For once, the YouTube algorithm came up trumps and I stumbled, across a new channel to subscribe to. Jeff Su makes productivity videos (doesn’t everyone on there) and I’ve found some of his content really helpful. First whilst researching improvements for my productivity, and I then watched a video on simple Mac that he thinks are underrated.
Two stuck out straight away for me and I have been using them ever since. They are Shottr and Latest, both of which combined to produce this post yesterday when the new micro.blog Mac app update came out.
I really love Cleanshot x, it offers more options but it’s also £30. Whereas Shottr is completely free and gets you 80% of the way there. With powerful keyboard shortcuts, the option to include backgrounds and also mark up your screenshots, it’s outstanding that you get all this for free.
It also has built in OCR and you can blur out text without blurring the rest of the image, which helps when you share as many screenshots as I do.
For all the apps you have installed from outside the App Store, Latest offers a nice update interface. Instead of setting each app to check for updates and call home every so often, you can turn these all off and just check Latest once a week or so.
The reason that app is so appealing is the awkward updates that seem to pop up when you are trying to do something, and this simple app puts you back in control. It will present all updates in an essay to understand interface and even pull in all the information such as descriptions and changelogs.
I hope that these two free apps can be as helpful to you as they are to me. I am always on the lookout for new things to make my Mac better considering how much time I spend sat at it so I will keep posting new things I find.
A couple of days ago I wrote a link post, the same as I have done hundreds of times before. Found an article online somewhere, read it, picked out a few things that stuck out and threw them into Apple Notes. I typed out my thoughts on the couple of highlighted areas and published these to my blog.
No more thought was put into this than I have put into every other link post I have ever published. Unless I am specifically subscribed to the author, I have absolutely no knowledge any further than the post I consume, or perhaps some supporting links they post in said article. However, this linked post I published happened to be by someone who has some terrible ideas about trans individuals, and this was only pointed out to me yesterday evening.
Thankfully, this was by the excellent podcaster Alex Cox (you can see the replies on the post) making me more aware of the person I was linking to. To be clear, these ideas are not in the post I liked to, I just read a post talking about ancient aliens and thought the ideas surrounding disagreement were poignant in the current climate. However, this doesn’t stop me feeling terrible about it.
As soon as I received the reply, I began to worry and think about what I should do. My heart was absolutely in the right place, and I immediately wanted to make sure I have done the right thing. I think it is OK to separate some ideas from the person who has them, but at some point publishing online I do have a certain responsibility, even with the tiny platform that I have. It would break my heart that someone would find this person through my post and then consume other terrible posts and ideas.
Let’s just say I didn’t sleep much last night thinking about this, but I decided in the end to keep the post up, but with a clear disclaimer at the top. I believe the post still stands up on its own. I hope people understand that I read this at face value, however I genuinely understand how it could read if you are aware of the backstory (which I was clueless about).
It’s been a little over a year since I wrote about setting up iOS focus modes. At the time, it was a new feature in iOS15 and one that felt far from ready for release. The confusing UX and complicated options lead to my conclusion that hardly any people would use the feature. Now 13 months on, my feelings have changed very little. Improvements have been made, but the hoops you have to jump through, and the missing features, mean that Focus Modes on all Apple devices still suck.
Overall, the experience of trying to set up your Focus Modes feels like it was designed by an engineer. That the team designing this already expects you to understand how to use it, with little to no onboarding or instructions. This isn’t unique to Focus Modes, Apple still struggles to communicate the intricacies of its software and even the help guides online expect you to already have a large knowledge of the feature you need help with.
I did get a little too excited when iOS16 introduced a way for apps to tap into the new focus modes. Namely, Apple Mail can now make certain accounts show at certain times, but with there still being no “everything else” Focus Mode, you can’t make your work email only show in a work Focus Mode. It will still be displayed when there is no Focus mode active.
This wouldn’t be an issue, I could just create a focus mode that is active when not at work and hack around this. Except that an icon appears at the op of my screen constantly, and the sync between devices is still all or nothing. Apple really needs to spend some time thinking about how these modes work and how normal people might use them. I love the fact I can have my phone be different things at different times, but the designers haven’t thought about what happens the rest of the time.
Having Focus Modes is better than nothing. The improvements are moving in the right direction, but setting them up and understanding everything falls well short of the mark I expect.
Sounds simple, doesn’t it. Everyone who’s used the web knows what a blog is. They were the web for a very long time, before all this social media nonsense kicked off, and there’s a very real push for more people to start them. The belief is that you have to have something to write about, or you need a special set of skills, but in reality you don’t need anything.
Well, you require a way to do it, and thankfully there are loads of options out there, many of them free, but this post isn’t about that. The trouble comes with what to put on your blog, and that’s where it’s important to remember what a blog is. It’s a web log. It’s there for you to ‘log’ anything you want. From thoughts and ideas, to life lessons and photos from vacations. There should be no worry about the what or the why of what you put on your blog.
You don’t need to start a website. Nor do you need to moleskin the posts you put there. You just need to take all the output you would usually give to a social network for free and put it on your blog. That’s why services like micro.blog, Tumblr or WordPress plugins like social sharing are the best place to start. You can share your blog to wherever you want, but keep control of everything you do.
There’s a higher, more preachy post on owning your content in here somewhere, too. One that urges you to get to grips with blogging to make the web a better place, but all you need to worry about is having a blog. Using it for whatever you want to use it for, and making sure you carry on sharing with the web. What is a blog is a question with numerous unique answers, but the reality is that a blog is you.
I did not know this at the time of writing and will not be linking to this person again. For more infromation see here.
Jesse Singal urging us to Rediscover Wrongness
People can usually believe wrong things without being dangerous, and in fact billions of people do hold religious beliefs that make no logical sense without becoming violent zealots.
I am wrong, what feels like hundreds of times a day, some days. Occasionally, it’s small things that I didn’t think though correctly and guessed. Sporadically, it is matters I didn’t really understand or misinterpreted the information I had at hand. And every so often I just choose wrong, and there is absolutely nothing wrong with this.
Don’t get me wrong I am right a lot of the time too, I’m not ready for life help yet, but I am not doing anyone any harm. There’s no malice in a lot of the things I believe in that could be wrong, I am just wrong and that should be OK. I’m fine with being wrong, finding out that I am wrong and then changing my world view, but many people seem to have forgotten this skill altogether.
The issue comes when someone that another thinks is incorrect is painted as a harmful, and often portrayed in an exaggerated way. The other side of a disagreement isn’t evil or trying to trick you, they just see the world differently to you and make decisions based on their experiences. As Jesse points out in the linked article, “If everything is dangerous or violent, then nothing is”.
The notion in the article of much of this constant state of angriness is due to the attention economy is correct. The more exaggerated the accusations and finger pointing, the more attention is gained. No-one believes that having a wrong idea about the way the Pyramids are built is harmful, as the author well knows, but that doesn’t get clicks, does it.
There is also a real issue of the bubbles we all live in now. Social media algorithms creates a space where we see posts and updates that we agree with. YouTube and Netflix force content on us that we will like, and issues arise when we bump up against the edges. We, the people, need to learn how to disagree with someone but still appreciate them as a person. To smile and shake your head at the conspiracy theorist next door, but still stop and talk to them whenever you can.
The lines of politics have never been this rigid before, and it’s pathetic. I know we can get back to being OK with this. I was brought up with a friend group that was as diverse as it comes, and with an ingrained bullshit detector that was sharpened in a school without internet access. We learnt to fall out, make up again, argue and bicker but still get along together.
I know this ability is in all of us. One wish for 2023, now the walls of large social media are at least a bit broken, can we re-learn to disagree politely, please? To take criticism, embrace other view points and not worry about it. You might actually learn something too.