I’m surprised by how much I am using this — I wasn’t very excited by Apple’s new Freeform app at first. There are many similar apps (although mostly paid, not free as this is), and Freeform seemed to be lacking important features. Still, I did start using it as a more visual and customizable substitute for Bookmarks. Apple’s New Freeform App Looks Like Someone Phoned It In There is a lot to like, but also a lot missing heremedium.com

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…

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…

How are your floppy disks holding up? — See that “C:\” in the screenshot? That “\” is a backslash. The “/”’s in “http://somewhere.com/whatever.html” are slashes, not backslashes. That’s all you need to know. You may stop reading now and go about your business. But I’m going to stay here and rant on for a while because I still…

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. …

You forgot all about it, didn’t you? — A Mac What? I said Mac Mini. If you go into an Apple store it might be hidden behind the iMacs. …

Neither is the Studio Display monitor, but I don’t know who that is for — Apple has come out with a brand new desktop machine. It’s not a Mac Mini, it’s not a iMac, it’s not a Mac Pro. It does not replace any of those machines; they all continue to exist. This new Mac Studio is a machine that stands on its own. …

I never knew this stuff was there — I was sitting parked after telling Siri where I wanted to go and for some reason I tapped on the CarPlay screen. What magic is this? More controls popped into view, controls I had never seen before. What? Why didn’t I know about this? Curious, I tapped the top icon…

Is it because my brain is broken? — There is something wrong with my brain. Well, not exactly wrong, but not so great, and that leads to my being unable to do certain things. Did you ever take one of those intelligence tests where part of it has you fold up boxes in your mind? …

Not as I originally planned, but I did get what I wanted — Earlier this week, I had an epiphany about using my iPhone in a new way when grocery shopping. It’s such a simple thing: photograph or scan my receipts. Then, when I want to know how much tea cost me over there rather than here, I can search and, thanks to…

Quick: what does Shift-CMD-6 do? Or Shift-CMD-Ctrl-3? — If you looked at the screenshot above, you might have muttered “Yeah, yeah, CMD-Shift-5, what else ya got?” You got me. Yes, that’s what you get with CMD-Shift-5 and almost everybody knows that — well, I hope almost everybody knows it. But you might not know that you can get…

I’ve seen many people do this — No, I’m not an iPhone camera expert. I wouldn’t presume to tell you how to take pictures with your phone — or with any camera at all. Oh, sure, I know enough to get by, but that’s about it. No, this is about something I often saw people do when…

Or is it? — Cables, cables, everywhere. Aside from what I’ve shown in the photo above, I have a similar rat’s nest of dissimilar cables in another part of the house: Lightning, USB-A, USB-C, USB Micro and Mini , and more— it drives me nuts. Feeling similar pain, the European Union wants to force…

For starters, the carrier deals sometimes are not deals at all — I worked at an Apple retail store for a few years after closing my consulting business. I had fun, learned a thing or two, and made some money to pad out my retirement. One of the many things that surprised me was how many customers had no idea that they…

Bitcoin isn’t Netflix — The Bitcoin enthusiasts are still preaching to the ignorant. I just read another new “investor” here on Medium who is joining up because a Big Medium Name said they should. What do they think you are “investing” in? Bitcoin is just Dutch Tulip Bulbs. Or, perhaps more accurately, Blockbuster. When…

It’s better than you think — Do you know what I did when I first saw the new IOS 15 Safari on my iPhone? That’s right: I went straight to Settings and put that bottom tab right back up top where the Internet Gods wanted it! …

Apple Continuity Features — When I worked at a local Apple store, we had a “Continuity Table.” Its purpose was to show the wonderful features of Apple Continuity, but it never worked well. …

I’m not joking about this at all. This is important. — I am very serious about this. If you can afford an iPhone, you can afford an Apple Watch and I feel sorry for you if you don’t see why you should have one. Not an Apple fan? This Withings Scan Watch looks like an excellent choice for Android. An Apple…

What am I missing here? — Years back I sometimes needed to scrape data from website forms. I’d write simple Perl code that looked something like this: #!/usr/bin/perl use HTTP::Request::Common qw(POST); use LWP::UserAgent; $var1=”2012/08/01"; $button=”Send”; $ua=LWP::UserAgent->new(); my $req= POST ‘https://somesite/formpost.pl', [var1=> $var1,button=>$button]; $content=$ua->request($req)->as_string; print $content;

It wasn’t easy, but it is time to do it — I have been using Gmail since October 2004, about six months after it was first released to beta. I switched to Inbox when they invited me in 2014. …