One of my favorite people in the Apple Community is Sal Soghoian, formerly with Apple and now a free-agent automation sensei. One thing a lot of folks don’t know about Sal is that he is a Berklee trained guitarist and ridiculously talented.
Sal has a YouTube channel, Playing the Coda, where he shares some of his music. The trick here is that in nearly all of these tracks he is simultaneously playing the melody and the bass line. At once. On one Guitar. Watch closely. Here’s is George’s Blues.
The Opal C1 Webcam is meant to be the webcam everybody actually wants to use. It\’s got tons of software features and a better lens system than anything you\’d find in most (all?) other webcams. It\’s time for me to kick the tires…
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We recently had a MacSparky Labs Jam Session about careers. There was a lot of good advice shared, along with some common threads amongst many of the Labs members.
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Join Mike and me on this episode of Focused where we discuss the role of friction and where we choose to add it into our own focused workflows.
This episode of Focused is sponsored by:
There are new Apple Betas. Hooray!? Let’s discuss.… This is a post for the MacSparky Labs Pathfinder members. Care to join? If you’re already a member, you can log in here.
We’ve been hearing for a few weeks now that Apple is considering using a third party LLM for Siri, particularly Claude. I understand this is not usually the Apple way of solving a problem like this, but at least for the short term, it seems the right move.
I have no doubt that Apple will eventually have its own perfectly acceptable model to drive Siri, but at this point we just need Siri to work flawlessly. And if using someone else’s model for a year or two is how we get that, than I say get out the checkbook.
On this Mac Power Users feedback episode, Stephen and I answer listener questions about Apple’s current betas, revisit networking, dictation, email, going paperless, and more. This one really hits all the classic MPU topics.
This episode of Mac Power Users is sponsored by:
There’s a new browser war heating up, and it’s all about artificial intelligence. Google—assuming they’re allowed to keep Chrome—is quickly turning it into an artificial intelligence-based browser experience. They’re not alone, though.
Firefox is adding experimental AI-powered link previews. Safari already has some basic artificial intelligence features. (And hopefully, we’ll learn that there are many more next week.) The Browser Company is discontinuing the ARC browser in favor of its new, unreleased browser, Dia, which will also rely heavily on artificial intelligence features.
It doesn’t surprise me that artificial intelligence will upend not only traditional search but also traditional browsing. I don’t think anyone is clear yet what that means.
But we can expect a lot of interesting experiments to show up in browsers over the next few years as it shakes out. If you’ve been using the same browser for a long time, this may be the time to get curious about some new competitors. In this case, I’m taking my own medicine, as I’ve been running ARC, until its recent cancellation announcement, and Brave, which is my favorite chromium-based browser. I think I’m going to even have to spend some time with Chrome. Interesting times.
With this year’s betas, Apple has enabled ChatGPT within Image Playground. This dramatically increases its value to users. In this video, I demonstrate how this works.… This is a post for the MacSparky Labs Pathfinder and Insider members. Care to join? If you’re already a member, you can log in here.
Recently, we had a family celebration. The reason is irrelevant, but the means of our celebration was our usual. We went to Disneyland. We’re fortunate to live close, and two of the four members of my immediate family work for Mickey.
So, we went to “the park,” where we shared a meal at a restaurant, rode the Pirates of the Caribbean, shared a delicious cookie, and stretched our legs by walking through the park before heading home. It was delightful.
While eating our meal, there was another family of four at the table next to ours. Mom, Dad, and two girls, just like us. Although the girls in this case were both under 10, and mom and dad were a bit younger than Daisy and I.
The thing is, I couldn’t keep my eyes off them. As soon as they got seated, both girls got on iPads, and both mom and dad got on their individual smartphones. For the entirety of their meal, they were all eyes on screens. After a while, I shared the observation with my family, and we made a little game of watching and waiting to see if any of them would talk to each other throughout the meal. The answer was, for all intents and purposes, that they didn’t.
Because I visit Disneyland often, I witness this remarkable yet unremarkable phenomenon frequently—kids in strollers with iPads, parents and couples in lines with iPhones. You’d think that after the expense and hassle of going to a place like Disneyland, you’d want to experience it a little, but remarkably, many people don’t.
I’ve been taking my girls to Disneyland their entire lives. Over the years, chatting with my girls while strolling, eating, and waiting in line turned into some of the most memorable conversations of my life. Why would you surrender that for an App?
We often talk about how people can’t put their phones down while in line at the market, but what about during moments of joy? When taking in a theme park with your family, at the beach, or on vacation? Those moments are found solely in your immersion in the now.
Pay attention the next time you are at a place like Disneyland. Notice how many people are remarkably, yet unremarkably, not even there. Don’t let that be you.