Tech – Page 20 – Life on the Wicked Stage: Act 3

A Possible Answer To Those Apple Migraines

I’ve written about what seemed like random issues with my Apple devices here and here. It looks like these supposedly unexplainable Apple Migraines might not be quite so random. At least of late.

Applemigraines

The issues are maddening. At apparent random times the Macs I use will disconnect from iCloud, losing the ability to Sign in with Apple Watch and jettison the Continuity features including Handoff and Universal Control. At times a reboot would rectify the problem. At other times not. I’ve spoken several times with Apple Support and they have no answer they are willing to reveal.

Recently though I’ve detected a pattern. Apple has released quite a few operating system updates in these last few months. Several of those were what Apple calls Apple Security Responses meant to fix security holes and are smaller updates. We’ve also seen two larger OS updates in recent months. If you follow the news you know roughly when these releases will drop. Regardless of type, the last five releases prompted an iCloud disconnection the morning the updates would be released.

I’d say it’s like clockwork, but that’s a risky statement. Stranger still is that during at least two of these cycles after installing the OS updates I got the alert that a new Mac had been added to my account.

Macaddedtodevice

That notification haven’t appeared for the last three updates. I’d call Apple Support and talk to them about it, but that’s been proving to be a waste of time with this and other issues.

Apple just released what is probably the last major OS updates for Ventura and iOS 16 as well as their other devices. There may be more of those Security Responses before Sonoma and iOS 17 roll out in the fall. I’ll post updates if I see this behavior continue. Is this an answer? Probably not. But it is a clue.

In the meantime, it’s still catch as catch can when it comes to pinning this down conclusively, and as long as Apple Support remains silent on the issue who really knows what’s going on behind the scenes.

Hollywood on Strike: Nothing Artificial About This Intelligent Move

Balls and Strikes.

SAG-AFTRA joined the WGA by going on strike against the Hollywood studios. This sounds and feels like it’s going to be quite a show. The issues surround the pieces of the compensation pie, but also everyone’s favorite new tech-bug-a-boo, Artificial Intelligence.

The studios, like many other industries see AI as a way to reduce costs. Set aside the issue of replacing labor, introducing AI also affects creativity. We’ve been heading here for quite some time and this is certainly a moment when lines need to be drawn because the precedents set down now will have an effect for who knows how long.

Here’s SAG-AFTRA president Fran Drescher’s speech announcing the strike. She says it better than I, or just about anyone could.

And for history and political buffs if history does indeed repeat, Fran Drescher will be elected President of the US down the road. Ronald Reagan was the last president of the guild when it went on a similar strike with other guilds.

Evernote Like Everything Was Never Forever

Evernote. It was one of my mainstay apps for so long. As it was for many. There wasn’t much I didn’t squirrel away in that app. It was always one of the first apps I installed on any new device. And as a Tablet PC guy back in the day its digital inking features were a big draw. Evernote was everywhere. Always there when a new platform dropped. Always a way to make data transportable between platforms. But it hit hard times and its future is more than a bit murky.

Evernote splash

“Never, Ever, Forget” was the slogan that accompanied the elephant logo so prominent on so many devices. What we should all never forget is that nothing lasts forever. After cluttering up the service with more features than anyone could possibly have needed, Evernote hit tough times and lost users by the herd. Charging a steep (for the time) subscription price didn’t help the migratory exit either.

Evernote was bought last year by Italy based Bending Spoons and last week the new owners announced they were closing down US operations, laying off staff and consolidating operations in Europe. Perhaps they’ll manage to keep the eventual extinction away.

Not really a new story. But as familiar as it may be it’s a reminder that any of these services where we store notes, receipts, memories, journals, or data in any form may feel like ours but they’re not. The rent always comes due. The investors always want growth. And the eventual march to the end begins. There are a number of note taking data stores you can migrate your Evernote data to and I recommend doing so if you haven’t already done so. But never, ever forget. Nothing lasts forever.

Meta Meets the Moment with Threads. (For the Moment)

You gotta hand it to that huckster Zuckerberg. He and his Meta team have certainly met the moment with the release of his Twitter killer, Threads. It’s not that the app is all that great in this version 1. (More on that later.) But Zuck pushed this thing out with such gusto and killer timing that he was able to eaisly take advantage of Elon Musk’s baffling and ballooning buffoonery. When billionaires go for each other’s throats apparently they use guillotines.

Sure, these social media wars aren’t over yet. Far from it. But these wounds are deep. The number of signups on Threads keeps rising so fast I won’t even hazard a guess at how many millions there have been for fear of the number being old news before I finish writing this. And on it goes.

And on it will go. I don’t think we’ve ever seen such an underpantsing as Zuck put on Musk. He’s taking advantage of someone who has made himself such a detestable target, that Zuckerberg, not all that well liked himself, is momentarily being thought of as the conqueror Elon and his detestables dreamed of being. It’s deliciously funny. But it is also frightening when you take a moment and think about it.

Again, there’s no guarantee Threads will carry this moment’s momentum into something resembling what Twitter was before Musk took MAGA torches to it. And while in this really crazy, and what seems historic, rush there seems to be an appetite for this kind of “everybody into the pool” replacement. That’s guaranteed to fade once ads, bots, spammers, etc… inevitably get their chance to piss in the pool. That’s gonna happen.

The Threads team also needs to move quickly to address some serious missing pieces for a social media app in this day and age. There’s nothing that speaks to accessibility in the app yet. There’s no web access from a browser forcing everyone to use it on their phones. Hashtags aren’t there yet. Forget searching. Or sending direct messages. These are table stakes in the social media game. Lots of iPad users are complaining that there isn’t an iPad app. Don’t hold your breath on that one. This thing is connected to your social network via Instagram and there’s still no appetite for an iPad app from Instagram yet in what seems like another front in the Billionaires Battles, this one between Meta and Apple.

Just about everyone is screaming to only have their feed show only folks they are following. Same here. But, folks, let’s get real. These companies need to push all sorts of stuff into your eyeballs in order to make bigger bank. We lived through this with Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and the rest. We will probably see some soft of attempt at appeasement here, but it’s not going to last. Don’t kid yourself.

There’s also talk of Meta doing the federated thing with Threads. That’s got pros and cons and lots of consternation stirred up among those who see the beneift of protocols like Activity Pub in the Fediverse. (If you have no idea what that means, don’t worry. Most don’t.) I have my doubts things will go this way. But if it does, there’s going to all sorts of noise made on places like Mastodon and beyond.

So this story has offered a slam bang opening number and for a variety of reasons appears to be sucking many in to see what’s next while it sucks ever more life out of Elon’s Twitter. There’s more to come and more to know when it does. About the only thing we know in this moment is things are changing. But they always are. Score this moment for Meta. Enjoy the ride while we watch it play out.

Oh, and you can find me on Threads at https://www.threads.net/@warnercrocker

The Missing Link in the Artificial Intelligence Story

I’ve written and linked to a bit about Artificial Intelligence. I see the upsides and the downsides. The mislabeling (marketing.) The gold rush. The warnings. And I’m starting to see a bit of tarnish on this shiny new object of desire. It’s fascinating.

What’s starting to puzzle me in this ongoing discussion is what we’re not seeing.

But first a few themes.

One of the biggest stories is how AI is going to give us more freedom to enjoy our lives and be more creative by assuming many of the mundane drudgery of our lives. What immediately follows that is how many jobs we’re going to lose and stories of “too eager for the quarterly results” CEOs cutting jobs.

The next recurring story is how this will affect creativity by replacing artists, stealing from artists, and generally reducing creativity to bits and bytes created by bits and bytes.

And then there’s our continued march away from knowledge and facts to one where we don’t know what’s real and what isn’t. Especially once the supposed AI bots and Large Language Models start feeding on themselves instead of just on the stuff we make up.

Those three themes seem to predominate the conversation. But back to what I’m not seeing.

Why aren’t we seeing the tech bros advocating ways to use AI to help us get rid of the some of the scourges of the Internet and our lives?

A few examples:

A tool to indentify and remove spam from email, texts, phone calls, etc…
A tool to indentify scams and scammers.
A quick label on any web page that tells us how many trackers there are and where they are from.
A tool that always puts the “Continue Watching” queue at the top of the home page of streaming apps.
A tool that kills ads for products we just purchased.
A tool that actually lets users unsubscribe from content.
A tool that points to which company sold our data to the new content in our in-boxes.
A label that justs says “Bullshit” on content that is bullshit.
A tool that tells us when our ISP is throttling bandwidth.
A tool that always links back to the original source for regurgitated content.
A tool that identifies and labels bots.
A tool that tracks and reports the origin of evil doers on the web.
A tool that actually deciphers error messages, tells us the real problem, and connects us to useful solutions that don’t require wading through scores of bogus and out of date webpages and videos.
A tool that actually lets us vote advertisments up or down and lets us say I never want to see this ad again.

And of course:

A quick label that says this content was created by artificial means.

I’m sure there are others.

Of course this kind of “intelligence” would devastate so many business models that the global economy would probably collapse. But then perhaps there could be an AI tool that tells calls bullshit on the stuff economists and politicians tell us about that as well.

Sunday Morning Reading

Some Sunday Morning Reading for Father’s Day. There’s no real theme to this week’s edition. Which is fitting. We used to joke that my Dad had a new hobby every six months. He did. But that just demonstrated his endless curiosity about the world around us. I think I got some of that tossed into my mix. So here’s a pot-pourri of topics to share.

Humans aren’t mentailly ready for a lot of things. So called Artificial Intelligence is certainly one of them. Thor Benson tells us why that might be the case.

Nicholas Casey tells a great spy story in The Spy Who Called Me.

Barbara Kinsolver is a great writer. Her latest book Demon Copperfield brings a dive into Dickens for a tale from Appalachia. Lisa Allardice has written a terrific profile on Kingsolver.

Pennsylvania apparently is one of the key stomping grounds for the Christian Right’s desire to spin us back to the dark ages. Frederick Clarkson gives us an excllent look into this.

Why Is Everyone Watching TV With the Subtitles On? Devin Gordon offers up some answers. Mine’s simple: Selfish stupid filmmaking.

What came first the chicken or the egg? Well that age-old riddle leaves the rest of the egg-laying species out of the question. Intriguing piece by Nisha Zahid.

And while we’re talking about the riddles that plague humans about the non-humans sharing our planet, Ari Daniel highlights an article in Cell that says an Octopuses can tweak the RNA in their brains to adjust to warmer and cooler waters.

This is a scary and sad tale. Gina Dimuro tells us about Blanche Monnier. Her parents locked her in her room for 25 years after she fell in love with the wrong kind of guy.

If you’re interseted in just what the heck Sunday Morning Reading is all about you can read more about the origins of Sunday Morning Reading here.

Apple’s Mixed Reality Reactions

As expected Apple unmasked its new mixed reality headset, now named Apple Vision Pro, at its annual World Wide Devleopers Conference this week. No surprise that the reactions have also been as expected with some giving new meaning to the old cliché about Apple’s reality distortion field and others being quite vocal with their negative reactions, especially as regards to that $3500 price point.

I’ve been following along with some of the bloggers and journalists who got to try the headset on, experience the 30-minute demo and I have complied a series of links to some of the reactions. Keep in mind the responses from those who got strapped in are somewhat akin to folks reacting to a trailer for a new film. Folks are responding to a canned demo, acknowledging that, and the fact that Apple has a lot of work to do before this thing debuts to the public supposedly early in 2024.

I’ll have more to say about it at some point in the future based on my thoughts to these reactions.

Matthew Panzarino in TechCrunch says Yes, Apple Vision Pro Works and Yes, It’s Good.

Jason Snell of Six Colors goes Eyes (and head) on with the Apple Vision Pro.

Joanna Stern in the Wall Street Journal had two reactions after the demo. “Wow. Very Cool” and “Did I just do drugs?”

John Gruber says the price might be an impediment to owning one. But the experience is something you’ll want to set aside some time to try it out.

Krista Jones in Esquire says she knew you could do futuristic FaceTime, but what she found the most interesting -shocking even-was how it made her feel.

Harry McCracken in Fast Company gives us three things he learned and three things he didn’t about the new gizmo.

Jason Hiner on ZDNet says Apple Vision Pro is far ahead of where he expected it to be.

David Pogue on Medium brings up a recurring theme I’m seeing among those writing about these first experiences that say the device felt heavy after using it a bit in the 30 minute demo.

Roman Loyola of MacWorld didn’t want to leave the demo.

And you might want to watch this video review of the experience from MKBHD.

There’s plenty more out there if you’re interested. There will be more digital ink spilled on this between now and the products eventual release than you can imagine. Bottom line themes I see emerging:

1. Amazing technology

2. Expensive

3. Weight is still an issue

4. Apple has lots of work to do before this releases and even more in the years ahead. They’ve staked out a vision and have the bankroll to advance it. It will be interesting to follow.

Sunday Morning Reading

Some complex, challenging, and excellent writing to share with you today covering everything from big picture politics to the small, media meanderings and meltdowns, and some interesting tech analysis heading into Apple’s big mixed reality headset announcement at its WorldWide Developer Conference tomorrow. Hope you find the suggestions fascinating. I do.

Chilling read. Ryan Busse, a former gun executive talks to ProPublica’s Corey G. Johnson about the danger of increasing radicalization in the industry.

The subhead for this piece, “The view from nowhere came from somewhere” should have been the title instead of The Invention of Objectivity. Regardless Darrell Hartman lays out a good read about how “objectivity” came to the New York Times. Subjectively speaking pretending that journalism can be unbiased is not a bias I subscribe to.

David Todd McCarthy walks along The Edge of Defeat in today’s political battles between progressives and establishment loyalists. Note: McCarthy is also setting up a new publication focusing on his political writings and musings called Rome Magazine. Also worth your time while the world burns.

Peter Turchin in The Atlantic adapts some of his book End Times (a good read) into an article called America is Headed Toward Collapse. He argues that history can show us how to muck our way through our present day “discord” as we have done twice before. I’m not sure history is going to be so kind this time around.

Anyone paying attention to the goings on at CNN leading up to and following the recent “town hall” featuring the conman known as the former president will find this behind the scenes feature by Tim Alberta in the Atlantic a fascinating read. The title certainly points to where it’s going: Inside the Meltdown at CNN.

Big pictures are complex. Neil Theise’s book Notes on Complexity: A Scientific Theory of Connection, Concsicousness, and Being tackles some of that complexity. In this article he lays out five key insights from his book.

Smart People are Falling for Stupid Lies by Kathryn Joyce in Vanity Fair is another article that racks the big picture political focus down to the view inside local battles in a specific county. These type of articles are enormously helpful in shedding light on the fact that the problems we face aren’t just top down but also bottom up, and how both feed the frenzy. Here’s another one from February in Politico about Ottawa Country, Michigan.

Om Malik tosses a bit of reality into the hype fire surrounding Apple’s headest to be unveiled tomorrow.

One more piece on Apple’s upcoming headset. David Pierce at the Verge says If Apple Wants Its Headset To Win, It Needs to Reinvent the App .I don’t agree with some of the things David lays out, but his central thesis is spot on.

If you’re interseted in just what the heck Sunday Morning Reading is all about you can read more about the origins of Sunday Morning Reading here.

Apple WWDC Thoughts

Beginning June 5 Apple kicks off its annual World Wide Developers Conference, (WWDC). Apple will introduce new versions of its operating systems for current devices, but all of the excitement is focused on Apple’s AR/VR headset and the operating system that will run the thing. Mixed reality, augmented reality, virtual reality… who knows. I’m sure whatever it will be will somewhat unreal. I’ll certainly be interested to see how Apple tries to make it real, but it’s from a very backseat perspective. I just don’t see myself as being in the market for this kind of device/experience.

Apple WWDC 2023 770x433 jpg

Let’s face it, the next period of time is going to be focused very much on the headset and what it offers. Even though whatever Apple announces is probably going to be a years long effort towards what the product will eventually become. How that interacts with the existing ecosystem will be much more interesting for me.

To be honest, I’m not expecting much from iOS or macOS or any of their siblings. And I’m not sure anyone should. For better or worse these operating systems are quite mature. Sure there will be some new things, but for my money I’d prefer to see Apple keep tidying things up. Refining and striving for consistency are higher priorities for me than whiz bang new features.

I don’t have many big “wishes” for what I’d like to see. But I do have a few minor ones that would make my time in the orchard a bit easier.

Notifications are still problematic. Especially on the Mac. For goodness sake give us a button that allows us to bulk dismiss notifications like we can on iOS.

Last year saw some syncing up of features in Apple Mail between iOS and Mac. Keep it up. Also, make Rules work better and more consistently.

It’s time for a Clipboard Manager in the operating systems.

Bring Automations to Shortcuts on macOS.

Get rid of the consistent inconsistency with iCloud.

Fix Siri. Just do it.

The App Stores make much money for Apple and developers. It’s supposed to be a showplace. Clean it up. It should also run more efficiently than it does.

I’m hoping there will be some clarity and cleaning up of Stage Manager given that it feels very much like a building block for the AR/VR vision.

That’s it. That’s my wish list. Whatever reality we end up in after Monday I hope some of the above gets addressed.