I was getting the feeling lately that I’ve been writing a lot here lately, and I already had an export of all of my blog posts, so I decided to check my word count each year over the last 8 years. As of yesterday, I’d written | Continue reading
Apparently the last week of online discourse around Meta’s new Orion prototype struck a nerve with me because I posted an all-timer in terms of snark recently. This comes after years of two general frustrations with how some people cover and talk about technology online (especial … | Continue reading
Good lord am I seeing a lot people talking about Meta’s new prototype hardware, Orion. Are people losing their minds? Why is this anything of note? Why even comment on this thing at all? It certainly hasn’t caught my attention. No sir, I’m a | Continue reading
NotebookLM is an interesting project from Google that lets you upload a ton of documents about whatever you want, and then "chat" with them. Another thing they just released is the ability to generate a "podcast episode" about the things you've uploaded. The audio | Continue reading
I got Lasik 2 years ago and here’s who it’s going. | Continue reading
Lee Peterson: Sometimes It Takes Just One Random Post to Grow Your Blog This was completely random and it shows that sometimes you don’t need some sort of plan, just write what comes to mind and that you want to share. You’ll get found and readers | Continue reading
Elizabeth Lopatto writing for The Verge: X blocks links to hacked JD Vance dossier X is preventing users from posting links to a newsletter containing a hacked document that’s alleged to be the Trump campaign’s research into vice presidential candidate JD Vance. The journalist wh … | Continue reading
This might be the longest quote ever on Birchtree, but stick with me here. This is Matt Mullenwerg, CEO of Automattic, writing on the official WordPress blog (emphasis his): WordPress is a content management system, and the content is sacred. Every change you make to every page, … | Continue reading
Earlier today I saw a post from someone who has had their iPhone stop charging at 80% for the past year and they didn’t see much, if any difference in battery health than their coworkers who didn’t do anything, and let the iPhone do its “ | Continue reading
I saw a post on Threads recently that is of a general genre of conversation I see on a regular basis. The first post was: Just going on purely laptop tech reviews you would think 90% of the US population were employed as video editors. Which got the reply: You | Continue reading
The above screenshot is from my computer. There are 16 apps that have screen recording permissions, and each one of them not only needs that permission, I intentionally gave them that permission when I installed them. I've been carrying along with my life, happy with how these ap … | Continue reading
I recently posted this on Threads: My regular reminder that anytime someone says “99% of users” is completely making things up and has done precisely zero investigation outside of their own experience. Once you notice this, you start to see it everywhere. People have a very bad h … | Continue reading
Last year I cancelled a bunch of subscriptions to see what was actually worth my money. That went great, so this year I'm doing it again! | Continue reading
There are several things I would like to see improve with the Vision Pro (and VR hardware in general), but it’s recently hit me that the main issue I have with using it is that despite all of the video passthrough and digital eyes on the outside of | Continue reading
There are a billion things in iOS 18 this year, and I highly suggest checking out Federico Viticci’s review over on MacStories tomorrow, but here are a few things that have actually been impactful for me since installing the beta back in June. This is addressing things in | Continue reading
Nicole Sperling for the New York Times: Apple Rethinks Its Movie Strategy After a String of Misses Apple executives in Cupertino were already questioning the entertainment units over the amount of money being spent on movies, and the people said there was a thought within the com … | Continue reading
Long time Birchtree readers know I love data, and love data even more when I can throw it into a graph. I’m also a fan of testing things that everyone generally agrees are true, but no one seems to have any data to back up. That brings us | Continue reading
I was researching for my last article when I stumbled upon this post from John Gruber in 2011 where he responds to a bad article on Time.com about Windows 8. What was interesting to me was this bit about how Excel on an iPad with the ability to open | Continue reading
Apple on their developer site today: Set Up Win-Back Offers If your app offers auto-renewable subscriptions, you have the option to set up win-back offers to encourage lapsed subscribers to re-subscribe on the App Store. You can configure offers in App Store Connect to be display … | Continue reading
There’s a trope online where someone will post pictures of the iOS screen when alarms and timers are going off and they’ll lament, “why are the actions reversed, it’s confusing!” This post will get lots of engagement with people agreeing, but there | Continue reading
I have an evolving theory that buttons are amazing and people love them. There were rumors Apple was going to remove all physical buttons from the iPhone. As recently as April of this year, there was reporting that the iPhone 16 lineup would have no physical buttons! But in 2 | Continue reading
Immediately following the presidential debate last night, Taylor Swift announced her endorsement of Kamala Harris on Instagram: Recently I was made aware that Al of 'me' falsely endorsing Donald Trump's presidential run was posted to his site. It really conjured up my fears aroun … | Continue reading
It’s been said Apple cares about themselves first, then their users, then their developers in that order. In this post, I explore whether I think corporate or individual freedoms should be prioritized. | Continue reading
I’ve been off the internet all day and wanted to share some gut reactions to the updates Apple just announced before being influenced by others. So, in the general order they talked about things, let’s go! Apple Watch Series 10 This looks like a nice update | Continue reading
We're 24 hours away from Apple announcing new iPhones and Watches, and I'd love it if I can resist the unending urge to always keep up with the latest and greatest. | Continue reading
Zack Zwiezen: It's Really Nice That Astro Bot Just Has One Release Date Astro Bot is a really good video game and a great reason to own a PS5. Its colorful visuals, myriad gaming references, and excellent platforming have already made it one of 2024's best | Continue reading
Press release from the US Justice Department: Two RT Employees Indicted for Covertly Funding and Directing U.S. Company That Published Thousands of Videos in Furtherance of Russian Interests “As alleged in today’s indictment, Russian state broadcaster RT and its employees, includ … | Continue reading
David Wallace-Wells in an op-ed for the New York Times: What Will We Do With Our Free Power? In 2023, the world installed 444 gigawatts of new solar photovoltaic capacity, according to Bloomberg. While that figure can be hard for normie brains to process, it represents a staggeri … | Continue reading
PayPal Newsroom: Introducing PayPal Everywhere customers can now add their PayPal Debit Card to Apple Wallet in just a few steps and use it with Apple Pay, enabling even more ways to pay. PayPal is a pioneer in digital wallets, they’re one of the biggest wallets in the | Continue reading
Reeder is out today and Devon Dundee has a great overview over on MacStories. I wanted to call out a few things because as a Reeder 5 (now Reeder Classic) fanatic, I have thoughts. With a product as successful and engrained as Reeder, it would be easy for the app& | Continue reading
I bought one of Apple’s FineWoven cases when they came out last year because I thought they had to be pretty good. Apple had a great track record with making what I thought were the best phone cases on the market and I was convinced that they wouldn& | Continue reading
Something people always say is that phone reviewers couldn’t possibly review a new device after just a few days. I’d contend that a good reviewer can do this because they’ve built up experience to know what to look for in established product categories like | Continue reading
In which I explore the difference between "thought leaders" on social media telling users why they're wrong, and UX designers who would get fired if they treated their users this way. Talking about the work vs doing the work... | Continue reading
Andy Bell: Just Use Fucking Paper, Man I’ve given up this week and gone back to paper and a pencil and I feel unbelievably organised and flexible, day-to-day. It’s because it’s simple. There’s nothing fancy. No fancy pen or anything like that | Continue reading
David Imel explaining the fediverse on the latest Waveform video: Just like the United States is a federation, right? Like this group of states with independent laws, but also this higher order of laws under the Constitution that could freely move and trade with each other. A fed … | Continue reading
Oliver Darcy on his new, excellent Status newsletter: Zucker-Bucks Under Pressure Notably, Zuckerberg's GOP-friendly behavior comes after Trump publicly threatened to target him, should he find his way back into the Oval Office. In early July, Trump warned on Truth Social that if … | Continue reading
There’s a common refrain in online discussions about software that “most people don’t use or need that, it’s just a niche that doesn’t matter.” As someone who works in user experience every day, I’m constantly surprised by the | Continue reading
Allison Johnson writing for The Verge: European iPhones are more fun now Whining about stuff is a treasured American pastime, so allow me to indulge: the iPhone is more fun in Europe now, and it’s not fair. And Federico Viticci linking to the above piece: The DMA Version | Continue reading
Allison Johnson for The Verge: Google’s AI tool helped us add disasters and corpses to our photos In our week of testing, we added car wrecks, smoking bombs in public places, sheets that appear to cover bloody corpses, and drug paraphernalia to images. That seems bad. As a | Continue reading
Yesterday, Netflix announced that Monument Valley 3, the next game in a what has been an iconic game series on iOS. The game is coming December 10 and will be exclusive to Netflix subscribers and available on iOS and Android. Monument Valley 1 and 2 will also be coming to | Continue reading
I’m watching more cartoons this year than maybe ever before. Today we explore some of the reasons I think that might be. | Continue reading
Steven Knight from SellCell: iPhone 16 Pre-Launch Survey: 62% of iPhone Users to Upgrade to iPhone 16 The second rumored feature the 2000 iPhone users want to see with the 16-series is the thermal control to avoid overheating, with 26.8% of those surveyed stating that this will p … | Continue reading
Myke Hurley talking about Apple opening the NFC chip to other payment apps on the iPhone during today’s episode of Upgrade: I will be intrigued to see what actually this looks like when it launches. And I desperately hope it does not mean we're going to | Continue reading
Today I'm attempting the impossible: 71 movie tiers handed out in half an hour. Can it be done?! Well, I did it already, so yes, but it was a lot of fun along the way. | Continue reading
Marc Palmer: Launch Day! Shareshot 1.0 Is Live in the App Store 🎉 Today we launched Shareshot! We’ve been working on this app for almost exactly a year, and we’re so pleased to be able to finally ship it. Here’s a little backstory | Continue reading
Casey Newton on Platformer: X Is Just a Political Project Now The Trump years were characterized by constant (and almost totally baseless) criticism on the part of Republicans that platforms had abandoned their political neutrality to promote Democrats. During those years, had Ma … | Continue reading
My “quirk” on this blog years ago was the fact that I, an Apple fan, would try using Android and Windows devices for extended periods and share my thoughts on those products. Whenever I tried to go all-in on one of these other companies’ products, I’ | Continue reading
Apple today: Developers can soon offer in‑app NFC transactions using the Secure Element Starting with iOS 18.1, developers will be able to offer NFC contactless transactions using the Secure Element from within their own apps on iPhone, separate from Apple Pay and Apple Wallet. S … | Continue reading