I’m Done With Apple’s Shortcuts and It Could Get Much Worse — I really thought Apple’s Shortcuts would be a good tool. I recognized its frustrating interface and its limited power, but because I was able to do a few useful things with it, I had hope. Apple Shortcuts: Love It or Hate It? Shortcuts is coming to Mac and Automator is on life support. What say you?medium.com That hope has dried up like my birdbath in July.

But I’m not sure I believe that — Doesn’t look pretty, does it? I was diagnosed with Barretts Esophagus more than a decade ago. It comes from GERD, which is acid reflux. In my particular case, the acid leaks by the flap that is supposed to keep it away from your throat. It’s hereditary; my father had that…

Why you may never need to charge your wearables again — For hundreds of years, self-winding watches have offered the wearer a symbiotic relationship not attained with regular automatic or manual watches. Automatic watches rely on a battery and manual watches rely on the wearer to regularly wind them by hand. But there is an aspect of the organic and the…

The US supreme court on Monday declined to hear bids by major oil companies to move a growing wave of climate lawsuits from state courts to federal courts. The appeals to move the venue of the lawsuits were made by Exxon Mobil Corp, Suncor Energy Inc and Chevron Corp. The…

This short story about the future of XR was entered in the Litreactor Science Fiction writing contest in 2012 and won first price. The ideas behind it, about VR and AI, has inspired me choose my path as an XR designer. “Mom wants to talk to you, my liege lord.” …

It is probably the most underrated app on your iPhone — Scanning and storing documents If you deal with a lot of documents and the only way you follow to store and manage them digitally is to take photos of them or use a third-party app, then you either don’t own a scanner or you are blissfully unaware. Luckily, you came across this post, and…

Apple TV’s “Extrapolations” says it all in the title — Extrapolations review - even Meryl Streep can't save this convoluted eco drama 'm not too sure where to begin with Extrapolations, Apple TV+'s star-studded anthology series about the possible impact…www.theguardian.com Even Meryl Streep can’t save it? According to that review and others equally clueless, this series is not worth your time. It’s too confusing, too weird, too lecture-y for you to bother with.

I’ll keep the subscription and hope that it improves — Duolingo has taught me more than any other language app or book. I’ve tried just about all of the apps, paid good money for many, and none of them have given me as much as the green owl and his friends. None of them. However, Duo could do-o so much…

Sorry, but I don’t think there is much hope — I can’t tell you how many posts I have read recently about the demise of Medium. According to what I have read, it’s Tony Stubblebine’s fault, or maybe it’s ChatGPT, or who knows what caused it, but views are down, money is shrinking, and everything is wrong, wrong, wrong. My…

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

Apple only vaguely has mentioned this, but it works beautifully — Recently I had to fill out a form for a service I wanted. At this point of website development, I expected to do that online, happily typing in the requested information and submitting it. To my surprise, the site offered a “printable form” instead. Sheesh! Somebody is rather lazy! I…

Tips the manual doesn’t mention — When you first unpack a new Apple Watch, you will be pairing it to your phone, assigning a passcode and doing some minimal setup. These are easy tasks, and the iPhone Watch app will lead you through it all. …

Elon Musk has done some weird things, but this is the weirdest so far I certainly wouldn’t presume to know what’s happening inside Elon Musk’s head, but from the outside looking in, it looks like he’s either trying to kill Twitter or somehow turn it profitable. Or he’s just bonkers. …

It’s come a long way since iOS 9 — Ever notice this? What Is the Files App? You might not have ever noticed this on your Apple iPhone or iPad even though it has been available since iOS 9, when it was called iCloud Drive and had far weaker abilities. Originally, the intent of this app was to give your iOS devices access to…

Or so some seem to think — Apparently it is acceptable to prod and poke the screens of tablets and phones, or anything running Microsoft Windows, but you must never, ever put your grimy fingers upon the pristine screen of a Mac. I couldn’t understand what the problem is. Do Macs bite or deploy electric shocks to…

We have to eat and breathe, right? — A few weeks ago I posted this at another site: An apple a day keeps the doctor away, assuming that you can wash off all the pesticides, but that takes a twelve minute soak in vinegar or a baking soda solution and you won’t do that, so forget it. That…

But they are — One of my sisters is celebrating her 80th birthday soon. She and I regularly swap recommendations for TV movies and series we’ve enjoyed, but she has not signed up for any of the Apple shows I enjoy. I thought I’d fix that for her birthday, so I sent her an…

And claims not to know things that it actually knows a lot about — I broke down and spent a little time playing with ChatGPT yesterday. I’d been putting it off because, well, because I just don’t care much about it. But then I had a thought: why don’t I find out what it knows about me? Who? Your first thought might be that it…

Or any of the others — I truly cannot understand the reason people think Bitcoin or any other virtual coinage will become our currency. This is very much like thinking that the supposed truth of your religion will be taken up by everyone else. That’s not likely to happen. Though some CryptoHeads do have a religious…

Dangerous for them, for starters — Google has decided to go ahead with releasing its ChatGPT project. This is the one that caused a kerfuffle a little while back when one of its trainers insisted it had become sentient. …