I got an email from Keychron inviting me to try their newly-improved keyboard launcher software. Better yet, it’s browser-based, so you just open up your browser and go, no software to install or keep updated. Except for one thing…
Now, if you don’t run macros, or want to assign keys to quick launch applications, or remap keys in general, or fine-tune the RGB lighting, this software can be considered optional.
However, it’s the only way you can do a firmware update if something goes amiss with your Keychron keyboard. And that can happen!
Forcing users to use a Chromium-based browser is bad because it ignores other perfectly viable browsers, like Firefox or Safari. macOS and most Linux distros don’t even include a Chromium-based browser. The graphic above isn’t accurate, either, as it ignores other notable Chromium-based browsers, like Vivaldi or Brave. This is also a bad thing because instead of adhering to web standards (as any good web-based software should), it uses hooks that are exclusive to Chromium, helping to further entrench Chromium–and Google–as the de facto monopoly in web browsing. And Google is actively working to destroy the web right now, in order to make more money for itself.
Mostly, it’s silly forcing people to use specific browsers, because it goes against everything that the web is meant to represent.
In conclusion, Keychron is bad and should feel bad.
A new retro console! An Intellivision console, just like I had as a surly teen! It’s called the Intellivision Spirit.
But wait, there’s a YouTube link in the same article…
This seems to suggest the name is Sprint, not Spirit. And yes, it is the Intellivision Sprint, not Spirit1Bonus: How does a carpet get “cigarette-soaked”, exactly? And were the kids playing Intellivision back in 1982 chain smokers or something?.
The story was posted two days ago (as of this post I’m writing) and this curiously obvious gaffe has not been corrected. The first (of two) comments also points out the error.
But hey, it’s just a sloppily rewritten press release, rather than AI slop, so I guess we should be thankful for that.
A breathtaking example of dark patterns and how not asking for consent from a user can lead to a tech-related catastrophe filled with bogus warnings and alerts.
A neat tale of dogged perseverance beyond what most people would do, with connecting-the-dots and searching saving the day.
A sad testament to what a big ol’ pile of poop Windows has become in its latest incarnation. For every good feature, it feels like there are two user-hostile ones added.
My own experience with Windows 11 has increasingly soured since its debut, which is a neat trick, considering an OS normally starts out kind of janky and unstable when it launches and smooths out over time. Instead, Windows 11 has become both increasingly fragile and obnoxious, with ads, dark patterns and AI shoved into every corner of it, even basic apps like Paint and Notepad.
In version 7.51 of Signal (desktop version) they changed how you access stickers. Before, you clicked on a sticker icon in the text box and chose a sticker. One click, simple.
Now you click the emoji icon, which makes no sense because stickers are not emojis, they’re stickers, then you have to click over to the Stickers tab and choose a sticker.
In simpler terms, what took one click now takes two. This is a regression, no matter how you look at it.
Here’s how the Signal team looks at it on their Github page: “Now you can experience the pinnacle of human technological advancement in Signal Desktop with a brand-new selection interface that makes it easy to quickly find an emoji, sticker, or animated GIF that’s perfect for the moment.”
They could have left the sticker button in the text box and still implemented this change. They could have made the sticker button customizable for “quick access” to stickers, emoji or gifs, but no, instead they just made adding a sticker two steps instead of one.
They have also taught me to never update Signal again. Good job, you clowns.
There was a recent update to the Official™ Font Awesome plugin, and I was excited, because I like icons and glyphs and other weird non-verbal forms of communication. However, when I tried inserting Font Awesome icon of a cat (of course), I discovered it was very big. Like, taking up half the screen of a 27″ monitor big.
I noticed you could adjust the size, so I adjusted the size way down. This seemed to have no effect.
I was sad.
But today there was an update and I think it’s been fixed. I’ll test this below by clogging up the rest of this post with Font Awesome icons! Or maybe just one. Or two.
This is the cat I originally tried posting:
And now, the yin-yang symbol. It spins! I think.
Here is a larger version of the cat, now in orange:
Exciting times here on the ol’ blog. Carry on with your day, if you can!
I have tweaked some of the fonts on the site again (but not all of them, so there is a bit of a crazy quilt effect going on here).
Specifically:
Body font: JetBrains Mono
Heading 2 font (used for post titles): Ubuntu Mono
As an added bonus for me, because WP doesn’t “see” JetBrains Mono in the editor, it is using Bold Segoe UI at 17px instead.
I’m all about the monospaced fonts. For now. For today. We’ll see what happens tomorrow.
EDIT: I have already changed the Header font to Barlow Semi Condensed, mere minutes later.
EDIT 2: I've now changed the sidebar to JetBrains Mono and also made the background colour of the site blue, and the sidebar a greenish-yellow. Or a yellowish-green.
EDIT 3: I've updated the blue in the logo to make it a bit lighter and it seems WP just needed to cache the fonts, as the editor now shows JetBrains Mono, as nature intended. More tweaking undoubtedly to come.
This article is just all-around depressing: Casual Viewing
Such slipshod filmmaking works for the streaming model, since audiences at home are often barely paying attention. Several screenwriters who’ve worked for the streamer told me a common note from company executives is “have this character announce what they’re doing so that viewers who have this program on in the background can follow along.” (“We spent a day together,” Lohan tells her lover, James, in Irish Wish. “I admit it was a beautiful day filled with dramatic vistas and romantic rain, but that doesn’t give you the right to question my life choices. Tomorrow I’m marrying Paul Kennedy.” “Fine,” he responds. “That will be the last you see of me because after this job is over I’m off to Bolivia to photograph an endangered tree lizard.”)
And:
Netflix’s “views” might look impressive on paper (even Sweet Girl, the TNM starring Jason Momoa as a vengeance-seeking survivalist whose MMA-trained daughter takes up his cause, was viewed 6.7 million times in the first half of 2024), but these figures remain a sham. To get to 6.7 million, Netflix first tallies the film’s “viewing hours,” the total amount of time that users have spent streaming the movie. Here, Netflix makes no distinction between users who watch Sweet Girl all the way through, those who watch less than two minutes, and those who watch just a few seconds thanks to autoplay, or skip around, or watch at 1.5x speed. All this distracted, piecemeal activity is rolled into Sweet Girl’s total viewing hours (12.3 million at last count), which the company then divides by the program’s runtime (110 minutes, or 1.83 hours) to produce those 6.7 million views. According to Netflix’s rubric, two users who watch the first half of Sweet Girl and close their laptops equal one full “view”—as do 110 users who each watch a single minute.
To compensate for reading this, here is a cat watching a TV with more attention than a typical Netflix subscriber:
Yesterday I went to the Verge homepage, but never clicked on anything. I appear to have not looked at any articles in the last few days, judging from my browser history. This makes sense, because I’ve de-prioritized the site since it added an “optional” subscription.
Today I clicked on the lead article and got this:
Yes, a paywall on the feature article, which was–hold onto your hats–about rearranging your home screen app icons. I did not get a Verge subscription, nor did I try any trickery to allow me to read the article. Instead, I closed the tab, removed the Verge from my new tab page list of bookmarks and will rarely check the site in the future.
I don’t begrudge the Verge wanting to extract money from its readers–you gotta cover expenses! But the way they are doing it sucks, and I’m not going to reward them (apart from the volume of clickbait junk opinion pieces is still too high, as well) with my money.
A partial/ambiguous paywall is bad design. It just is. I’ve barely looked at the site in the past week, so I don’t know if I’m getting hit by the paywall at random, if I reached my limit of “free” articles, or the feature article is paywalled by design. The pop-up doesn’t say, and I’m not going to dig around on my own to find out.
Asking people to fork over money and still serving them ads is also bad design. And tacky.
I don’t care about the newsletters. It’s not an enticement.
In a time when subscription fatigue is a real thing, the Verge has taken probably the second-worst approach to adding one (the worst would just be a complete paywall. I wonder if they’d still have ads then? Maybe!)
I don’t know how their two markets compare, but the way Ars Technica does subscriptions feels right to me:
If you don’t subscribe, the site is plastered with ads. Gotta pay the bills!
If you subscribe, you get some perks:
Article PDFs to download
A better layout for articles and the site in general
Customization options for text size, width and additional themes
No ads
Notice the last one? You get an ad-free experience and, knowing it is ad-free, subscribers get a layout that flows nicely without having to accommodate ads.
No content is locked behind a paywall. The sub is reasonable–as low as $25 per year. I like supporting the site this way and I get a nicer experience (to be clear, I do subscribe to Ars Technica).
Anyway, I suspect the Verge will do fine, since subs or not, they are still running ads. I’ll miss some of their content (but not their awful comments system). Having culled the site, I now have a tiny bit more time to devote to cat pics, so in a way, it’s win-win for me.
The new logo uses the same font but adds an underline and changes the colour from all-orange to green and yellow. Green and yellow work well together, but there was something a little too familiar. Then I realized it.
I had created the Subway logo.
So now I have to change it again.
My Subway-ish logo:
Fake edit: I’m going with this for now. At least it doesn’t make me crave a six-inch chicken sub.
Not a fake edit: Now I’m trying a yellow and gray version. I’ll probably keep changing it, but won’t update this post every time, so the true level of my madness will not be fully revealed.
Frank probably made his post in response, but it’s still kind of impressive he got it in when he did, given the article got over 40 pages of comments in about 24 hours.
Myself, I’m using List View now instead of the main Grid view. My issues reflect a lot of what others are saying:
Too much white space (and I see even less of it, since I subscribe and the design takes into account the now-unused ad space), which means a lot more scrolling and a lot less visible content.
Article headers are way too big, both font size and image.
The Grid view commits a huge faux pas by showing a large block of black with white text on it…when you select the Light theme. Not only is this illogical, it’s a legit accessibility issue. Light themes should be light.
Images in circles are small and not particularly easy to scan, which is overall minor.
I knew there would be griping a-plenty when the article about the redesign talked about updating to current design trends (which in many ways are bad and user-hostile). We’ll see where it ends up as they tweak, but history suggests it will be mostly as is and people will just get used to it.
Here’s the Grid view, as seen on the front page (click to see full-size):
That is a lot of dark for a light theme.
The headers on articles in Light view are still dark, too:
This is a 1780×1140 window.
Also, note that despite having my browser window set to 1780×1140 (not counting the address bar, etc.) I have to scroll just to start reading the article text. This seems suboptimal.
We’ll see how it evolves over the next few weeks. I’ll post an update if I remember!
I say this as someone who has owned an iPad Pro since 2017.
When the iPad debuted in 2010, Steve Jobs pitched it as a “between” device that could do things a smartphone could, and things a desktop computer could–but it could do them in a more convenient form. The activities included:
Browsing web pages
Reading magazines and books
Watching video
All of these activities require minimal interaction, so they are suited to a touch-oriented device. The iPad’s larger display–yet still eminently portable design–makes it superior to a smartphone for viewing web pages or magazines, though with more responsive designs and larger phone screens, this use case is not quite as compelling as it once was. It’s still better for watching video in bed than a laptop or phone, I’d say.
Jobs only lived long enough to see one iteration of the iPad, called, cleverly1Given Apple’s often byzantine and arbitrary naming schemes, this is not sarcasm!, the iPad 2. It refined what was in the original, but otherwise changed nothing. It was just a better iPad.
That changed a bit in 2012 when Apple introduced the iPad Mini. It was, quite literally, a smaller version of the iPad. This didn’t change much, but it did mean that consumers now had two distinct choices when buying an iPad: regular size or smaller.
Apple then blew things up when they introduced the original iPad Pro in 2015. This had some refinements, but mostly it was bigger, going from a 9.7″ display to a 12.9″ one. Apple muddied the waters by later introducing a 9.7″ iPad Pro, which really wasn’t much better than the standard iPad Air available at the time (also a 9.7″ device). Apple “fixed” this by junking the Air (for a while) and bringing in a new base model iPad that stripped away things like the laminated display, but also dropped the price to a mere $299 (the original iPad sold for $499). The Pro models also supported a stylus, the Apple Pencil.
Does anything in the above paragraph look like a carefully-planned, long term strategy? Because it is not. It is Apple deciding one thing (“We need an upscale iPad so we can charge a premium price”) and then shuffling everything else around to make the line-up work. The early iPad Pros, apart from supporting Apple Pencil–an arbitrary limitation that was lifted a few years later, when Pencil support was added to all the myriad iPad models–didn’t really do anything that the base model couldn’t do. They looked a bit nicer, they sounded a bit better, they ran faster (not that you could really notice).
It was the Apple Pencil support that got me to buy that 10.5″ iPad Pro in 2017, then to move to the 12.9″ model when it was new in 2020 (I still use it today). It seemed like a way to get a Cintiq-like device, but (surprisingly, given Apple) for less than an actual Cintiq would cost. (This year’s iPad Pro models have reversed that, as Apple leaned much more into making the Pro model “premium”–even though it still can’t do anything more than a $300 iPad you can grab at your local Walmart.)
When I bought the 12.9″ iPad Pro in 2020, I got it from Apple directly and paid $1167. That’s pricey! The equivalent 2024 version is $1799. That’s silly.
But the price is not the main reason the iPad Pro is silly. You were probably wondering when I was going to get to this.
The silly part is: No one needs an iPad Pro. I don’t, you don’t, Apple doesn’t. Apple started the line to generate more revenue, and now they’ve jacked prices because Apple is in one of its greed-driven, “squeeze them for everything” phases (the last time was in the mid-90s). But in the drive for more money, Apple has boxed itself in, adding bits and pieces to iPadOS (which, let’s be serious, is just iOS with a different sticker on it), trying to make it work more like a laptop, with split screen, Stage Manager, a Files app (which started terrible and has stayed terrible since its introduction). But it is still marred by terrible memory management, arbitrary restrictions, a lack of utilities, and turning one or two click operations on a PC into a maze of steps, swipes and taps that sometimes just fail at the end, forcing you to start over.
It’s a mess and it’s a mess because Apple made a fundamental error in 2015 by introducing the iPad Pro. They got greedy, they made a mess, and in almost 10 years have failed to clean it up. WWDC 2024 is tomorrow, and Apple will probably make a few more token gestures to fixing iPadOS. But I don’t think they can.
The basic iPad experience is fine. Apple should refine what is there now to work better.
But here’s my advice for a company regularly valued at $2-3 trillion:
Keep the base iPad, Air and Mini. Lose the suffixes. They are all iPads now, differentiated only by size. If they insist on a cost-cutting base model, call it the iPad SE.
Kill the iPad Pro. Yep, kill it! No more iPad Pros! Continue to support existing models for 5–7 years.
Introduce a Mac tablet that runs a touch version of macOS. Include optional support to run a virtualized iPadOS.
Now you have a truly professional-calibre touch device. Yes, I’m basically asking Apple to re-invent the Surface Pro, but with Apple’s level of polish and precision.
The iPad Pro is just not going to get better, software-wise, without major surgery on the operating system that Apple will never commit to. So they shouldn’t. They should just give up and put out touch-based Macs instead.
