Posts tagged with tech
So – about three months after swapping my base model iPhone 17 for an iPhone Air, I’ve decided my little experiment is over.
I still love how the Air feels in-hand. I use it caseless and have had zero issues with drops or general comfort. Buuuuuut some of the things I originally had reservations about have started to surface and made me rethink the decision.
About an hour ago, I got a notification from Echofeed1:
After the initial WHAT THE FUCK, I realized pretty quickly that the only thing I have Echofeed posting from is my status.lol statuslog. I immediately checked to see if the status was there – and it was. Great, so someone figured out how to post to status.lol as me. Again: WHAT. THE. FUCK.
It’s like they aren’t even trying anymore.
I found this ancient relic in the hall closet the other day. It’s the only copy I have left, and I’ve been carting it around with me for 25ish years.
Lots of memories and great times wrapped up in this book. Those were definitely some crazy days in the late 90s/early 2000s Bay Area tech scene for sure.
And I haven’t… yet. But! Because I’m an idiot and apparently love to contradict myself, I’ve been working almost exclusively from my iPad Pro1 this week to see if I could make using it as my primary computer2 work again.
The experiment’s going pretty well so far – I haven’t run into anything that’s made me think, “shit, I need my Mac for this.” That said, if I really do commit to this setup, I’ll probably go back to the 13-inch from the 11-inch for the extra screen real estate. Kinda wish I’d kept it.
Why am I like this? Why am I never happy with how I’m already doing things?
Someone please take away my credit card and slap some sense into me.
Mostly plugged into my Studio Display.
I’d keep the Mac mini and get rid of the MacBook Air in that case.
Yesterday marked a week with the iPhone Air, and I’m still enjoying it. The form factor makes me want to use it – I find myself picking it up more often than grabbing my iPad or sitting down at my Mac. That said, here are a couple of observations from my first week with it.
Well, the FOMO finally won.
This morning, I went to the Apple Store and returned the iPhone 17 that I picked up on launch day and got the iPhone Air instead.
Now, don’t get me wrong – I really liked the iPhone 17 a lot. It’s a great phone. But every time I saw the iPhone Air or picked one up and played with it at the Apple Store, I sorta wanted one. It just felt SO GOOD in hand – it’s like you’re just holding a piece of glass instead of a phone.
I picked up my new iPhone 17 yesterday morning, and it was a bit of an adventure. My pickup window was 8:00-8:15 am, and I arrived at the tail end of that window. I was quickly checked in and paired with a specialist, and we started the process.
For the first time since the iPhone Pro models have existed – and really since the iPhone X – I ordered a base-model iPhone. I chose the base iPhone 17 in Lavender. I was torn between Lavender and White but decided on some color this year.
My reasoning for the change is this: I don’t play games on my phone, I’m not a pro photographer or videographer, I’m not a content creator and I don’t have any complaints about battery life. This is the first time that I’m really feeling like the Pro is complete overkill for how I use my phone.
Update: I traded in the 13" iPad Pro and got a base-model Mac mini and a Magic Keyboard for the 11" iPad Pro. I also sold the MacBook Pro, which leaves me with the Mac mini, MacBook Air, and 11" iPad Pro.
The state of my computing environment is absolutely ridiculous right now. I ended up here trying to figure out what is best for my needs and it spiraled. Now I need to get it under control. Below is what I currently have and what I’m thinking about doing. Please feel free to give me some feedback, because I… I have problems 😬
I’ve seen people write about awful Apple Intelligence summaries from various apps, but I never really noticed it being too weird or useless… until today.
I got this gem of a summary on my Mac this afternoon:
Oddly enough – and I’m unsure why – there was an actual summary on both my iPad Pro and my iPhone, but my Mac refused to show anything other than “Something was said”.
Good job, Apple Intelligence – you somehow managed to give me a summary that was actually worse than having no summary at all 🤦♂
In an effort to start using status.lol more often, I decided to create an iOS shortcut to post to it. Since omg.lol1 has an awesome API, it was really pretty easy.
The first thing you’ll need to do is have your API key handy. You can find it on your Account page, all the way at the bottom. Once you have the key handy, it’s time to build the shortcut!
I recently ran into an issue with an 11" iPad Pro where I wanted to revert from an iPadOS beta (18.4) back to the release version (18.3.2 at the time of writing). I’ve done this a million times over the years on various iPads & iPhones and across various versions, but this time I couldn’t get the thing to actually perform the restore no matter what I tried.
Typically, the steps I take are very simple:
