Getting in my own way

It felt really good to post 2 videos this week on A Better Computer. The first was a planned video about Up Ahead, an app I love, and the second was a surprise one about BBEdit since they added an interesting new feature. I'm proud of both videos, | Continue reading


@birchtree.me | 10 months ago

I don’t have strong opinions about a product I haven’t used

Joe Rossignol for MacRumors: iPhone Was Missing These 10 Essential Features When Unveiled in 2007Today marks the 17th anniversary of the late Steve Jobs unveiling the original iPhone at the Macworld Expo in San Francisco. While the device was significantly more advanced than any … | Continue reading


@birchtree.me | 10 months ago

Who’s ready for Walmart to decide what food you buy?

David Pierce for The Verge: Walmart’s AI Search Makes Shopping Faster, and Its AI Delivery Makes It InvisibleThe future of grocery shopping is no grocery shopping at all. It’s your fridge just being full, always, automatically.A couple things on this one…Firs … | Continue reading


@birchtree.me | 10 months ago

Substack wants to have its cake and eat it too

Casey Newton: Substack Says It Will Remove Nazi Publications From the Platformover the past couple years Substack has come to more closely resemble the social networks it often criticizes. Each week, Substack sends users a personalized, algorithmically ranked digest of posts from … | Continue reading


@birchtree.me | 10 months ago

How we can maybe explain the rumored upcoming very expensive iPads

Tim Hardwick: OLED iPad Pro Prices to Start From $1,500, Rising to as Much as $2,000Apple's upcoming OLED iPad Pro will start at $1,500, rising to between $1,800 and $2,000 depending on size and configuration, representing a major increase in prices compared | Continue reading


@birchtree.me | 10 months ago

The (likely) demise of Quick BIN Lookup

Back in 2016 I was working in a support role at a payments company and found myself regularly using a BIN lookup tool to get basic information about card issuers. Basic stuff like what country the issuing bank was from or if the card was credit or debit…nothing | Continue reading


@birchtree.me | 10 months ago

When am I going to retire Birchtree?

Here’s an uncomfortable question: when do I stop blogging?I’ve been doing this site since October 2010, which is over 1/3 of my life, and I don’t foresee anything that would make me stop anytime soon, but like…I have to stop | Continue reading


@birchtree.me | 10 months ago

2023 didn’t just break the iPad’s streak (“wah!”)

Zack Zwiezen: 2023 Was the First Waluigi-Less Year Since 2000As seen on the extensive fan wiki, Waluigi has appeared as a playable character or cameo in at least one Nintendo game every year since 2000. Like Old Faithful, Waluigi was predictably there every year, even if other ch … | Continue reading


@birchtree.me | 10 months ago

A splash of color

Chris Nicholas: A new blog for 2024It’s been a long time since I’ve published a blog post, two whole years. Part of the reason is that it took too much effort to create posts for my previous blog. I needed better DX. A few nights | Continue reading


@birchtree.me | 10 months ago

Nintendo is Nintendo

Keza MacDonald: Nintendo’s Design Guru Shigeru Miyamoto: ‘I Wanted to Make Something Weird’Miyamoto is often called the Spielberg of games and Nintendo dubbed gaming’s Pixar, but he doesn’t like those comparisons. “Miyamoto is Miyamoto an … | Continue reading


@birchtree.me | 10 months ago

Reasons to be optimistic

Nick Heer: How to Be Optimistic About Technology NowWhen I was much younger, I assumed people who were optimistic must have misplaced confidence. How anyone could see a future so bright was a complete mystery when, I reasoned, when what we are exposed to is a series of mistakes | Continue reading


@birchtree.me | 10 months ago

Apple 2023 report cards: Vision Pro ️

Surprise! This is the 5th in a series of posts reviewing Apple’s 2023 across their major product lines, and laying out my hopes for 2024. Check out the other posts about the iPhone, iPad, Mac, and Apple Watch.This is a weird one since the product isn’ | Continue reading


@birchtree.me | 10 months ago

Apple 2023 report cards: Apple Watch ⌚️

This is part 4 in a series I’m doing to close out the year, looking at each of Apple’s big product lines and assessing how they did in 2023 and what I hope to see in 2024. Here’s my previous posts on the iPhone | Continue reading


@birchtree.me | 11 months ago

Apple 2023 report cards: The Mac

This is the third in a series of posts I’ll be doing through the end of the year looking at where each of Apple’s major product lines are at going into the new year. Here’s previous pieces on the iPhone and iPad.How the | Continue reading


@birchtree.me | 11 months ago

Quick Reviews gets its annual update

A couple years ago I made a website for myself, Quick Reviews, and I've used it hundreds of times to create nice reviews for social media. Today I've made a few changes to the site, as I like to do every year or so. It' | Continue reading


@birchtree.me | 11 months ago

Apple 2023 report cards: iPad

This is the second in a series of posts reviewing Apple’s major product lines in 2023. Here’s my look at the iPhone.How the year startedApple updated 4 of their 5 iPad models in 2022 (everything but the iPad Mini) and added a new model | Continue reading


@birchtree.me | 11 months ago

The future of LLMs is local

I saw this post over on json.blog, OpenAI Is Just Uber, which sounds like it makes sense, but I think is drawing the wrong conclusions on a couple fronts.A decade later, ride-sharing hasn’t evolved significantly since its launch. Costs have risen as consumers now pay the | Continue reading


@birchtree.me | 11 months ago

Apple 2023 report cards: iPhone

This is the first in a 4-part series of posts I’m writing to close out the year where I can get my thoughts out about Apple’s biggest product lines. I won’t be giving a score, but I will share my thoughts on the state | Continue reading


@birchtree.me | 11 months ago

Walking away and feeling great about it

Ben Werdmuller: Leaving the Nazi BarIf I find that the owner of the living room allows people who make me or my friends feel unsafe — or, as is true in this case, pays them to hang out there, and makes money from their presence — I can use | Continue reading


@birchtree.me | 11 months ago

Are movies actually getting longer?

Are movies getting longer than they used to be? It’s something I think a lot of us feel is true, but is it? I wanted to get a feel for this, so I collected some data, looked at the trends, and made some proposals based on that info. | Continue reading


@birchtree.me | 11 months ago

2023 was a big year for the fediverse. 2024 could be even bigger

David Pierce for The Verge, 2023 in Social Media: The Case for the FediverseIt doesn’t make sense that we have a dozen usernames, a dozen profiles, a dozen sets of fans and friends. All that stuff should belong to me, and I should be able to access | Continue reading


@birchtree.me | 11 months ago

Let the internet run out

Sometimes I read the last post in my Mastodon feed, and pull to refresh, and there’s nothing new to see. Other times I’ll read everything in my RSS feeds, so there’s nothing in my queue.Then there are places like Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Threads, | Continue reading


@birchtree.me | 1 year ago

Tech I ❤️

I feel like blogging can be inherently negative sometimes, as it’s simply more fun to write about the things that annoy you than the things you like, so today I’m just going to list a few software and gadgets that I adore right now.Things continues | Continue reading


@birchtree.me | 1 year ago

Apple’s boring iPhones will soon not be worth a damn

Philip Berne: Apple Needs a Foldable iPhone Soon or iPhones Won't Be Worth BuyingApple, I’ve got good news. The iPhone is refined enough. It is refined well beyond what other manufacturers even care to accomplish. Other phone makers could build a phone that pays just as much atte … | Continue reading


@birchtree.me | 1 year ago

Dear Miss Lonelyhearts (365 Albums)

Listen hereThis is an entry in the 365 Albums Project in which I plan on posting one album I enjoy every day for a full year. You can subscribe to the Apple Music playlist to hear one song from every album mentioned in this series. | Continue reading


@birchtree.me | 1 year ago

The Con (365 Albums)

Listen hereThis is an entry in the 365 Albums Project in which I plan on posting one album I enjoy every day for a full year. You can subscribe to the Apple Music playlist to hear one song from every album mentioned in this series. | Continue reading


@birchtree.me | 1 year ago

Born to Run (365 Albums)

Listen hereThis is an entry in the 365 Albums Project in which I plan on posting one album I enjoy every day for a full year. You can subscribe to the Apple Music playlist to hear one song from every album mentioned in this series. | Continue reading


@birchtree.me | 1 year ago

Of Course He Would, but It’s Still Insane

Eric Tucker: Trump Allies Cite Clinton Email Probe to Attack Classified Records Case. There Are Big DifferencesBeyond just the hoarding of documents — in locations including a bathroom, ballroom, shower and his bedroom — the Justice Department says Trump showed highly sensitive m … | Continue reading


@birchtree.me | 1 year ago

I Truly Cherish All Those “Rich Advertising Experiences”

Emma Roth: This free TV comes with two screensWhile ads shouldn’t interrupt whatever you’re watching on the main display, Telly’s chief strategy officer, Dallas Lawrence, tells The Verge that ads might utilize both displays when you’re not using the TV. “When the Theatre display … | Continue reading


@birchtree.me | 1 year ago

Post Tropical (365 Albums)

Listen hereThis is an entry in the 365 Albums Project in which I plan on posting one album I enjoy every day for a full year. You can subscribe to the Apple Music playlist to hear one song from every album mentioned in this series. | Continue reading


@birchtree.me | 1 year ago

Flying toasters

Hello and welcome to another Friday! This week we’ve got flying toasters, which I always see as a good start to the day. As always, you can subscribe to get this in your inbox every Friday morning. The Big LinkAfter Dark in CSS Younger readers may not be familiar, | Continue reading


@birchtree.me | 3 years ago

A guy walks into an Apple Store

"Hello, I'd like to buy one of the new iPhones, please!" "Sure thing, here's the new iPhone 12. It's fast, beautiful, and is generally awesome." "Sweet, I'll take it. This box is really small." "Yup, that's because Apple is making the environmental move to reduce waste and not gi … | Continue reading


@birchtree.me | 4 years ago

What matters in a phone?

The new iPhone SE officially comes out today, and I have had strange feelings about this phone since it was announced last week. That strange feeling? “Why the hell isn’t this my phone?” See, I’m currently using an iPhone 11 Pro, and have been spending $700-1,200 on | Continue reading


@birchtree.me | 4 years ago

Undiscoverable UI Madness

We have a couple Mac users in the office so I went around and asked them how to do some things on macOS, which as we all know, is much better than iPadOS at making important, useful UI elements easily discoverable. I talked to 3 people who have been using | Continue reading


@birchtree.me | 4 years ago

Matt Birchler's watchOS 7 concept ↦

My ambitious, but largely practical concept for what I’d like to see from the next generation of watchOS. | Continue reading


@birchtree.me | 4 years ago

iOS Is the Best Platform for Google Apps

I saw that story go by today and I got me thinking again: if you want the best Google software, iOS is really the place to be. That sounds crazy, and maybe for some people it is, but as someone who… | Continue reading


@birchtree.me | 6 years ago