This week I’ve been using the M1 MacBook Air exclusively for work (I’ll post more on the experience soon) and as I’ve grown accustomed to using it for days at a time instead of hours, I’ve come to see how it does some things better than Windows.
But Windows still bests it in certain ways.
Here’s one way each is better than the other, in my opinion, WHICH IS OBJECTIVELY CORRECT.
macOS: Better font rendering. Fonts do not look bad in windows, but they look better on Macs. This is especially noticeable when you get into smaller font sizes or where color contrast is higher. Everything looks a little smoother on a Mac’s screen.
Windows: Perhaps unsurprisingly, given its name, but window management is better on Windows. It has easy to use options for snapping windows in place and resizing them, and has other handy features like window previews on the taskbar and more logical behavior on the taskbar vs. Apple’s dock.
I’ll expand more on which OS does things better in a future post, but I can confidently say that people who tout one being obviously superior to the other (without having some weird edge case or niche use) are big fat liars. For common tasks like browsing the web, listening to music, writing or doodling, they are both fine.
What is the 99% rule, you may ask? I will tell you! Right now!
I have two devices which are affected by the 99% rule:
Fitbit Inspire HR
Logitech G703 gaming mouse
Both of these devices run on rechargeable batteries, so I periodically recharge them, as logic would dictate.
Regardless of how much charge is left in the Inspire HR when I begin to charge it, if I leave it charging for awhile and then check its current charge, it will always report:
99%
When I charge the G703 mouse, the same thing occurs. I can start charing it at 30% battery or 12% or whatever, when I check the status it will say:
99%
The charging for the Inspire HR seems to work something like this:
0—10—20—30—40-50—60—70—80—90—99——————————————100
I have not scientifically measured this, but it feels about right.
I am not sure why these devices seem to take a very long time to go from a 99% charge to a 100% charge. I suspect it may be related to the same technology behind the now deprecated Windows progress bar:
You may have seen this devil-in-disguise. The bar will move along at a steady pace, then abruptly or randomly slow down. Or stop. Or suddenly take off like it is sliding down a steep hill. It is, in a word, unpredictable. There are probably a multitude of technical reasons for this, ranging from variable drive transfer speed to phases of the moon, but in the end Microsoft changed to a more ambiguous way of showing progress so that people wouldn’t be afflicted by the 99% rule.
But it lingers on in devices that do not have progress bars. I’m not sure why, but I think it speaks to the persistence of the universe, so maybe in some perverse way it’s a good thing.
This concludes my desperate attempt to put a positive spin on some weird behavior for today.
I use Firefox because Google sucks and I have a soft spot for the underdog, which Firefox very much is in this era of Chromium-or-bust browsers. Also, Apple doesn’t make Safari for Windows (anymore) and I’m sorry, Apple, I don’t use your devices all the time! So Firefox it is.
These are the extensions I use regularly and that I find useful. The list is a lot shorter than it used to be, as browsers began integrating a lot of features that previously required extensions.
Pocket. Save web stories to read later. Also converts text to a reader view, which makes the layout look nicer (and kills ads as a bonus side effect). Mozilla (makers of Firefox) owns Pocket, so it is integrated into Firefox, though it’s available for other browsers, too.
Font Finder (revived). I am always on the lookout for good fonts because a) I am always thinking about what will look good on my blog b) I have a fascination with fonts and typefaces and c) I’m just kind of weird in that I want to know the name of the font I’m looking at. Font Finder lets you reveal a font on a site with a simple click. You can even select a section of text and get it to render in whatever font you want, which is even more of a niche case usage that I’m looking for.
Dark Reader. Does its best to intelligently switch any site over to a dark mode. Handy for glaringly bright websites that don’t offer alternative views for those late night sessions. You can customize the color choices it makes, too, if you don’t like what it comes up with.
uBlock Origin. Yes, I block ads. Considering how they have become a vector for malware, tracking, slowing down page loading and breaking up page layout into nonsense, I feel no guilt in blocking ads. I pay for a lot of the sites I read regularly–when the option is present. It usually isn’t.
LanguageTool. This is the dullest name for a decent grammar and spell-checking extension ever. Similar to Grammarly, it offers to spell-check on the fly and has a nice single-click UI that please me. Like Grammarly and others, it gates some features behind a subscription, but the free version works well for me. My one complaint is it wants to insert commas everywhere.
OneNote Web Clipper. I don’t use OneNote that much anymore, but when I did, this extension worked well in letting you easily clip stuff for later use. Think of it as a more interactive version of Pocket.
NelliTab. Replacement for the New Tab page. After I found FVD speed dial started bogging down Firefox (it could take 30 seconds to start up) I sought out alternatives and the nice thing about NelliTab is it uses your bookmarks, so if you later decide to stop using NelliTab you still have your bookmarks all neatly organized into folders. The icons it uses look nice, too, and there’s a host of options for layout to help customize it just so. I may find I eventually bog this down, too, but for now it’s fine.
Apparently I copy and paste a lot of random things, so the Clipboard history feature in Windows 10 (accessed by the Win + V combo) is surprisingly handy. I’m not sure if using it makes me a power user, but I’m going to pretend it does.
Here’s a few other random small utilities I use with Windows (I may make a Mac list if I’m not feeling lazy–and the Mac actually has a more dire need for these sorts of things, so take that, Tim Cook!):
Greenshot. The included Snip & Sketch actually works pretty decently now, but I’ve gotten used to Greenshot. It works great for grabbing screenshots and has a nice assortment of editing features that turn it into a mini image editor. And it’s completely free. Sadly, the not-free Mac version is not nearly as good.
Sizer. This program lets you assign keyboard shortcuts to predefined window sizes. I currently use a horrible piece of software at work that opens windows to something like 80% of your screen size, which may have made sense back in 2003 when everyone had 15 inch monitors, but is super-obnoxious when your monitor is a widescreen 27 inch model. I can only imagine what these windows would look like on a 34 inch ultrawide. Anyway, with one swift key combo I can resize the window to something sane and move it to exactly where I want it on screen. Also free!
EarTrumpet. Goofy name, but it acts as a replacement for the standard Windows volume control, making it a lot easier to control audio from multiple devices.
PowerToys. Yes, they’re back. It’s the 90s all over again! This is a nice collection of small utilities that let you do things like remap keys, quickly resize images, includes a color picker and more.
I wrote “Hello world!” in C#. I’m adding C# to my resume now.
(This is part of a bigger plan that will hopefully come to fruition this year. More details soon, possibly in the next post if I’m not lazy or distracted.)
Let’s see if I can remember the code:
Console.Writeline("Hello world");
Fake edit: I checked and forgot to capitalize the L in Line, which would have produced an error, since C# is case-sensitive. But I remembered that it’s case-sensitive!
Also, this is the most coding I’ve done in like ten years.
Macrumors posted this YouTube link for their review of the M1 iMac just released.
Yes, the computer is facing away. It is backwards. It was explained by noting that the orange on the back of the iMac is much more saturated and vivid than the pastel orange found on the front-facing chin, so they wanted to show that.
I’d like to think no one would ever actually set up their iMac this way but…you just never know.
Seriously, this should be a solved problem, but the only way to get consistent performance on a mouse when I’m using any Mac (I have owned three in the past four years) is to use one that plugs in using old-fashioned cables.
Tonight I have been using my MacBook Air with the Logitech Marathon mouse and it started out fine, but over time the mouse cursor starts to become slow and then erratic, glitching across the screen. It improves for a bit, then starts glitching again. If I dig out one of my old wired mice it works just fine, so it seems like there’s something up with both Bluetooth and Wi-Fi connectivity on Macs.
This never happens in Windows. In fact, I can take this exact same mouse and use it in Windows right now and it will operate perfectly fine. My regular Windows mouse is a Logitech G703 wireless gaming mouse. It works perfectly when untethered.
I just don’t get it. It’s like Apple optimizes the OS to only work with their mice and nothing else. It’s incredibly annoying and reminds me why I never manage to make it long whenever I try using the Mac. For an OS that gets lauded for its stability and design, it has some pretty deep flaws.
At least the keyboard works properly. Oh wait, it’s plugged in. Bleah.
Steven Levy’s book chronicling the development of the Macintosh is not just a historical record of the development of that seminal personal computer, it’s a historical record in itself. Originally published in 1994, with an afterword for the revised edition added in 2000, it captures Apple at three distinct periods in its history, all of them coming before the development of the iPhone and Apple’s eventual rise as the world’s most successful consumer electronics company:
The early 1980s when the company went through its first growth spurt, buoyed by the success of the Apple II. This is where the bulk of the book takes place, as it covers the genesis of the Macintosh through to its debut in 1984.
The early 1990s. The Mac is established and successful, albeit not the world-changing device many of its developers had hoped for. Apple itself is in a precarious position, embroiled in boardroom drama, a bloated product line and the existential threat of the growing PC market.
The late 1990s. In which the story comes full circle, in a way, with Steve Jobs returning to Apple and unveiling the iMac, the first major release that would help guide Apple back to profitability and long term success.
The first third of the book lays out the history leading up to the development of the Macintosh, centering largely on Xerox’s Palo Alto Research Center (PARC). One of the scientists working there was Alan Kay, whose hypothetical “Dynabook” would embody many of the design elements we take for granted in modern personal computers. The scientists at PARC would go on to create machines that used mice and windows, but the company was never able or particularly interested in turning their research into commercial products, frustrating many of them who wanted to push forward the boundaries of computers.
From here, Levy–who actually visited with these scientists during this time in the early 1970s–moves on to the newly-minted Apple Computer, which was expanding to dozens of employees on the success of the Apple II. The Apple II was a capable but primitive machine and most acknowledged it would not be the future of Apple. A serendipitous trip to PARC by a team from Apple to take a look at what the scientists there were working on would lay the groundwork for what ultimately became the Macintosh.
It’s here that Levy moves onto a two-pronged approach, covering the development of the technology, along with the personality clashes along the way, many of which were due to Jobs’ combination of perfectionism and antagonistic management style.
Apple actually developed the Lisa first, a Mac-like computer doomed to fail mainly due to its exorbitant price (some things never change). Another team worked on a more accessible computer and while Jef Raskin led the Macintosh project initially, Jobs imposed himself and eventually took over.
Levy does a good job in letting the principal characters tell the story through their own words, fleshing out detail when needed, without imposing his authorial voice (though he is an unabashed Mac fan). Oddly, Levy’s tone stands out most when he is simply talking, often in a condescending way, about the technology itself. He is clearly interested more in what the technology can do and not the nerd factor.
The fun here is in seeing how the Macintosh team struggled and (mostly) overcame so many obstacles as they put together the original 128K Mac. Levy does a very good job in dispelling the notion that Apple simply copied what they saw at PARC. The Apple engineers actually expanded the PARC research in significant ways and put all the technology into a device that could be used by anyone. The Macintosh was not the first computer with windows, a mouse and a graphical interface, but it was the first available to the masses and the first to do many things we take for granted now.
It’s especially illuminating now, some 36 years after the debut of the Macintosh, to see how it all came together and how the original device really shaped the personal computer industry–and still does, as witnessed by the introduction of Apple’s in-house M1 chips that will power all Macs going forward.
One minor complaint about the book–it is filled with numerous grammatical glitches, possibly due to a bad scan (it effectively predates the e-book era). There’s also some sloppy, if amusing typos, such as a note on how “Hypercard was included for free with every Macintosh starting in 1977” (impressive as the Macintosh did not debut until 1984).
Overall, this is an informative and at times fascinating look back at the birth and clumsy adolescence of the personal computer, and how one, the Macintosh, dared to push forward, thanks to an incredibly dedicated and talented team of designers and engineers. Recommended–and not just for nerds!
In this test I take my Apple dongle (heh heh) and hook up the following things to the Air:
Asus 24″ monitor via HDMI
Logitech M720 Marathon mouse (using USB Type-A wireless receiver)
CTRL mechanical keyboard via USB-C
I’ve done similar with the MacBook Po in the past and the good news is everything simply works as expected. The default mouse tracking speed is set in a way that I am convinced it is meant to test your patience as it very slowly and carefully tracks across the screen. But that is easily adjusted.
The monitor works fine and looks good once True Tone is turned off. Every time I connect an Apple laptop to this thing it makes me want a 4K monitor. Someday.
The keyboard just works, as expected.
So until my dock arrives, I can use this jury-rigged system to use the Air for writing and such activities. And I will.
Starting tomorrow. Or maybe the next day. Definitely by the weekend.
I’m not kidding. Just watch.
Also, I have added a few more apps:
Discord. Intel-only but runs fine. It’s mainly a chat program, so it doesn’t have to do a lot (I don’t plan on streaming games from the MacBook Air, though that could prove modestly amusing)
Day One. Maybe I’ll finally commit to this journaling thing and record my darkest thoughts for all the world to never see but wonder about. Until I re-post everything to this blog.
This is not a full review, as I’ve only had my 2020 M1-based MacBook Air for a day, but I can give a few impressions.
First, yes, I got a replacement for my 2016 MacBook Pro just a few weeks shy of its four-year free keyboard replacement offer ending.
After mulling over the differences between the equivalent MacBook Pro replacement and the Air, I opted to go with the Air because:
The Air costs a fair bit less, allowing me to increase the ram and storage without spending more
They have the exact same M1 chip, so general performance is pretty much identical
The Air only loses out on sustained performance, something my use case would rarely if ever hit
As a bonus to the above, the Air has no fan, so is completely silent
The Touch Bar still seems like a goofy, unnecessary idea
The extra battery life of the Pro is nice, but the Air is already way better than what I had before, so the improvement in the Pro is not worth the price premium
Setting up the Air was pretty straightforward. I have made a new rule this time, which I plan to strictly enforce (until I stop):
Only install programs I am actually using, not ones I might use or may eventually need to install. Slim (installs) is in. So far I have installed:
Firefox
Edge (to have a Chromium-flavored browser handy)
Ulysses
OneDrive
And that’s it!
For Firefox, I started with the current non-native version, but it was just janky enough to drive me to use the 84.0a beta, which is M1 native. The two issues I encountered were crashes on quitting and searches not working. Annoying and I could have probably managed, but the beta has been stable and runs fast.
Ulysses is M1 native. Edge and OneDrive are running under Rosetta 2 translation, but they both seem fine. So software-wise, I haven’t had any major issues, or nothing that couldn’t be fixed fairly easily.
I set up Touch ID and it is fast. FAST. Pretty much instant. But having the system unlock with the Apple Watch is even better.
The system wakes up almost instantly, too.
Battery life so far seems very good, though I haven’t really used the Air enough to give it a proper workout.
I selected Silent Clicking for the trackpad, but can still hear it click. Maybe I need to reboot? Maybe silent means kind of silent.
Oh, and the keyboard. This feels much closer to the keyboard on my old 2013 MacBook Air. It is still clicky (and clicks notably with my caveman typing style), but the clicks are much softer, because there is actual travel now. It no longer feels like pounding your fingertips into hard, unyielding plastic. It’s what the 2016 keyboard should have been. Better late than never, I suppose.
I’ve ordered a dock for the Air and in a few days will ship off my Mac mini for trade-in, so the Air will be doubling both as my laptop (for the future days when people can take laptops outside their homes again) and as a desktop machine, where simply plugging one cable from the dock to a Thunderbolt port should be all I need to get it working with an external monitor, keyboard, mouse and all that stuff.
So far it seems pretty good. We’ll see how it holds up over the long term. My MacBook Pro still works, but I can’t say I ever enjoyed typing on it. Considering it was my primary writing tool for a few years, that was a bit of a problem. Hopefully the Air will be a better overall experience.
Something funny happened last Saturday. Well, it technically started before that, so let me back up even further.
We journey way back to the days of 2014, when U.S. presidents weren’t sociopaths and pandemics hadn’t been around for almost a hundred years. It was a simpler time.
In December, I upgraded my 16 GB iPhone 5C to a 64 GB iPhone 6. The new phone was bigger (but not too big), faster and all that good stuff.
We move forward three years to 2017. The U.S. president is now a sociopath, but there’s still no pandemic, so not totally awful. My iPhone 6 is starting to sputter a bit, performance-wise, though the battery is still fine for my modest needs. I decided to upgrade to an iPhone 8. Other than a faster processor and support for wireless charging, it is functionally the same phone.
We move forward again to May 2018 when I get a kidney infection. This is not nearly as fun as getting a new phone. I lose over five pounds. I am forced to walk much slower than normal, because my innards hurt if I walk faster (my usual pace). This leads to a little bit of serendipity.
As I stroll the neighbourhood, I begin to notice more and more details–flower beds, fruit-bearing trees and so on. I take out my phone and start taking pictures.
I take a lot of pictures.
In 2017, I took 510 photos. In 2018 that jumps to 1,149, and it stays that high (or higher) after.
We now catch up to the fall of 2020. My iPhone 8 is about the same age as my iPhone 6 was when it got replaced. Unlike the 6, the 8 still performs well, thanks to Apple’s CPU improvements. The battery, though, has suffered terribly. Is it due to taking so many more pictures? Hijinks related to wireless charging? Just generally a lot more use? I don’t know.
What I do know is that now, in November 2020, the battery on the phone is so bad I can’t go out for more than an hour without needing a power bank to revive it. So I made the sensible decision to replace it and conveniently, Apple has an entire line of new phones for me to choose from (I loves me Apple Watch too much to consider Android at this time).
At this point, you may be wondering, what does any of this have to do with getting a camera? I will explain.
Last Saturday Nic and I went to the Reifel Bird Sanctuary. Knowing my phone was likely to poop out, I did two things:
I brought along an Anker power bank that could fully charge the phone up to six times
I dug out my 12-year-old Canon Powershot point-and-shoot camera and charged it up to bring along, just in case
My initial plan was to use the camera as a backup in case the phone died. The phone did, in fact, die. I found I could tether it to the power bank and still take pictures, though (sort of like having a portable generator for it), so what I ended up doing was taking a lot of pictures with the phone, then the same shots with the camera to see how they’d compared. What I found was:
The camera still takes pretty good photos!
The 3x optical zoom allowed me to get shots that were impossible with the iPhone
Some of the photos from the camera were actually superior to those from the phone (some were not)
All of these–but especially the optical zoom–instilled in me a sudden yearning I did not have before. I wanted a standalone camera again. Surely this is madness, I thought. Do I really need a dedicated camera for most of the pictures I take? No. Would it allow me to take pictures I currently can’t? Yes! Would the pictures in general be better than what I’d get with a phone, even a fancy new iPhone 12? Yes again.
So now I want a camera, and I am starting to research models. My main criteria:
Must offer specs that put it above a smartphone, otherwise what’s the point?
Spec 1: High pixel count (iPhone cameras are 12 megapixel)
Spec 2: Good optical zoom. I’m thinking at least 8x but more is better
Spec 3: Must be capable of good night/low light shots
Spec 3: Must cost no more than around $1,000 because I’m not going full prosumer crazy here
I am starting by looking at point-and-shoot cameras that generally come with a single lens but still offer good quality, then seeing what else may be out there.
Oh, and I’m still getting a new phone, but now I may not need the best camera since a good camera will likely suffice. Look for a rambling long post about the new iPhones soon™.
