I think they are bombarded with so many different value/price propositions they end up having no real clue. They start considering that, for instance, Spotify Premium costs them 10 euros/month in exchange for unlimited access to a vast library of music; that a Dropbox Plus plan gives an individual 2 TB of cloud space, unlimited device linking, plus other handy features for 12 euros/month; that a Netflix Basic plan gives them unlimited access to ad-free movies and TV series in HD for 8 euros/month… Then we have this photo app that (I’m not kidding) gives you unlimited save & export only if you pay 10 euros/month (but it was 12 euros/month a few weeks ago). What kind of ‘clearer idea’ about software value do we expect a regular consumer to have at the end of the day?

My impression is that people have no other choice than put up with what the App Store throws at them. I’m sure that some have understood that those prices they used to pay some years ago were simply too low to be sustainable in the long run, and they’re happy to support their favourite apps or developers by starting a subscription. But I really wish more people would come to a better understanding of how much a piece of software costs to make, and its overall value, through a more nuanced education than, Either subscribe to this app for $7/month or $75/year, or pay a one-time price of $99, or look elsewhere. I wish we could have avoided going from one extreme — great apps at ludicrously low prices — to the other — great and not so great apps with subscription plans that more often than not don’t feel particularly fair.

I’m not putting the entire weight of my criticism on developers’ shoulders, don’t get me wrong. With Apple still wanting (for the most part) their 30% cut, with the utter joke that is Apple’s review system, and with the clunkiness that still bafflingly plagues the whole process, developers do what they can to stay in business in an environment that should celebrate them instead of thwarting them. But as a customer, the current situation of ridiculous in-app purchases and subscription plans, and tactics that discourage one-time purchases to push me toward subscribing, do not make me a happy shopper.

I’m subscribed to a few services that I feel provide me with a fair amount of benefits for the asking price. But I still view the majority of apps as products, not services. So while I understand that services require periodic payments to sustain the costs of the constant maintenance and provision of such services, products are things one should purchase and own. They’re not services in need of constant maintenance to operate.

Whenever I say I very much prefer paying a fixed amount upfront, and being quite open to purchasing a paid update down the road, typically many are quick to point out that, by subscribing to the app, I’d be doing essentially the same thing: If you’re willing to pay $10–15 upfront for App X and then pay another $10–15 for App X 2.0 a few months later, then why aren’t you willing to subscribe to App X for $1.99/month? Isn’t it the same thing, in the end? It may be the same thing from a financial standpoint, sure. But it’s not the same when it comes to the options and choices I am given.

When I have the choice of making a one-time purchase for $10, I express my commitment to what I have before my eyes. When a new, improved version of the app comes out, I may choose to delete the older version and buy the new one for another $10 or I may decide to skip the new version and keep using the old one (in my case, this is hardly due to me not wanting to spend another $10, but more like me disliking the redesigned UI that often reshuffles interface elements unnecessarily and messes with my muscle memory). But at least I’m getting to keep the old version, as unsupported as it may get. This is not the same as starting a monthly subscription then cancelling it when the app changes in ways I don’t like, or for whatever other reason. And that’s because in most cases, when you cancel a subscription, either you stop having access to the ‘premium’ features you were paying for, or the app stops working altogether.

But suppose, for the sake of argument, that one is okay with whatever kind of subscription is thrown at them. Suppose one is okay with subscribing to every app that offers them a minimum of utility. How many subscriptions are you willing to start? How many subscriptions before things start getting a bit too much? At what point, after looking at your bank statement at the end of the month, do you draw the line? In the days of the race to the bottom in the App Store, things quickly became unsustainable for many developers. Now the scenario has changed in such a way that things can become unsustainable for many consumers probably just as quickly. And again, there are a lot of happy customers who have no problems subscribing to apps they love or that they find essential for their workflows. But I also wonder how many of those customers are not giving money to other apps they might enjoy because they had to make a decision and choose to invest only in some apps and not in others as well. (See the App Store review I quoted at the beginning).

I have no real solutions to propose because I’ve probably missed a few things in my analysis (not that it is a simple situation to analyse, mind you). The changes I’d love to see sound perhaps too idealistic, but I think it could be great if we could go back to an App Store that is more focused on purchases rather than subscriptions. One-time purchases at more realistic prices, with an easy way of offering paid updates for subsequent major app releases, and more meaningful, less nickel-and-diming in-app purchases. A fairer system focused on app purchases would also be less exploitable than a subscription system, less prone to abuses and fraud. I also wish Apple did better at detecting scam apps and subscription schemes, and made the lives of legitimate developers easier after years of jumping through stupid hoops and being subjected to a volatile and seemingly random app review process.

Subscription fatigue and related musings was first published by Riccardo Mori on Morrick.me on 26 February 2023.

Why do you want to touch your Mac screen so badly?

February 9, 2023

by Riccardo Mori

Tech Life

It’s that time in the tech debate cycle when we’re once again talking about how Apple should start making Macs with touch-enabled displays. I remember back in 2020 how so many people were certain touchscreen Macs were just round the corner, because they put together these two pieces of ‘evidence’:

The revamped UI in Mac OS Big Sur featured an unusually wider space between various UI elements, suggesting Apple was prepping the UI to accept touch input by offering more touch-friendly targets.
The fact that the new Macs built on Apple Silicon are capable of running iPhone and iPad apps natively.

It’s early 2023 and Macs with touch-enabled displays are still nowhere to be seen. But there seems to be an increasing number of tech people who just can’t wait for Macs to come with a touch display. And I’m genuinely curious to know what kind of insurmountable problems a Mac with a touch display could solve for them. I’ve given this a lot of thought; I’ve tried to ask myself what I could do better with a touchscreen Mac than what I’m currently doing. I couldn’t find any compelling answer.

But I have a theory as to why the idea of a touchscreen Mac makes me shrug — I’m a longtime Mac user; I’m someone whose time spent on Apple devices is 80% Mac, 15% iPad, 5% iPhone. The efficiency and, let’s call it ‘interaction performance’ I have developed over decades by using Mac desktops and laptops with their intended input methods — keyboard, mouse, trackpad — will hardly be improved by also having touch input on a Mac display. I’ll always be quicker with mouse and keyboard. Even most trackpad gestures that are already available on Mac laptops feel slow and awkward. Swipe up/down with three fingers to reveal all app windows or to put the Desktop in the foreground, are gestures I’ve never really learnt because I can just hit F10 or F11 to do the same, without even moving my fingers away from the keyboard. Thus, a traditional Mac laptop with a touch display wouldn’t bring me any real advantage or usefulness.

To get back to my theory: the people who’d love to have a touchscreen Mac are people who prefer having the iPad and iPhone as primary devices for work and leisure. It’s the iPad-first guys who on the one hand are frustrated by the still mediocre multitasking and still limited functionality Apple is providing on the iPad, and on the other hand realise the sheer versatility and multitasking dexterity the Mac still has in spades despite the general worsening of Mac OS over the past few years. In short, they say they’d love a touchscreen Mac, but what they mean is that they’d love a hybrid iPad/Mac device that could offer the best of both worlds.

And you know what? I think Apple should make that device. Not a touchscreen Mac, but a Surface-like 2‑in‑1 device running Mac OS with an added ‘tablet mode’ that would adjust Mac OS’s UI to be operated by touch when you’re running Mac-only apps. And when you’re running an iOS/iPadOS app, well, there wouldn’t be any issues as the app would behave exactly like on iOS/iPadOS.

I also think that this device should replace the iPad Pro entirely. Because this device would effectively be the best iPad Pro you can imagine. This iPad/Mac convertible would make everyone happy and I don’t think it would really cannibalise sales of regular iPads and regular Macs. Mac-first people (like me) would keep enjoying and purchasing Macs. People who only need an iPad for basic tasks and consumption would continue to enjoy the regular iPad, an iPad Air, or an iPad mini, and people with ‘hybrid’ needs would have exactly the device they want, just like Surface Pro users on Windows.

By the way, as a Surface Pro user myself, I can say that the appeal of such a device isn’t that you can touch the screen all the time you want. When I’m using it in laptop mode, with the Surface Type Keyboard and integrated trackpad, or even with a separate mouse, I basically never touch the screen. The appeal is that, in more mobile and less stable situations, I can detach the keyboard (or wrap it on the back of the Surface), take out the Surface Pen or equivalent stylus if needed, and the device becomes a full-blown tablet. In other words, the appeal is the device’s ability to adapt and transform while retaining its usability and usefulness. A traditional Mac laptop with the touch-enabled display feature bolted on would indeed be a terrible laptop, with yet another layer of interaction plastered on top of what Mac OS already offers. But the Apple equivalent of Microsoft’s Surface Pro? That would make much more sense, in my opinion. At this point, it’s the only way I can see for Apple to produce a truly ’Pro’ device in tablet form.

People and resources added to my reading list in 2022

January 30, 2023

by Riccardo Mori

Tech Life

My, my — time really flies. It’s been ten years since I started writing, every January, a recap of the most notable discoveries and additions to my bookmarks and feeds made during the previous year. But it’s never really been just a list of resources to read, as over time I’ve added podcasts, YouTube channels, and useful Web-based tools among other things.

In this series of articles I’ve also talked about how I manage my RSS feeds, and which apps I prefer using on which devices. I’ve also shared my observations and criticism regarding content in general, trends that annoy me, and even why I removed people and sources I used to read and recommend.

2022: A year of negligible changes overall

When I’m preparing a new post for this series, I always carefully re-read the one I wrote the previous year, mostly to check whether I noticed significant changes in what I’ve found online or differences in content delivery trends, etc., compared to the previous year(s). Well, I found that very little has changed. If you go back and read People and resources added to my reading list in 2021, the general observations I wrote in the sections Blogs: the Cinderella of current media and Tech blogs are still valid.

Once again, when it comes to blogs and RSS, the old ‘trend in two movements’ made its appearance: I’m talking about the Blogs (and RSS) are dead / NO, blogs (and RSS) are NOT dead trend, of course. It usually goes like this:

Someone, usually writing for a big tech website, publishes an article about blogs and RSS feeds being a dying breed.
Someone else — usually someone with a personal blog or website, and usually prominent enough to be quoted by other bloggers — reacts by writing another piece either saying, No, blogs are very much alive, and cool and still the best way to create meaningful debate nowadays, or, Yes, blogs are an endangered species: we should really bring back blogs and personal sites because they’re the best way to create meaningful debate nowadays.
Other, usually minor figures, pick up on this reaction article, and go updating their long-neglected blogs, or even start new ones. They write a few posts over the course of a few months, to then neglect their blogs once again.

Tech blogs

Like I wrote last year, I don’t know whether blogs are ‘dead’ or not, but it’s certainly harder for me to find consistently good and well-written tech blogs. I know that relying on tried-and-trusted sources I’ve been following and reading for years may result in a perspective bubble or echo chamber. I’m always reading tech news with an open mind, and a tool like Flipboard is rather helpful for discovering potentially interesting new voices. But more often than I’d like, what I end up finding are occasional gold nuggets in enormous piles of coal. Great articles that make me want to look up the author in search for a more consistent and structured output, only to find very little. Maybe another good article written for the same tech site several months prior, or personal blogs (or personal aggregations of materials via sites like Medium or Substack) which — you guessed it — have been lying neglected for a long while.

Anyway, there have been a couple of additions in my RSS feeds in the tech-oriented department. Neither are entirely new sources to me, because in both cases I was already reading them occasionally, but last year I decided to make it official and add them to my reading list.

Jeff Johnson’s The Desolation of Blog. Jeff belongs to that unique breed of long-time Mac developer that still knows how to develop properly for the Mac platform and still remembers how human interface guidelines are supposed to work. If you discovered him only recently, you may know him for a series of excellent Safari extensions like StopTheMadness or Tweaks for Twitter, but his full résumé on his website’s main page should give you a better idea of where he comes from. Consequently, you may find his articles to be of a more technical nature than other, more general tech blogs, but hey, you may end up learning a thing or two.
Josh Ginter’s The Newsprint. Like with Chris Hannah last year, I have to thank Mike Rockwell for making me discover Josh’s blog. I first noticed The Newsprint in 2021, bookmarked it, and kept it on my radar for a while, then I happily put it in my feeds last year. What I like about The Newsprint is that it features a variety of subjects which, unlike many other blogs, aren’t treated superficially. Josh strikes me as the kind of tech-oriented writer who may be too busy to update his blog every other day, but when he does, he means it — he picks a specific thing and takes a deep dive in it. And I love that.

YouTube channels

During 2022 I kept discovering interesting stuff on YouTube, but I also tried to contain the ‘subscription creep’. YouTube, thanks to its uncanny algorithm, quickly develops a snowball effect. You keep discovering cool channels, maybe you watch three or four videos to make sure you like the channel, you subscribe, and soon you find yourself managing dozens of subscriptions. Meanwhile, your home page gets constantly filled with content you love (because it comes from the dozens of channels you’re subscribed to, plus from other channels you’re very likely to love because they’re adjacent to content you already indicated as content you love) and the end result is an unmanageable chaos of stuff you’re interested in, but in order to keep up with it you’d have to spend the whole day watching YouTube.

It’s a perverse mechanism that can become a nasty addiction before you even realise it. Luckily I realised it before it was too late, and started limiting the time allotted to watching videos during the day, and I also started to weed out all those subscriptions I impulsively added in the past, keeping only those that are truly worth visiting on a frequent basis.

For these reasons, I didn’t add many new channels in 2022. That said, there have been some interesting discoveries.

Photography

The problem with mainstream photography channels on YouTube is that their creators are often influencers sponsored by different photography brands, and their content is mainly about gear. Which means that their reviews are seldom truly objective, and that they’re constantly focused on the latest and greatest gear. As a consequence, their channels are more useful to the creators themselves, to camera manufacturers, and to photographic gear companies. What the audience may find useful is that these channels keep you quite up-to-date with the latest photography products and specs.

I believe such channels are generally a negative influence on novice and amateur photographers, because they give the false impression that photography is all about ‘the right gear’ — megapixels, autofocus speed, lens sharpness, and so forth. While these may be crucial factors, especially in commercial photography, they’re not the be-all and end-all of photography as an art form.

That’s why I’ve been seeking channels that talk about photography in more general and more insightful terms, produced by people whose real interest is to teach and impart wisdom to their audience, not selling sponsored gear. And I’ve found some of them — typically professional, experienced photographers who make money with their work and not via YouTube or affiliate links. This certainly makes for more disinterested advice on their part.

Martin Castein — What I love about Martin is that in his videos he goes straight to the point with a healthy injection of common sense no matter the subject. (By the way, this is also the common denominator of all the photographers I’m recommending here). He can show you how to obtain amazing results, whether it’s landscape or portrait photography, by using even older professional cameras like the Canon 5D and 6D Mark I. Or he can present a particular photo he took and explain the process that went through behind the scenes. His videos are never too long, and he definitely doesn’t waste your time. And whatever the subject, I feel that I always learn something new at the end of his videos.
Peter Coulson — The majority of Peter’s videos are about him working in his studio on a particular shoot. If you’re interested in learning how to shoot models in a studio (but also outdoors), how to work with light, and so forth, you’ll enjoy his channel. He makes everything look so effortless. The kind of photography I do (mostly street photography in urban environments, and some landscape photography) is completely different, but Peter’s way of working with studio lights and natural light is fascinating to me nonetheless; sometimes the tricks and techniques behind a studio portrait are way simpler than the final result may lead you to believe.
Fil Nenna — A recent discovery, but a channel worth keeping an eye on. Fil produces well-made videos, short and to-the-point, about a variety of photography topics; he may discuss general themes or provide specific tips, tricks, and pieces of invaluable advice. I like his friendly, direct demeanour.
Dee Rosa — Another recent discovery, Dee is a very frank and outspoken professional who’s not afraid to share his opinions on a photography topic, even if (especially when) they’re unpopular. I like his approach because he’s another who’s bullshit-averse, a bit like yours truly.
Jonathan Harris — Jonathan’s channel is a bit different. He is a camera expert and his videos are specifically about gear, and especially about professional film gear. But he doesn’t really do camera reviews — they’re more like camera overviews, and are very useful to people looking to buy that kind of gear because he explains how those cameras work, and the particular points to check during inspection to ensure you’re purchasing a good unit in working condition. His videos are generally short, very specific, and quite useful.

Technology

Laptop Retrospective — This is a fantastic channel if you’re a fan of IBM/Lenovo ThinkPads like I am. I actually discovered this channel before 2022, while I was browsing YouTube in search of reviews and more information about a couple of vintage ThinkPads I was interested in acquiring. After finding what I was looking for, I thought I was done with it; instead I’ve been returning to the channel on a regular basis. I like the host’s calm demeanour and witty humour, and I like that every laptop review (they’re not all ThinkPads, by the way) follows a specific format. It usually begins with a brief history of the machine, then a listing of its specs in all the known variants, then an overview of the ports and connections, then a disassembly to inspect the machine’s innards and see what’s upgradable, and finally the machine is turned on and explored further, with some closing observations. But if you’re specifically interested in the design of ThinkPads, there are several videos just about that, a series called Think Design, where the host also chats with key figures responsible for the ThinkPad’s design over the years.

Gaming

The Librarian — Now, here’s a channel that surprised me for the quality of the commentary. The host is especially interested in talking about themes surrounding horror, dreams, perception, and the mixture of what he calls “creepy & comfy” elements (in general, but also in games specifically). His videos aren’t all about games or game playthroughs. Sometimes he’ll read creepypasta and other stories with creepy content; sometimes he’ll upload a video of a recent urban exploration trip. I found his channel because I was looking for information on custom game maps developed for Garry’s Mod (GMOD), a historic and popular sandbox based on the Source game engine developed by Valve. And in fact, a recurring feature on The Librarian’s channel is his explorations of GMOD’s maps but in VR. Anyway, you don’t follow this channel to watch just another guy doing a ‘let’s play’ of a game. You follow this channel to enjoy someone articulately dissecting a game, talking at length about what makes a certain game or map work (and what doesn’t). The host’s personality is captivating, and I think the experience is like those books you can’t put down once they click with you.

Other

After many years enjoying the occasional video that came recommended online or by a friend, and now that he has returned to his beloved New York City, I thought it was time to finally subscribe to Casey Neistat’s channel. You may love the guy, you may hate him. I happen to love him and there’s always some detail in his videos that fills me with awe and amazement. I’m not a filmmaker, I’m a writer, but Casey is great at something that serves both worlds — storytelling.
And you know who else is good at storytelling? Casey’s brother, Van Neistat. Van has a different personality, though, and in his videos what captivates me more is the exploration of what it means to be an artist and a maker. Van’s videos are thought-provoking and (to me) give off a sort of Beat Generation vibe that I love so much.
Emma Thorne — I think it’s best if I introduce her using her words in the channel’s About page: I am just a little duck trying my best. High energy silliness combined with British snark. Taking on religion, LGBTQ+ rights and conspiracy theories. Emma is a lovely, intelligent, articulate host who hates bullshit and has the guts to watch channels filled with such idiotic notions shared by dangerously ignorant and bigoted people, so that she can react, dissect, and discuss what’s wrong with them and why. Over time, I’ve been getting increasingly impatient and annoyed by YouTube creators uploading unnecessarily long videos just to make a point or talk about a particular thing; but I’d happily listen to Emma for hours. Her humour, wittiness, and personality always make for an entertaining watch. Oh, she also has a gaming channel.

Podcasts

Still nothing to see here. I think it’s worth repeating what I wrote last year:

In 2019 I unsubscribed from all the podcasts I was following, and I haven’t looked back. I know and respect many people who use podcasts as their main medium for expression. My moving away from podcasts is simply a pragmatic decision — I just don’t have the time for everything. I still listen to the odd episode, especially if it comes recommended by people I trust. You can find a more articulate observation on podcasts in my People and resources added to my reading list in 2019.

Useful/fun Web tools

I wish I could offer more, but last year was busy and chaotic, and I had little time to explore the Web looking for cool stuff. You’re welcome to contact me with your suggestions, though!

The usual disclaimer: single-purpose sites like these may stop working or being maintained without warning. At the time of writing, they all work.

Unicode Character Table — Just what it says on the tin. I found this site because I needed a quick tool to search for Unicode codes for specific entities, and I wasn’t using one of my Macs (on the Mac I love the UnicodeChecker app — check it out, it’s available for any Mac OS version since 10.0).
Literature clock — developed by Johannes Enevoldsen, it’s a word clock using time quotes from literature, based on work and idea by Jaap Meijers.

My RSS management

Again, nothing new to report on this front. The apps I’ve been using (and loving) on my several different devices are still the same, and I haven’t found better RSS management tools worth switching to. Here’s a brief rundown of the apps I’m still using:

On my Intel Macs running Mac OS 10.13 High Sierra: Reeder and ReadKit.
On my 13-inch retina MacBook Pro running Mac OS 11 Big Sur: NetNewsWire.
On my PowerPC Macs: older versions of NetNewsWire.
On my iPad 8: Unread, Reeder, NetNewsWire for iOS, and ReadKit.
On my iPhone SE 3, iPhone 8, iPhone 7 Plus, iPhone 5s, iPhone 5, iPad 3: Unread. (Though on the iPad 3 Reeder seems to be more stable and less resource-hungry).
On older iOS devices: Older versions of Reeder, and an older version of Byline.
On my first-generation iPad: an older version of Newsify, Slow Feeds (which is now called Web Subscriber), and the Feedly app itself.
On my ThinkPad T400 and ThinkPad X240 (with Windows 8.1 Pro and Windows 10 respectively): Nextgen Reader doesn’t seem to work anymore, so I switched to FeedLab. I’m using FeedLab also on my recently-acquired fifth-generation Surface Pro.
On my ThinkPad X61T with Windows 7, and my ThinkPad 240X running Windows 2000: FeedDemon 4.5. Discontinued in 2013, it still works reasonably well, but of course RSS subscriptions have to be managed manually.
On my Windows Phone 8.1/Windows 10 Mobile smartphones: Nextgen Reader (which curiously seems to be still working fine on mobile) and FeedLab.
On my webOS devices (Palm Prē 2, HP TouchPad): FeedSpider.
On my Android phone (Xiaomi Mi A2): the official Feedly app.

Past articles

In reverse chronological order:

I hope this series and my observations can be useful to you. Also, keep in mind that some links in these past articles may now be broken. And as always, if you think I’m missing out on some good tech writing or other kind of resource you believe might be of interest to me, let me know via email, Twitter, or Mastodon. Thanks for reading!

I like 11 better than 15

January 25, 2023

by Riccardo Mori

Tech Life

While I was feeling under the weather at the beginning of January, this article on MacRumors caught my eye: 15-Inch MacBook Air Rumored for 2023, But New 12-Inch MacBook Now Unlikely, then I forgot about it. But I did bookmark it because I wanted to return to it, and here I am. From the article:

Gurman did not share any additional details about the 15-inch MacBook Air, but display analyst Ross Young previously claimed that Apple’s suppliers would begin production of 15.5‑inch display panels for the new MacBook Air in the first quarter of 2023, leading him to assume that the notebook would be released as early as this spring.

I’m sure a few people will tell me via email and on social media that I’m wrong or shortsighted, but I don’t get the appeal of a 15.5‑inch MacBook Air at all, and I don’t understand why Apple thinks it’s a good idea to add a laptop of that size in the lineup when there are already MacBook Pros at 13.3, 14.2, and 16.2 inches, and another MacBook Air with a 13.6‑inch display.

I understand that product naming has become more fluid at Apple in recent times, but the MacBook Air line of laptops has always been about entry-level and compact machines. I don’t doubt that Apple can produce a light 15-inch laptop, but compact?

I always liked the fact that, for the past 20 years or so, Apple has had a compact laptop among its offerings, dating back to the 12-inch white iBook (dual USB) of 2001. (I’m not mentioning any laptop from the previous era, because in the 1990s laptops with 10 to 12-inch displays were rather common). Those who have been reading me for a long time know very well I’m a fan of the 12-inch PowerBook G4. Even today, despite being thicker than most current laptops, it remains a fairly compact machine in overall size, and can be easily carried around.

My first-generation iPad and 11-inch MacBook Air.

Due to pressing changes in my work circa 2018, I decided to purchase a second-hand mid-2013 11-inch MacBook Air, and after a very short period of adjustment, I felt I was using the true successor to the beloved 12-inch PowerBook G4. The same couldn’t be said about the retina 12-inch MacBook Apple introduced in 2015 after discontinuing the 11-inch Air. Sure, it had a better display, and it still was a compact machine, but the advantages stopped there. It was too underpowered in comparison, and having only one USB‑C port meant very very little versatility. But still, for those who wanted a super-light compact machine with a good screen to perform some general-purpose tasks while on the move, that 12-inch MacBook remained a good choice — provided the butterfly keyboard didn’t act up.

The 12-inch retina MacBook was discontinued in July 2019, and with it the smallest laptop in Apple’s lineup disappeared, leaving that seat to the 13-inch MacBook Air. Still a light, svelte Mac, but I’ve been wanting a return of a truly compact MacBook ever since the discontinuation of the 11-inch MacBook Air in late 2016.

Now that Apple Silicon allows great performance and efficiency, and a better thermal management, it would be entirely possible to manufacture a MacBook with the footprint of the 11-inch MacBook Air or the 12-inch retina MacBook without it resulting in a compromised or crippled machine. And I think it would be more appealing than yet another laptop in the 15- to 16-inch display size range. No, don’t ‘iPad’ me. Don’t tell me that an iPad would be enough for those who want an 11- to 12-inch device. Maybe for some. But I’m pretty sure a fair amount of people would love a powerful M‑class Mac with the flexibility of Mac OS in a very compact footprint. Today my humble 11-inch MacBook Air is still quite capable of carrying out many basic tasks and even slightly more demanding workloads, and I’m still amazed at how little space it takes while being very comfortable to work on, thanks to a mostly-normal-size keyboard, a big-enough trackpad, and a good selection of ports considering its compactness (MagSafe 2, two USB 3 ports, one Thunderbolt port, 3.5mm headphone jack). Imagine a new MacBook Air like this, but with an M2 chip and a retina display.

Back to MacRumors’ article:

As for the 12-inch MacBook, Gurman previously claimed that Apple was considering launching it at the end of 2023 or in early 2024, but today he said that the smaller notebook is no longer on the company’s near-term roadmap.

Which is a pity. I think Apple will eventually end up reintroducing a compact laptop like the 12-inch MacBook, but prioritising a 15.5‑inch MacBook Air now just seems so odd to me. It’s likely that at its introduction, the 13.3‑inch M1 Air will be discontinued and the 13.6‑inch M2 Air will be slightly reduced in price, so that this purported 15.5‑inch model can be slotted into the price gap between the $1,299 13-inch MacBook Pro and the $1,999 14-inch MacBook Pro, while the 13.6‑inch M2 Air becomes again the entry-level model. Maybe. I don’t know. Apple has become fuzzier to ‘read’ in recent years. And maybe I’m wrong. Maybe, if the price is right, a 15.5‑inch MacBook Air will be an attractive product for many. But the 11-inch Air’s small footprint can’t be beat when working on a plane, or train, or in a cramped coffee shop, airport terminal, waiting room, and so forth.