I probably won’t, but should I? — My phone and my pocket knife cohabitate my right-hand pants pocket in warm weather. Once it’s cold enough to wear a jacket, the phone gets to live in a jacket pocket instead. That’s a somewhat nomadic life: it might be in my right coat pocket, the left, or an inside…

Frustration and irritation abound, but I like what I’ve done — Shortcuts can be highly annoying and frustrating. I feel that I have to start every article I write about them with that disclaimer because, well, because, dammit, they are! Don’t let that intimidate you. Many Shortcuts are very easy to create and understand. They are usually more Point and Shoot…

I was planning on buying a new watch, but this makes more sense — My plan for this Fall of 2022 was that if Apple added anything significant to the Watch, we’d replace our Series Five models. Apple did add quite a few new features, but only two were compelling for us: Crash Detection and Low Power mode. Our Series 5’s never had great…

Shortcuts to the rescue — If you don’t already know, “Complications” are extra controls on a watch. My father’s old pocket watch had several extra knobs on it; those were called Complications. I don’t remember what they did, but Apple brought the concept to their Watch faces when they introduced the device. …

Some will apply to MacOS Ventura as well — IOS 16 is imminent as I write this, and iPadOS will be right behind it. There are many changes coming and some of these will require a visit to Settings to enable desired behavior. As we all know, Apple provides a handy list of changes for the Settings app. Yeah…

Better late than never, I guess — When I gave up Gmail for Apple Mail, it certainly wasn’t because Apple has better mail features. They did not, and do not. However, as of IOS 16, several long wished for features have been added. I do think it is a bit ironic that Apple has finally begrudged some…

And CarPlay will soon have this feature too — So there you are, heading to wherever, with Apple Maps guiding the way. Suddenly you realize that you will need gas. Sure, you could just pull off at the next exit, but that might not be the smart thing to do. …

This new ability seems to have been mostly unnoticed — In some recent update, Apple quietly added the ability to create real apps directly from an iPad. Yes, really: the fine print in the picture above offers to “Submit your app to TestFlight or the App Store from App Store Connect.” So it is real, even though I did not…

Not among my favorite days, but there it is — It’s Thursday, which for me means exercising my core and my hands. Both of these are important, but I truly can’t enjoy core. I endure it, and that’s the best I can say about it. I only started getting serious about hand strength recently when I could not unscrew a…

The first watch beta I have ever installed — I have installed Apple betas for years on my iPads, iPhones, and Macs. Sometimes I jump in early, sometimes late, but I haven’t missed many over the years. Until this year, I have never installed a watchOS beta. Usually, the watchOS betas have not offered anything that intrigued me enough…

We may have to see an AI counselor — Although the Ecobee and I had some issues when we first met, I feel that we have had a good relationship. …

Which is strange because I like it a lot on my iPad — I didn’t expect to like Stage Manager on my iPad, but it turned out that I do, and I am using it frequently. Stage Manager on the 11-Inch M1 iPad is Actually Useful Which surprised me and perhaps will surprise youmedium.com On the other side, I did expect to like Stage Manager on my Mac, but I do not. I was initially quite puzzled by this, but it…

Which surprised me and perhaps will surprise you — Skip this paragraph if you already know what Stage Manager is. If not, it’s an iPadOS 16 feature that allows resizable, overlapping, and moveable window groups for apps. Up to four windows can be in a group, and there can be four groups. In the screenshot below, only one of…

Nothing I have read or heard has quite envisioned this — I listen to a number of tech related podcasts, so of course many have talked about self-driving cars and the changes these could bring to our daily lives. …

It’s all intelligence — Recently, a Google employee made the claim that an AI project was sentient. This was greeted by jeering and disgust by most, even those with no background whatsoever in the field. The major argument against his claim is that the AI only knows what it has been told; it only…

This may not be quite as wonderful as Apple painted it — Apple announced that its part of the FIDO/W3C alliance will be ready in IOS 16. That alliance, nine years old as I write this, was formed to “help reduce the world’s over-reliance on passwords”. Google was among the founders, Microsoft joined in 2015, and Apple signed on in 2020. Italicized…

Advantages and disses — We already had a camera that points at our front porch, but because it needs to plug in, it peeks out through a window at a sharp angle and doesn’t get a good view. It’s good enough to alert us of someone coming to the porch, yet it annoys us…

It’s so heavy now — When I was a somewhat scrawny teenager in the early sixties, I could lift a 100 pound dumbbell over my head with either hand. I do mean lift: pushing it up in a controlled motion and letting it down, not jerking it up with the help of my legs. Yeah…

Or endoscope if you want to be fancy about it — Have you ever needed to look under your fridge without moving it? Have you ever dropped something important behind something too heavy to move? Or have you ever just wanted to look inside something that you can’t open? No, I haven’t either. Oh, wait, you have? Well, curiosity killed the…

Don’t mess with Tony — Kids can be cruel. Socialization tames most of us eventually, but at my elementary school playground of the early nineteen fifties, only the presence of teachers prevented us from devolving into savagery, and the teachers couldn’t watch everyone at once. I am and was a wise ass. To be more…