I have obtained exclusive footage of Alan Dye leaving Apple Park after overseeing visual interface design updates across Apple’s operating systems.

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Quinn Nelson:

[…] at a moment when the Mac has roared back to the centre of Apple’s universe, the iPad feels closer than ever to fulfilling its original promise. Except it doesn’t, not really, because while the iPad has gained windowing and external display support, pro apps, all the trappings of a “real computer”, underneath it all, iPadOS is still a fundamentally mobile operating system with mobile constraints baked into its very DNA.

Meanwhile, the Mac is rumoured to be getting everything the iPad does best: touchscreens, OLED displays, thinner designs.

There are things I quibble with in Nelson’s video, including the above-quoted comparison to mere rumours about the Mac. The rest of the video is more compelling as it presents comparisons with the same or similar software on each platform in real-world head-to-head matches.

Via Federico Viticci, MacStories:

I’m so happy that Apple seems to be taking iPadOS more seriously than ever this year. But now I can’t help but wonder if the iPad’s problems run deeper than windowing when it comes to getting serious work done on it.

Apple’s post-iPhone platforms are only as good as Apple will allow them to be. I am not saying it needs to be possible to swap out Bluetooth drivers or monkey around with low-level code, but without more flexibility, platforms like the iPad and Vision Pro are destined to progress only at the rate Apple says is acceptable, and with the third-party apps it says are permissible. These are apparently the operating systems for the future of computers. They are not required to have similar limitations to the iPhone, but they do anyway. Those restrictions are holding back the potential of these platforms.

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I am not sure it is worth writing at length about Grokipedia, the Elon Musk-funded effort to quite literally rewrite history from the perspective of a robot taught to avoid facts upsetting to the U.S. far right. Perhaps it will be an unfortunate success — the Fox News of encyclopedias, giving ideologues comfortable information as they further isolate themselves.

It is less a Wikipedia competitor than it is a machine-generated alternative to Conservapedia. Founded by Andy Schlafly, an attorney and son of Phyllis Schlafly, the Wikipedia alternative was an attempt to make an online encyclopedia from a decidedly U.S. conservative and American exceptionalism perspective. Seventeen years ago, Schlafly’s effort was briefly profiled by Canadian television and, somehow, the site is still running. Perhaps that is the fate of Grokipedia: a brief curiosity, followed by traffic coming only from a self-selecting mix of weirdos and YouTubers needing material.

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Rani Molla, Sherwood News:

While the prerecorded videos of the products in use were slick and highly produced, some of the live demos simply failed.

“Glasses are the ideal form factor for personal superintelligence because they let you stay present in the moment while getting access to all of these AI capabilities to make you smarter, help you communicate better, improve your memory, improve your senses,” CEO Mark Zuckerberg reiterated at the start of the event, but the ensuing bloopers certainly didn’t make it feel that way.

I like that Meta took a chance with live demos but, in addition to the bloopers, Connect felt like another showcase of an inspiration-bereft business. The opening was a more grounded — figuratively and literally — version of the Google Glass skydive from 2012. Then, beginning at about 52 minutes, Zuckerberg introduced the wrist-based control system, saying “every new computing platform has a new way to interact with it”, summarizing a piece of the Macworld 2007 iPhone introduction. It is not that I am offended by Meta cribbing others’ marketing. What I find amusing, more than anything, is Zuckerberg’s clear desire to be thought of as an inventor and futurist, despite having seemingly few original ideas.

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If you want reviews of the iPhone 17 — mostly the Pro — from the perspective of photography, two of the best come from Chris Niccolls and Jordan Drake of PetaPixel and Tyler Stalman. Coincidentally, both from right here in Calgary. I am not in the market for an upgrade, but I think these are two of the most comprehensive and interesting reviews I have seen specifically about the photo and video features. Alas, both are video-based reviews, so if that is not your bag, sorry.

Niccolls and Drake walk you through the typical PetaPixel review, just as you want it. The Portrait Mode upgrades they show are obvious to me. Stalman’s test of Action Mode plus the 8× zoom feature is wild. He also took a bunch of spectacular photos at the Olds Rodeo last week. Each of these reviews focuses on something different, with notably divergent opinions on some video features.

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Well, add XOXO to the list of conferences I was never able to attend. The final edition occurred this year and it looked pretty special.

Happily, if you — as I — were unable to attend in person, Andy Baio has begun uploading videos of this year’s talks. I have watched those from Cabel Sasser, Dan Olson, Molly White, and Sarah Jeong. These are all worth your time — and so are, I am sure, the ones I have not yet seen.

Update: Be sure to watch Sasser’s talk before exploring an amazing archive he is assembling. Seriously — watch first, then click.

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Deviant Ollam gave a brand new talk at CackalackyCon this year about fire safety standards from a pentesting perspective. It is as entertaining as just about anything you may have seen from Ollam, despite being about two hours long.

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