“(MacOS) Catalina Crisis – On my Om”
Don’t upgrade to Catalina until it’s seen at least one bug fix release.
The file metaphor is fading into the background
“Computer Files Are Going Extinct - Technology services are changing our internet habits”
Don’t mistake the increased attention and features that the Files app has been getting in iOS as a reversal of this trend. Files are now generally either a part of legacy workflows or have been pushed into the background as an implementation and exchange metaphor. Which means that a lot of people aren’t going to learn properly about files until they get a job at a company still built around files or until they get into a field that’s still using it as an implementation metaphor (like coding). And even then, it might be easier to just skip teaching people about files and go straight into teaching them about modules or packages as a subset of how files work.
‘Steve Blank Why Companies and Government Do “Innovation Theater” Instead of Actual Innovation’
Agree 100% with this.
It may be autumn but these birds were still around, though.
I think I may have found my desktop wallpaper image for the season. Leaves, leaves, leaves.
Montréal was quite picturesque yesterday with a few nice ‘autumn-y’ moments.
Google tries to pull a fast one on an ad blocker, before back-tracking after complaints
As an organisation Google continues to pull stunts on partners and other vendors that undermine the fabric of the web (excessive ads and tracking scripts are the single biggest threat to web UX there is) all the while blaming literally everybody else for the decline of the web.
‘uBlock Origin: Dev build 1.22.5rc1 “REJECTED” from Chrome Web Store’
Also, note the typical tactic of first blocking or pulling something then backtracking and calling it a mistake once they’re called on it. This is an intentional* strategy designed to create uncertainty among businesses that threaten their core advertising model.
* “Intentional” does not mean explicitly planned. It could be a planned strategy but more likely it’s achieved through both direct and indirect incentives ─ certain behaviours are more likely to further your career at Google ─ and selective under- or over-funding of parts of your organisation, which means that upper management can achieve their intended strategic goal with a high degree of plausible deniability and without having to micromanage or ‘herd cats’ (so to speak).
This tactic has the additional benefit of letting you hire and keep employees who are genuinely idealistic and whose ideals are in diametric opposition to the organisation’s overall goals. They think they are reforming and fixing a flawed, possibly misguided organisation while they are actually enabling a company whose intent and purpose directly contravenes their ideals.
This reminds me of the content as infrastructure blog series I linked to yesterday.
“Michael Tsai - Blog - Mail Data Loss in macOS 10.15”
Hold off on upgrading
“Canadian cellular plans are among the highest in the world by an obscene margin”
The situation is so bad here that I’ve opted entirely out of using mobile data.
It’s bad.
Modern Operating systems
- macOS: We break everything for a few weeks once a year. Just take your summer holiday in the autumn! You have a summer holiday, right?
- Desktop Linux: These 10 things are awesome and you can configure them to be exactly the way you like. These 100 things are always broken and will never be fixed. That’s the deal, take it or leave it.
- ChromeOS: we break one thing every six weeks. You better hope it isn’t something you rely on.
- Android: That walk you took yesterday took you past these six businesses. Here are their ads. Also, good luck finding apps that aren’t malware or spam.
- iOS: Use the great camera on your iPhone. Enjoy it for those few fleeting moments before Photos loses your picture to the iCloud black hole.
- Windows: Delve through [SECURITY UPDATE] layers of pristinely [UPDATE!] preserved OS [UPDATE MUST KEEP SAFE!] user interface paradigms [DANGER! DANGER! UPDATE!] dating back thirty years that [MALWARE IS OUT THERE! UPDATE!] in no way work together or make sense.
- iPadOS: The greatest productivity platform ever! As long as you don’t code. Or need to install custom apps. Or need to write scripts. Or need to use command line tools. Or need the added screen real estate that comes from proper multi-monitor support. As long as all your work can be done on a single screen with these 30 or so subscription-based apps that are usable, great!
“Content as Infrastructure Archives – e-Literate”
Thought-provoking series of blog posts on content as the infrastructure for courseware and education.
“Time for a MOOC reckoning - HESA”
The punditry got it “massively” wrong, as usual.
“Our Collective Chinese Conundrum – On my Om”
“Huawei isn’t a recent problem. It was a problem a decade ago. The dynamic in this spat between the NBA and China isn’t new — China gets what China wants, not the other way around.”