2024 is at and end and I thought I would sit and write, stream of consciousness-style, about things that I remember. Some of this is going to be pretty raw emotion and if you’re not up for that, please tap out now.
Overall it’s been a pretty good year. I’ve been at peace on a great many things and struggling with others. Technology-wise I am still rolling with four main devices: An M1 Max MacBook Pro with 32gb of RAM (Devika), an iPhone 16 Pro 1TB (downsized from a 15 Pro Max and don’t miss the size one bit), an Apple Watch S10 (gave my Ultra 1 to my middle daughter who frustratingly doesn’t use it… I should have just traded it in), and an M4 iPad Pro that I absolutely adore and am forcing myself to use more often. I’m trying to understand the decisions and trade offs that were made with iPadOS and lean into them rather than letting my old age muscle memory take over. I find myself asking questions like… “do I really NEED a professional file manager or should I just let the apps take over their space and manage files on the apps themselves?” That seems like the way Apple wanted it. I’m trying to adapt. I very much love the focus afforded by the device and opportunities for creativity.
I was telling my youngest daughter, “When something like this happens, I can’t rest until I figure it out.”
What was that? At some point in iOS 16, our Apple Family setup stopped sending notifications for “Ask to Buy” purchases from our daughters. I don’t know if this started on the first installation of iOS 16 on my devices or on theirs, but it was plain broken. It’s supposed to send a notification to my wife and I whenever our daughters want to install an app or execute an App Store purchase. We’re pretty liberal about what we approve for our daughters, but it was still nice to have that functionality. But now, it was busted.
It’s time for my version of the WWDC wishlist. WWDC is almost always about the software. Each year they talk about what’s coming in the various *OS plans for the year. They decidedly do not focus on hardware. You can get a prognostication of the hardware they have in the pipe, but it’s fun to see what they have in mind for future iterations of the software.
Last year I was convinced that Apple was going to go full pro with iPadOS after the introduction of the M1 iPad. I think we’ll start to see more “pro” get into iPadOS, but it’ll still be iPadOS. Running macOS on iPad doesn’t make sense. I realize now that I was a little premature. It makes sense, because not every iPad is running on an M1 processor yet. But they have introduced it on the iPad Pro and the iPad Air. There’s very little left for them to do before they introduce more “pro” development and creation features to the iPad. Generally, I think we’ll start to see more of those plans this year.
Apple has a knack for building things under our noses over the course of years… actually, even decades. They’re really good at building onto their technology when it works. When it doesn’t work, they throw it out and start over, only to build it up in the way that matches their final vision. We saw this happen with the M1 chip. It took them more than a decade, but they finally cashed in on their vision. I think we’re about to see that happen again at WWDC 2021.
I happened to see someone mention forestry.io on a Hugo forum. I’m trying it. It looks pretty nice, like what I would expect from a headless CMS where hosting isn’t necessary.
I really want to use my iPad to write code. It shouldn’t be this hard. I don’t know why, but it really is. Today, I’ve been playing with round-tripping through Working Copy and Code Editor by Panic (formerly Coda). I think I’ve almost gotten it worked out, but man is it painful. I shouldn’t have to run a webdav server on my own iPad to edit documents and save back to GitHub.
I guess the good news is that I’m able to ssh into a local copy of my git repo without leaving this window. I sure have put down a lot of money on text/code editors just to experiment and find out which ones aren’t working out.
This should be so much easier. I feel like iPadOS has been band-aided to death so that it can avoid being a Macbook when people want to use it like a Macbook.
In iOS 11, you don’t only have to use the dock for single apps. You can drag an app group into the Dock as well. I just found this out by “trying it out.” That makes it much more useful for app switching when you swipe up from the bottom.
I’m really liking iOS 11 a lot. It sold a new iPad to me… an iPad Pro 256gb 12.9”. I just had to have it. I can almost turn it into my work machine, but the Files app let me down. I couldn’t rename a file extension with the Files app. I needed to do that and it hosed me since I couldn’t. I reported that though :)
I should be at WWDC 2014 this year, but I’m not. I work for a Microsoft-centric shoppe right now and they just don’t see the value in it. Nevertheless, I put my name in for the lottery and I didn’t win anyway.
I watched most of the keynote from afar and parts of the State of the Union address. All of it is ultra exciting. If they get Continuity, iCloud Drive (FINALLY OMG) and Messages right, this will be a killer OS combo with iPhones, iPads and Macs.
I’m sure Apple is testing something, but this is a given. Why would we try to glean something from this? Silly people.
Usage logs show Apple has begun testing iPhone 6 running iOS 7:
Apple’s new iPhone and iOS software have begun surfacing in app usage logs…
(Via MacDailyNews)
It’s brutally important that you understand this article if you support Exchange 2007 or 2010.
Read it. Now.
