In this post I said I would make a decision on a task manager/to-do app in a week, then two weeks went by and here I am, sans decision.
Which perhaps underlines the need to start using one of these apps.
Previously, I had considered these options:
Things 3
TickTick
Microsoft to-Do
I’ve tinkered with the trial version of Things 3, and it’s very nice, even fun, but ultimately I feel it being limited to Apple devices only is a dealbreaker. I still do a lot of stuff on my PC and will continue to do so into the future. If they at least offered a web version, I’d probably still consider it. But alas.
To-Do offers good integration with Office 365 and collaboration, neither of which are of any use to me. As one reviewer noted, it’s nice-looking and the ability to set custom backgrounds for different tasks allows you to make them visually distinct, handy for at-a-glance recognition. But this is easily the most basic of the to-do apps (I mean, look at its name), and I feel it’s just a little too simple to make it worth committing to.
TickTick seems decent enough, but in my brief time with it I didn’t really warm up to its interface. There’s nothing wrong with it, I just don’t find it compelling. It’s hard to explain.
This leaves Todoist, which I had toyed with years ago, and was reminded of when it came up in several surveys of to-do software. It’s multiplatform, including a web version, and offers a lot of functionality even before you consider the subscription version. And for whatever reason, I spent more time poking around in it and testing stuff out.
So my tentative decision has been made: I’m going to try using Todoist. Starting next week (for real, I double dog swear) I am going to start scheduling stuff and see how it goes. I expect minimal drama and no more than one instance of curling up in a ball on the floor.
Friday’s run was my first using the new third generation AirPods. I resisted getting the AirPods Pro, even though I lusted for their water resistance for my soggier runs, because every pair of earbuds I’ve tried that feature rubber or silicone tips has never fit well for me, regardless of the material or the size of the tip (keep your minds out of the gutter, people). I just have weird ears, I guess.
On the other hand, the basic AirPods actually fit in my ears securely enough that I can wear them while running and never worry about one popping out (and indeed, this has never happened). When it was confirmed the new AirPods would have water resistance but otherwise use the same style of fit (no tips), I decided to take a chance on them.
After a couple of days of use, including a run and multiple walks, I give them a provisional thumbs up that I suspect will convert to a plain ol’ thumbs up over time.
Good:
Pairing with my iPhone was seamless, as expected
Fit seems fine, no looseness or jiggle while running. I’ve not yet been concerned one might pop out.
Sound is as good as the previous generation. My lab-certified terrible ears can’t really detect anything better about the sound (some people say it has better bass), but maybe I just haven’t listened enough.
Water resistance should prove handy when it rains, hooray. This has yet to be tested, but I don’t anticipate any issues.
Works with the Find My app if an AirPod does eventually pop out
Shorter stems look less silly than previous generation
Not really good but not necessarily bad:
Those same shorter stems make these AirPods a bit trickier to put on and to remove from or place back into the case. You have less to hold onto, so it feels like they are easier to drop or lose hold of.
Still overpriced, really
The touch/squeeze controls seem better-suited to walking than running. I can’t confirm this yet as I haven’t used the controls while running, but I wonder if squeezing the stem to play/pause/skip could lead to accidentally pulling one of the buds out.
I will have further thoughts on these soon, but for now I give them a solid 8 out of 10 boilerplate Tim Cook answers to puffball questions.
It’s been just over three weeks since I installed Windows 11. Here are some additional thoughts now that I’ve had some time to get more comfortable with it.
Bugs
I haven’t encountered much in the way of bugs, but one is the Start menu sometimes not opening, whether it’s clicked on with a mouse or accessed through the Windows key. The usual fix is to restart the explorer.exe task, which is pretty simple, but hardly something most people would know how to do. For them, a reboot would still work. It’s happened a few times since I installed Win11, so I have no idea what triggers it.
UPDATE: I have now seen this bug manifest differently, where the Start menu opens but only appears as a translucent outline, with nothing else visible. The same fix restores it.
Things I miss
Invoking Task Manager via the mouse: I don’t use Task Manager that often, but I don’t like having to right-click on the Start button to launch it. I liked the old, more flexible way of just right-clicking anywhere on the taskbar. Taking this away is not an improvement.
Program management via tiles: With tiles (live or otherwise) completely gone in Windows 11, the ability to organize apps into groups is also gone and this is something I will miss more as time goes on and I use more apps. I previously had them organized into groups like Writing and Graphics. Now all I can do is pin them to the Start menu and shuffle the order around, but without any discrete organization. It adds a small bit of friction to launching apps, but it’s still there. I’ve even thought about installing Fences to mimic this feature on the desktop.
Resizing the taskbar: You can hack this with registry edits, but you should be able to resize and move the taskbar. Neither is possible right now. You get the taskbar where it is and you like it!
Stuff I like
I can now confirm I do indeed like the following:
Dark mode. A few inconsistencies, but not enough to keep me from switching away from it.
The general look of the UI. It feels cleaner and more refined. Windows is now more pleasant to use. It’s hard to capture this in words, but it’s a thing.
The Settings app. It really is significantly better. It shows how mediocre the one in Windows 10 is (and how horrible the one in Windows 8 was).
Faster updates. Microsoft Store apps seem to update much faster, and the Library link makes it easy to see what you’ve installed from the store. And general Windows updates also seem to be swifter now. Smaller ones don’t even require a reboot. The future has finally arrived.
Stuff I don’t like
Ghosts of Windows past. It’s still pretty easy to find UI elements that hearken back to Windows 7 or earlier. I was cutting Microsoft some slack when Windows 10 launched, but that was six years ago. They should do better in unifying the design and look of the OS.
Teams integration. Teams keeps coming back. Go away, Teams, I don’t need you. I think this might be fixed after I disabled it from starting up in Task Manager’s Startup tab, but I feel like a random update will set it back to enabled again.
Multiple screens, singular clock. No clock/date on a second display. Why? This irritates me. The clock/date/system tray only shows on the primary display. There should at least be a toggle to enable this on additional monitors.
I occasionally get newsletters from Canon Canada because I have a Canon camera and apparently managed to sign myself up for their newsletters. It was fine, though, as they came infrequently and while they didn’t always interest me (kids photography camps, etc.) they weren’t, like, offensive or anything.
This morning I got one reminding me to stock up on Canon ink for my Canon ink jet printer.
I don’t have a Canon ink jet printer
I don’t have any ink jet printer
I have a Brother laser printer that uses toner and I’ve never had to replace the toner because that’s how often I need to print something
This blatant shilling to get me to buy something I have no use for was enough to get me to unsubscribe, so now instead of getting exposed to all of their news and promos, I get exposed to none of them.
Whoever decided to send out this email should be bopped in the head with a Canon in jet cartridge.
I finally got my dual monitor setup in place today and I have thoughts.
First, I somehow forgot just how much space two monitors sitting side-by-side occupy. There are areas of my desk that are no longer easy to get to. It’s a minor inconvenience, but noticeable, at least right now.
Also, the monitors are different:
Right: 27″ 2560×1440 (16:9 aspect ratio)
Left: 24″ 1920×1200 (16:10 aspect ratio)
I thought the smaller screen of my older 24″ monitor would bug me, but it’s actually the lower resolution that does. Everything on the 27″ monitor feels like the “right” size, where everything on the left seems too big by comparison. If I keep the dual setup I’ll eventually get a matching 27″ monitor, but for now it feels a bit odd. There’s also differences in brightness and color I can see that would be minimized by having two of the same monitor.
I also wonder/worry if this will lead to any ergonomic issues because instead of looking dead-on at a single monitor in front of me, I am looking slightly to my left or right. It’s not like I’m craning my neck, but it’s something that might have consequences further on. Also, it just feels weird to not have one monitor sitting right in front of me.
And because I have an M1 MacBook Air, I can’t use the dual setup with it as it only supports one external display. Maybe I’ll trade it in for an M1 Mac mini (since I don’t want to spend $3,000 on one of the new MacBook Pros that do support multiple displays–more on these machines in my post covering Apple’s October 18th event soon).
Still, this should help for a lot of my workflow and will make online courses easier, with videos/tutorials on the left screen and my work area on the right. We’ll see how it goes.
I did toy with the idea of getting an ultrawide monitor instead, but:
They are expensive
Most are curved, which makes graphics work tricky (I am primarily doing graphics work, so accurate straight lines and such are important)
Curved screens, even leaving aside the point above, still feel weird to me. I remember the curved TV craze a few years back and note that the craze died out in short order (along with 3D). There must be a reason for that.
Anyway, we’ll see how it works out. If I end up totally hating dual monitors, I still have the single monitor arm mount on the wall, ready to go.
Being the reckless fool I am, I updated right on the day of launch, October 5th. Luckily, I had no driver issues, and the only conspicuous glitch was no audio until I rebooted the computer.
AMD processors (I have a Ryzen 2700) are apparently afflicted by a bug right now that is exacting a 3-5% performance hit, possibly up to 15% in some games. I haven’t noticed anything unusual, other than Diablo 3 taking a bit longer to load, but that could be on Blizzard, and why am I still playing D3, anyway? WHY?
The overall experience of Windows 11 is that it is pretty much Windows 10 with some UI refinements and changes. The changes are a curious mix of good and just different, likely because this was originally meant to be Windows 10x, a version of the OS for dual-screened devices that got repurposed to be the next general version of Windows. It would be interesting to see Microsoft do an intentional, full-on new version of Windows one day, but I suspect that may never happen.
The main theme in Win11, if there is one, is “less is more.” Also, round is good. A lot of cruft and bloat (though also some much-liked features) have been culled in the name of keeping the interface clean and simple. System sounds have a gentler tone to them. Combined with the rounded corners on Windows and especially when using a light theme, it gives windows a warmer and more understated appearance, more than I think any previous version. I’d even say that its light theme now edges out macOS just in general prettiness. There’s also a lot of new, little animations for things, and it gives the OS a–dare I say it–delightful feel. The dark mode is less successful as some window elements are too dark, I think, and there are still inconsistencies. Apple definitely has the better-looking dark mode (that said, I have switched to dark mode and will unlikely go back to the light side).
But as I said, not all changes are immediately seen as positive.
The taskbar
The taskbar is slightly taller now. Not a big deal, really. But you can no longer move it to the side or top. This is bad. There’s no reason for taking this away. The right-click menu on the taskbar is also gone. You now have to right-click on the Start button to get it (which also worked before in Win10). This is also an unnecessary change in the name of simplifying things. You also can no longer change settings on the taskbar to group icons or really do anything else with the icons. You get icons and you like them.
The system tray taskbar corner also sees some changes. There’s now a weird combo network/volume icon that actually takes you to the revised quick actions menu. It’s fine, it just seems somewhat arbitrary to tie these icons to launching quick settings (though volume and network options are there, of course).
Clicking on the time still shows the calendar and notifications, and the two are now separate cards, which provides a cleaner look. The new notification badge is now so subtle you can barely see it. I’m undecided on whether this is good or bad. Both pretty much work as before.
The Start menu
The Start menu has seen the biggest changes. It’s been moved to the center of the taskbar, though you can move it back to its traditional spot in the left corner. I tried it in the center, but it felt weird and in the way, so I moved it back to the left. I’m glad the option is there. Once you click on it, there’s a lot that is different:
Live tiles are gone. I doubt few will miss them. I used one for the weather, but that was it.
The alphabetical list of applications on the left is gone, replaced by an All apps button that shows the same thing. Given how often I actually scroll through the giant list of apps, I think this works to tidy up the interface.
The Start menu is now divided in two, with the top half being applications you pin, and the bottom half being Recommended. Visually, it looks fine, but there are problems:
The pinned section is a fixed 6×3 grid, meaning if you try to pin more than 18 apps, you’ll be forced to a second page. Fortunately, this is somewhat offset by being able to use the mouse wheel to move up and down between the top tier and lower ones. It also forces you to put the apps you really use the most at the top. Moving apps around is a bit clunky, but I expect it’s something most people won’t need to do a lot of.
The Recommended section tries to “intelligently” offer up applications or files that might be useful to you. In reality, this mostly consists of a few things:
Recently-installed apps
Recently-accessed files
This list takes up about as much room as the pinned apps and while you can purge the list, you can’t hide or otherwise removed the Recommended section. I’d like to be able to at least shrink it and expand the pinned apps section. Maybe in Windows 11 Feature Release 1 or whatever.
Since the list alphabetical list of applications is gone, so are the links to Documents, Pictures and other folders that used to be there. You can now pin these as icons-only to the bottom of the Start menu. It’s odd, but workable.
One of those little delightful things I mentioned earlier is how snappy the animation is when you open the Start menu. It zips open so smoothly, I sometimes click just to watch it happen. Windows 11 is filled with these touches.
Settings
The Settings app has been expanded and is organized a lot better than in Windows 10. You can easily navigate back and forth between sections. It’s really what it should have been in Win10 (or Windows 8, for that matter).
Widgets
Widgets are back. After taking a look, I unpinned Widgets from the taskbar and turned them off entirely. The only one I found useful was weather, and you can just pin the old Weather app to the Start menu and use that instead. All the others are provided by Microsoft and just aren’t that interesting or useful to me. I suppose if you are into sports or don’t have a favorite news site to check, it could be nice to have.
Windows snapping
This gets its own section. The OS is called Windows, after all.
One of the unwelcome trends in UX and UI design that has accelerated with the rise of smartphones, is hiding interface elements behind a swipe, long press or incantation. While it’s been possible to snap windows to the sides or top of the screen by dragging them there, Windows 11 now adds a visual element to this, while also expanding the number of options.
This is very nice, and you can access the new options by hovering over the maximize button of a window–but it only seems to work on native Windows applications. For example, it works on Notepad++, which is a Windows-only app, but it doesn’t work on Discord or Firefox, which use custom frameworks. This means you’ll need at least one “standard” Windows app open to use the feature. I usually have File Explorer open, so this isn’t an issue for me, but it will be more cumbersome for people who use a lot of cross-platform apps.
Other stuff
File Explorer now has a dark mode. It looks a little weird. I think it’s maybe just a tad too dark. I got used to it quickly enough, though.
The giant context menus when you right-click a file have been drastically shortened. This is both good and bad. It’s a much cleaner look now and the common options of Cut, Copy, Paste, Delete, Rename and Share (?!) are now presented as icons at the top of the menu, so once you learn the icons (no text for you, sorry), you can use them quickly. On the negative side, if you found some of those options in the really long old menu useful, you now have to click on Show more options (Shift-F10) to expose them. But at least they haven’t been entirely removed. The one I miss the most are the 7-zip options I use. Apparently, third parties will be able to add back functions to the new, shorter menus eventually.
Some apps have been revised, like Photos, but I haven’t spent much time with them, so I offer no opinion for now.
The Start menu is filled with some apps you may or may not want, but at least they are easily unpinned or uninstalled.
The taskbar includes Teams pinned to it. I unpinned it. Since Teams now comes with the OS, I chose to leave it installed, thinking that it would probably come back like a tortured spirit if I tried to remove it.
Some new themes and wallpapers are pretty snazzy, but I stuck to what I had for Windows 10.
The calculator has rounded buttons. Oooh!
It’s Windows 10 Plus (and Minus)
I know there is more, but really, this is mostly Windows 10 with some new UI elements and revisions. I haven’t encountered any showstopper issues yet, but it’s early days. Overall, I don’t regret updating, despite a few regressions here and there. I may not agree with every decision Microsoft has made, but none are so bad that I want to flip the table and go back to Windows 10.
It is somewhat odd that Apple dropped the two “standard” neutral tones of silver and space gray (their answer to black)
The new colors that are closest are Starlight, a sort of silver/gold mix, and Midnight, which looks black but on close inspection is actually a very dark blue. Neither of these really match the dropped tones.
In the grand scheme of things this is not a huge deal because “eh, close enough” and with enough negative feedback Apple might bring the other two tones back–possibly even before the Series 8 that will no doubt launch a year from now
The discussion on MacRumors has several people complaining about people complaining about the colors. I am now going to complain about the people complaining about the complainers below.
Here’s one quote from early in the discussion:
Meanwhile some hungry people in Brazil are searching for food on cities landfills.
Author of “You are bad and should feel bad”
Yes, good ol’ moral outrage. How dare you complain about something when hungry people in Brazil are searching landfills for food! Only when all of these people are well-fed will it be deemed okay to offer contrary opinions on mundane things in your life (especially if those opinions are shared on the internet). Wait. No, actually, it won’t be okay, because other people are starving around the world, too, not to mention all the other horrible things happening on this planet:
hunger (as mentioned)
poverty
political oppression and violence
war
global warming
let’s throw in cancer, too
So really, it will never be okay to complain about mundane things, because context doesn’t matter, everything is terrible and be happy with your Starlight Apple Watch, you ungrateful, spoiled consumer!
I mean, yes, it is genuinely bad that people are starving, but reading and posting to a discussion on MacRumors is already self-selecting to a very high degree, and doing so specifically to upbraid people for complaining about anything when there are Serious Issues out there basically makes you look like a self-important asshole who probably doesn’t provide more than lip service to the horrible things you use as examples of things actually worthy of complaint.
This kind of self-righteous stuff has always rankled me, and now I’ve ranted about it, so it shall never be discussed again.
(I’d go for the Midnight, it’s close to enough to black for me.)
UPDATE, April 18, 2022: I can confirm that in my own experience, variable refresh rate support is working in macOS Monterey. Since I have switched to using a Mac Studio as my desktop machine, I have found the following:
• Connecting via the Studio's HDMI port to one of my Asus VG27A monitors works with the 144Hz refresh rate • Connecting via one of the Studio's Thunderbolt ports to HDMI via a USB-C to HDMI cable does not allow for the 144Hz refresh rate, only 60 or 72 (and 72 does not work, as shown below)
Here’s my public service for the week. It happened to me, it could happen to you! (If you have the right combo of hardware).
The problem: When putting my M1 MacBook Air into clamshell mode, the 27″ external monitor it was connected to would go blank. The Air was still on and otherwise running, but was not getting a signal from the monitor.
Unlike the author, I believe the issue isn’t related to the cable, just the fact that macOS does not support variable refresh rates and when closing the lid on a monitor with variable refresh rates, it would switch to a rate it didn’t actually support. In my case, I have an Asus VG27A, which has a max (without overclocking) refresh rate of 144Hz. I run it at 60Hz on the MacBook, but when putting it into clamshell mode, it switched to 72Hz, which doesn’t work, causing the display to go blank.
Step-by-step solution
Here’s my step-by-step for the fix in case something happens to the Reddit link:
What this applies to:
Any M1 MacBook connecting to an external monitor with a variable refresh rate (typically a monitor with built-in support for G-sync or FreeSync). I can’t verify if this would apply to the same issue on an Intel-based MacBook, but it might.
What you need:
M1 MacBook Air or MacBook Pro
Another computer (preferably with its own with display), can be Mac or PC
Remote desktop software
The steps:
Install the remote desktop software on the MacBook and the other PC. I used TeamViewer, which is free for personal use, but there are lots of options. NOTE: Make sure the remote desktop software has appropriate permissions in the Mac’s security settings. TeamViewer prompts for this, but some software may not.
Set the MacBook to display on the external display, and keep the lid on the MacBook open
Use the remote desktop software to connect to the MacBook and make sure you can control the MacBook
Close the lid on the MacBook. The external display should now go blank, but you should still be able to see the Mac desktop through the remote connection.
From the other computer, go into Displays under the Mac’s System Preferences and change the refresh rate to 60Hz. Once this is done, you should see the external display work again.
Test the new configuration by closing the lid on the MacBook. If the external display remains on, you are done!
Apple is adding variable refresh rate in macOS Monterey, which is due in Fall 2021 (probably a month or so from now as of this writing, but this will likely continue to be an issue on Big Sur. Story on MacRumors
And probably others I’ve forgotten or haven’t visited. By coincidence, these are all Apple-related sites (though not officially affiliated with Apple).
I’ve written about this before, but after seeing multiple sites doing this, I am compelled to once more highlight this as bad design.
It’s bad design because dark mode should be an OS-level choice, one that provides a dark frame around content that may or may not be dark itself.
A good example of doing this right is the writing program Ulysses. Here’s how it handles dark mode:
It lets you toggle dark mode on or off, regardless of the OS setting
It lets you choose to match the OS setting if you prefer
It lets you set just the outer UI elements to dark mode
It lets you choose to make the “inner” elements dark as well–in this case, it’s the actual area where you write, which can be dark or light
A bad example is the iOS Maps app, which simply matches the OS setting, turning the map backgrounds into a dark gray mud that is hard to read. On the Mac, you can sensibly toggle this on/off. On iOS, you can’t because Apple is a trillion-dollar company and can no longer function properly (see also: the mind-bogglingly inept Safari beta that rolled out this summer as part of iOS 15 and macOS Monterey).
The best part is the fix for the three websites mentioned above if you don’t want to be forced into dark mode and don’t want to have to toggle an OS-level display setting every time you visit: Check them on a Windows PC, because even if you have Windows 10 set to Dark mode, the sites will not display as such–it only happens if you’re using a Mac, where these sites take an Apple-like approach of “our way or get out.”
I should point out that all three sites are quite fine in and of themselves, content-wise. I even pay for Six Colors! You should read all of them if you are a Mac geek.
The solution as I’ve mentioned before, is to offer a user toggle. The 9to5Mac website (among others) does this and it works just fine. There’s no reason the others listed can’t do the same. That two of them actually went through recent redesigns and still omitted this is not insanely great.
Tonight, the Apple TV turned itself on (technically it woke up, as it actually doesn’t have an actual on/off switch) and started silently streaming music from my music library (the receiver that powers the speakers was off at the time–it does have an on/off switch).
The last time I streamed music on the Apple TV was…I don’t remember when, actually. More than six months ago, I’d guess. Maybe longer. And I’ve done it maybe twice or three times in total.
But there was the Apple TV, doing its thing, unbidden and unwanted.
This happened a few days ago, too, but in that case it didn’t actually do anything, it just sat there until the screensavers kicked in.
A quick search suggested that having Background App Refresh set to ON might be responsible in it waking on its own. That doesn’t explain why it also started running some random app, though.
I updated the software, set Background App Refresh to OFF, then took the most important step:
I unplugged the power cord on the damn thing.
With all the streaming apps on the Xbox One (including Apple TV+, the confusingly named streaming service Apple offers), the Apple TV hardware is redundant. With it also acting squirrelly, it’s now actively annoying.
Having compared the streaming experience between the two platforms, I prefer the Xbox One, anyway. Maybe I’ll use the Apple TV as a very expensive paperweight–it’s actually about the right size and heft for that job.
