Egg Freckles

October 2018

• Three Hour Marathon

  I ran my first marathon in 3:34:31 (Boston Marathon 2009), my second marathon in 3:24:34 ( Boston Marathon 2010), and my fifth marathon in 3:05:43 (San Francisco 2013). But it would take me five more years, and over a dozen races before I would reach my goal of running a sub three hour marathon. My problem? I wasn’t running all 26.2 miles at a consistent pace I would start off too fast, and burn out before crossing the finish line. It wasn’t until last year that I realized I needed to run a 6:52 mile, every mile, if I ever hoped to finish a marathon in under three hours. Cool weather and a fast course certainly helped, but my Apple Watch is really what made my sub three hour marathon possible. Unlike most fitness watches, my Apple Watch shows me my current pace and average pace together every time I look down at my wrist. Keeping me on track to run a 6:52 mile 26 times! I almost didn’t make it. The three hour pace group sped passed me with just over a mile to go, and I let my pace…

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September 2018

• Infinite Loop

  As an Apple fan growing up in the 90’s, Apple’s Infinite Loop headquarters has always been a special place. Not just an office park, but Disneyland. A place where magic happened and new Macs were made. One Infinite Loop is where the Apple faithful would pilgrimage, take self portraits outside the main entrance, and buy “I visited the Mothership” t-shirts from the Company Store. As a east coast kid I could not wait for my chance to go. Now that I am an adult and Apple’s corporate address reads “One Apple Park Way,” I know Apple’s old HQ has lost some of its magic. But for me and the other Apple kids of the 90’s, Infinite Loop is still a symbol of Apple’s storied resurrection. The place where the Apple we know was born, and where all of our favorite Apple products came to be. If I could choose only one Apple HQ to visit, it would be the icon infested gardens of Infinite Loop on the eve of Steve Job’s return over the rolling hills, magnificent orchards, and curved glass ring of today’s…

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• Goodbye iPhone SE

  Harry McCracken “making sense of the most confusing new iPhone lineup ever“: As the iPhone lineup has expanded in recent years, Apple has let go of that minimalist clarity. It seems less like an accident than a willful decision, and—since nobody at the company is likely to acknowledge the shift as a change in strategy with pros and cons—it’s up to us to figure it out for ourselves. Why has Apple released three new iPhones that are kinda similar and kinda different in ways that require explanation? Harry has his own explanations for why Apple might want to standardize on the high-end iPhone X platform, but I think the message from Apple’s September 12th event is clear. If you are looking for a phone with a smaller screen, a phone with a headphone jack, or or a phone that costs under $400, Apple no longer makes an iPhone for you. In short, Apple has discontinued their entry-level iPhone SE in favor of larger phones that require additional adapters and cost upwards of $750. As someone…

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• Micro.blog is a…

  Manton Reece explains how Micro.blog is serious about preventing abuse and harassment: the platform was designed, from the beginning, to prevent abuse and harassment. Your microblog is your own, where you are free to write about whatever you want, but we protect the timeline, where you can @-reply others, through a variety of tools and curation. We have community guidelines that are enforced. I don’t believe tools, curation, or community guidelines will ever be able to police the public park as well as the walls of a private garden. But Micro.blog was not designed to be a public park. To participate on Micro.blog (hosted or unhosted) you have to be willing to create a blog, put your name on it, and stand behind it. Accountability is the wall that will protect Micro.blog against the kinds of anonymous harassment observed on public social networks like Twitter that are just festering with throwaway accounts. “On Micro.blog, you control your own content.” But your content keeps you in…

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• Farewell Fail Whale

  I have been failing at social networks since the early 2000’s. I rode the MySpace wave in 2005. Joined/quit Facebook half a dozen times over the last decade. Paid $50 for a one year subscription to Apo.net. Since 2008, Twitter has been my water cooler of choice on the web; a place to procrastinate, meet new people, and share ideas. But over the last few years expectations of Twitter and my friend’s expectations of me have been coming up short. It might be time for me to leave Twitter. Snark… For someone who doesn’t make new friends easily, my participation on Twitter has led me to meet some pretty cool people, and at least one punk. But my snarky sense of humor often makes my replies come across as trollish and arrogant. I am not making as many new friends as I once did. Instead of driving people away it might be time for me to go. Software… The simplicity of trading short 280 character messages from the comfort of handcrafted third-party apps has always made Twitter appealing to me.…

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August 2018

• NoScript

  I read this post on Daring Fireball last year and I wanted to comment on it: Charlie: I simply hate people relying on brittle client-side javascript when there are other alternatives. In the same way as I wouldn’t rely on some unknown minicab firm as the sole way of getting me to the airport for a wedding flight, I don’t like relying on a non-guaranteed technology as the sole way of delivering a web app. For me it’s a matter of elegance and simplicity over unnecessary complexity. Charlie proceeds to spend the rest of her rainy day reloading her favorite websites with JavaScript disabled and documenting their reduced functionality. For me this sort of activity does not occur once in a rainy day. For years I have filtered the JavaScript my browser receives by way of NoScript a JavaScript/Java/Flash blocker for Firefox and SeaMonkey. NoScript works by whitelisting domains I visit where JavaScript should be enabled. I can temporarily whitelist a domain to get things working on a website I…

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July 2018

• Legacy Apple…

  If like me, you follow Stephen Hackett’s 512 Pixels, then you know that every couple of months products from Apple’s past are added to the list of Vintage and Obsolete hardware no longer supported by the company. But what do these lists of legacy products mean, and how does an older Mac or ancient iPod make the lists? Age Matters… “Vintage [Apple] products are those that have not been manufactured for more than 5 and less than 7 years ago.” This includes any iPhone, iPad, iPod, Beats, or Mac models that have stopped being manufactured in the last five years. (Not necessarily five years from the date you purchased your Apple hardware.) Or course there are a couple of exceptions that can extend your vintage Apple product’s support, but these exceptions are restricted by where you live or where your purchased your product. > “Obsolete [Apple] products are those that were discontinued more than 7 years ago.” For these products Apple has…

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June 2018

• Mojave Dark Mode

  During this year’s “Introducing Dark Mode” session at WWDC Apple gave us three reasons why they were including Dark Mode as a feature in Mac OS Mojave. Dark interfaces are cool. Dark interfaces are not just inverted. Dark Mode is content-focused. As Stephen Hackett points out, reason No. 1 is hard to argue against; dark user interfaces are cool. (How far we have come from when the black on white interface of the original 1984 Macintosh was considered fashionable.) But dark user interfaces are also difficult to pull off; especially with over 17 years of Mac OS X graphical user interface history behind them. Stephen Hackett shows us how Apple does Dark Mode right.

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• Mojave System…

  The system requirements for each new Macintosh operating system are rarely out-of-step with Apple’s marketing message. Mac OS Mojave is no exception. A big theme for this year’s WWDC keynote was improved performance through optimization, and as expected the Mac OS Mojave system requirements reflect upon that theme. MacBook (Early 2015 or newer) MacBook Air (Mid 2012 or newer) MacBook Pro (Mid 2012 or newer) Mac mini (Late 2012 or newer) iMac (Late 2012 or newer) iMac Pro (2017) Mac Pro models from late 2013 (plus mid 2010 and mid 2012 models with recommend Metal-capable GPU) At first glance the Mojave system requirements don’t appear to follow a specific trend. It is only when we examine the minimal hardware requirements for Apple’s next generation graphics API Metal, that we find our answer. During a “What’s new in Metal” session at WWDC, Apple announced that Metal support in OS X extends to Macs built since 2012. But why is Apple making…

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May 2018

• Apple's Third Era

  Jason Snell on May 23, 2018: Here’s a bit of numerology for you. Today marks 17 years, one month, and 29 days since Mac OS X 10.0 was released on March 24, 2001. That’s a strangely odd number—6,269 days—but it also happens to be the exact length of time between January 24, 1984 (the launch of the original Macintosh) and March 24, 2001. In other words, today the Mac’s second operating system era, powered by Mac OS X (now macOS) has been in existence as long as the first era was. I grew up with Macintosh 512K in my home, a computer that is almost as old as I am. I have known the Mac all my life, and yet I am still surprised Mac OS X is as old as the Classic Mac era that came before it. Perhaps this is because: I was not fully aware of the first era during the early years of my childhood. The first era saw several long years of stagnation; I am looking at you System 7. The second era began during my adolescence — in the early 2000’s — when Internet adoption, technological innovation, and…

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April 2018

• New Mac Pro Delayed…

  This week we learned a new Mac Pro isn’t coming until 2019. Clearly this revelation is a Apple public relations move designed to reign-in expectations prior to this year’s WWDC. But what makes this announcement so absurd is the guises that it is being made in the name of transparency while omitting any details describing the upcoming machine. “We want to be transparent and communicate openly with our pro community, so we want them to know that the Mac Pro is a 2019 product. It’s not something for this year.” In addition to transparency for pro customers, there’s also a larger fiscal reason behind it. “We know that there’s a lot of customers today that are making purchase decisions on the iMac Pro and whether or not they should wait for the Mac Pro,” says Boger. This is why Apple wants to be as explicit as possible now, so that if institutional buyers or other large customers are waiting to spend budget on, say iMac Pros or other machines, they should pull the trigger…

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• Repairability Vs.…

  David Sparks: Over the years, Apple Products have become increasingly less repairable. The latest teardown of the new iPad evidences this fact with photos of densely packed electronic components and copious amounts of glue. This led iFixit to give the new iPad a low repairability score. I get that, but also don’t see it as big of a strike against the iPad as most people make it out to be. For years now, repairing these devices, even without the glue, has been no walk in the park. To make these devices small, they have to be dense, and things are locked together inside, so the contents don’t move around. This also leads to that sense of sturdiness you feel with an iPad in your hand. I don’t believe a computer has to be less “sturdy” to be more “repairable”. The two do not go hand-in-hand. The 2008 MacBook Pro introduced the Unibody chassis which made it far more sturdy than its predecessors, while remaining just as repairable. That being said I see what…

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