I stopped using Teams on my iPad months ago because it was impossible to use the camera while looking up e-mails, so I’m quite amazed this was possible with Zoom.

I completely get the need for entitlements (and curtailing their use when they’re privacy sensitive), but I have to wonder why this isn’t available to every major conferencing app (including WebEx, which Apple itself uses internally).

The Verge’s headline is clearly clickbait, but it bears noting that the Epic v. Apple court sessions are turning into a quite entertaining show that casts new light on (or, rather, surfaces, if you’ll pardon the pun) the way revenue sharing deals are struck–or not.

I’ve been going through the court notes, testimonies and some of the evidence shown (or at least as much as has been publicly available) and it’s been quite educating. I had some insight into game distribution and margins back when Steam came into play, but some of the new models are interesting.

And, of course, Apple’s flat out blocking xCloud (especially given the court notes show there was no end of trying to reach an agreement) still stings a bit.

I don’t think Epic will win, but I hope Apple evolves its business into a saner model that can keep up with the times.

As someone who uses Windows Virtual Desktop every day to run Edge, Office and Teams (yes, you can do conferencing over RDP quite nicely, even from a Mac or iOS), I found this to be both amusing and intriguing as it normalizes what I’ve been doing for ages.

Remote display protocols and bandwidth have progressed to the point where a remote session is virtually indistinguishable from a local one, so the only relevant issue here is scalability and data residence.

But yeah, Sun was right. The network cloud is the computer.

I want one of these. I’ve been looking at the option of building myself one, but would prefer to at least have a kit with the printed parts done in something sturdier (as I only have PLA and my printer is getting finicky).

As a direct side effect of having tracked this since it was announced on Twitter, I’ve also gone down the glorious rabbit hole at r/MechanicalKeyboards, but sadly there doesn’t seem to be anyone selling a 40% Planck layout with both Bluetooth and low-profile, silent switches.

The Apple Magic Keyboard is so great in that regard that it has spoiled me somewhat, and the two Logitech K380s I have are nearly as good…

Well, this was unexpected. I (obviously) don’t have nearly as much use for maps as I used to, but it’s nice to know it’s happening.

Regular readers will remember I used manage location-based services at Vodafone Portugal and regularly complained compared Apple Maps to the competition.

The whole thing is amazing to read through, but I just love the tongue-in-cheek finale.

Once this goes GA, most questions about whether or not Windows is a good development environment for UNIX folk will be moot (not just due to graphics support, but because the scaffolding for the entire thing will be battle-tested).

What I found really impressive, though, was having audio as well. Linux audio subsystems are such a pain that it feels borderline heroic to have it working already.

I missed the Apple event, but have been reading this PR, downloaded the press images and am just… sad. Sure, better camera, TouchID, nice form factor, a brilliant placement for the Ethernet port, but…

No 27”, no USB-A anywhere (not even near the Ethernet port), still “just” the M1 (so I suspect there will be no chance to match the current 3-display setup that my i5 iMac has) and… white bezels?

Seriously? The colors look nice (although the supply chain guy in me wonders at the profligacy of SKUs for colored peripherals), but white bezels? Those look absolutely hideous to my eye, and I have to wonder why they’re there at all – the metal itself would have looked nicer.

Then again, I suspect the Pro (if it returns) will probably have black bezels. Or metal ones. Or at least a nice 27” panel to ensure continuity.

Update: Also, I forgot to mention that even though I would be reasonably OK with a fixed amount of non-upgradeable RAM, I still think being unable to replace the SSD at all is a non-starter for me. Even Surface laptops now let you replace that without reflowing the entire logic board…

Either way, it looks like I’ll have to wait a fair bit longer for a nicer, full-featured Apple desktop.

At least we got a new Apple TV remote, right?

This is quite neat, but considering that for the sum total of the parts (even with only eyeball pricing for the expansion board) you can get a low-end all-in-one Celeron or Pentium Gold that will give the Pi a run for its money, I’m not sure we’re not going into diminishing returns territory here…

(Even with current shortages, low-end hardware is still on sale, and I’ve been looking at updated z83ii equivalents…)

However, it does seem like a good hint as to what people are prioritizing: better storage options, more ports, and, in general, something with just a few more features on top of the “bare” Pi boards.

It’s as if the Pi was “nearly there”, but not quite good enough for general use yet (which is largely what I’ve been leaning towards over the years, even as I keep hacking on them).

Let’s see if these things influence the next generation of hardware in any way.

I sincerely hope this doesn’t happen as we’ve recently gotten one of these in the family (where most people have the older, iPhone 5 style SEs out of preference) and it is a much better phone than the “normal” overfat iPhone.

I still find my XS to be comically large and unwieldy, and in comparison the mini has an absolutely perfect form factor with a great display that actually makes it possible to use your phone one-handed again.

The pandemic has certainly had an impact on sales, and I’m pretty sure being sedentary also makes bigger devices more appealing (as you don’t have to carry them around), but anyone who values actual usability would be delighted if they had the chance to handle one for five minutes.

I have quite a bit to say about the Teenage Engineering OP-1, but it’s been on my drafts folder for so long I need to revise a fair chunk of it.

But even though some other devices have tried to take it on, a decade of unique, truly original features is a lot, and it remains one of the most iconic “modern” synths. Kudos.

This makes a metric ton of sense, believe me.

Not really surprising except for it having taken this long.

Node-RED is already wildly popular as such things go and needed more of a product steer to it, so I’m quite curious to see how it goes from here.

I’m glad sanity prevailed, but we also need to take into account that as an indirect outcome of the entire thing Oracle managed to alienate a lot of people from Java as a platform (the only good thing for me was that Google started shifting to Kotlin as a preemptive measure).

Greed doesn’t ensure long-term success.

Update: Serendipitously, Microsoft announced own OpenJDK builds today.

This is apparently the same dataset rumored to have been floating around for a year or so, but now widely publicized.

Regardless of when and how it was obtained, it is an impressive amount of information and some cause for concern as Facebook tries to integrate all its online properties into a big, unified user database…

This is just too neat not to link to. It’s not just the way the reverb makes the SID chip sound… decent, it’s also the cleverness of implementing a chromatic button accordion keyboard, which is super compact.

I wonder if there are any MIDI controllers out there with that physical layout that don’t cost an arm and a leg…

This is just such a great story.

I’m hoping the Ever Given is straightened out and the Suez gets cleared soon (if only because there is an unending stream of Kubernetes jokes in my Twitter timeline right now), but this story is also a a great metaphor for how straightforward some things were before… containers.