I wanted to be able to click on a given user’s friends and have the friend profile open up in a new view but I needed to be able to access the list of users on more than one view so I used the @EnvironmentObject variable to access the data from both ContentView and UserDetailView.

Friend Face – ContentView.swift
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I used something like Text(“user.[field]”) for each of the fields except for user.registered which I substituted in the computed value that is stored in user.formattedDate so that I would get a date which is easier to read.

Friend Face – UserDetailView.swift
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Friend Face – Friend_FaceApp.swift
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And with that I have a working app that runs off of live data from the Internet.

I’ve uploaded the code for Day 60 on GitHub.

My friend Chelsea Matisz was on the panel for the latest episode of West of Centre: The new normal is not normal, but are Albertans ready to separate?

Everything we know about “the West” seems to be shifting this week. On a global scale, the U.S. has upended the post-war international order by slapping tariffs on dozens of countries, effectively shredding free trade. Closer to home, former Reform Party leader Preston Manning warns of a potential “West wants out” scenario if the Liberals form government again. How real are these threats? West of Centre host Kathleen Petty talks with three everyday Albertans about navigating this highly unusual election. Journalists Rob Breakenridge and Lisa Johnson then weigh in on whether these pressures could redefine the upcoming election — and Canada’s political landscape at large.

I just wanted to add that I haven’t heard anyone talking about Alberta separation. In a grade 11 social studies class that I was guest teaching the other day, the students hadn’t even heard the term “Wexit”¹. While there are some anti-Canadian idiots making waves on American News, I would say they are only few and far between.

1. The Maverick party, which pushed for western Canadian autonomy is not even popular enough to put up a single candidate.

Vox is reporting that Canada is so furious at the US right now:

I wanted a firsthand account of how all this is affecting normal Canadians and Canadian politics. So I dialed up Vox’s Zack Beauchamp, who lives in Canada, to get the scoop.

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Zack told me that “Canadians are angry — just out-of-this-world angry about what the United States is doing to them.”

The only thing I would add is that for many Canadians, while it’s true we are mad, we are anxious to go back to not being mad and that’s going to take some serious relationship work — more than just getting a new leadership in four years. For starters he needs to knock off the 51st state jokes¹.

(via Kottke)

1. And we all have to pretend that it is a joke otherwise, things are going to be bad for a long time.

The state of AI music in 2025 is getting pretty good. Here is a song written by a prompt in ChapGPT then converted the lyrics and music with udio.

The story that inspired the song was from a time that my grandpa took my young uncle Wally to the stockyards on a thoroughbred horse that was broken but still wild. My grandpa sent him home on the horse and at 10 years old, he was too little to control her. After she spooked and started to run for home, Wally worried that if the barn doors were opened the horse would run into the barn and he would get scraped off. Here’s the song:

Update (April 9, 2025): Even though it should not have come as a surprise, given how he had been deteriorating lately, I was still caught off-guard when my cousin Lydia contacted me last night to let me know that Wally died yesterday while she was there at the old folks home visiting.

When I played this song for Wally last week he confirmed, “If the door would have been open, Molly would have killed me.”

He was 92 years old. He will be greatly missed.

The moment this father watched as a humpback whale swallowed his son whole must have been terrifying. Luckily whales don’t like the taste of kayakers and spit him out just a few seconds later.

From The Guardian:

Last Saturday, Adrián Simancas was kayaking with his father, Dell, in Bahía El Águila near the San Isidro lighthouse in the Strait of Magellan when a humpback whale surfaced, engulfing Adrián and his yellow kayak for a few seconds before letting him go.

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Dell, just metres away, captured the moment on video.

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“Stay calm, stay calm,” he can be heard saying after his son was released from the whale’s mouth.

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“I thought I was dead,” Adrián told the Associated Press. “I thought it had eaten me, that it had swallowed me.”

(Via Neatorama)

I’ve tested out the new Image Playground app for MacOS and the results are pleasing. I created a whole collection of my family (my wife and my siblings and their respective spouses). This is what we would all look like if we were in a Pixar feature:

There is still a little wonkiness in some of the eyes but overall I think the state of the technology is progressing nicely. The other change from other image generators I’ve used is just how fast Image Playground is able to generate the images. These took just a few seconds each.

It’s earnings season again and Apple News has again reported record total net sales for first quarter earnings.

From Apple News:

CUPERTINO, CALIFORNIA Apple today announced financial results for its fiscal 2025 first quarter ended December 28, 2024. The Company posted quarterly revenue of $124.3 billion, up 4 percent year over year, and quarterly diluted earnings per share of $2.40, up 10 percent year over year.

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“Today Apple is reporting our best quarter ever, with revenue of $124.3 billion, up 4 percent from a year ago,” said Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO. “We were thrilled to bring customers our best-ever lineup of products and services during the holiday season. Through the power of Apple silicon, we’re unlocking new possibilities for our users with Apple Intelligence, which makes apps and experiences even better and more personal. And we’re excited that Apple Intelligence will be available in even more languages this April.”

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“Our record revenue and strong operating margins drove EPS to a new all-time record with double-digit growth and allowed us to return over $30 billion to shareholders,” said Kevan Parekh, Apple’s CFO. “We are also pleased that our installed base of active devices has reached a new all-time high across all products and geographic segments.”

See also, the six colours charts.

The images coming out of Los Angeles this morning are heartbreaking.

From the BBC:

We don’t yet have concrete answers as to what started the LA fires, it is too early to tell and first responders are still focused on evacuating and tackling the blazes.

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But, officials have pointed to high winds and drought in the area, which has made vegetation very dry and easy to burn.

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An important factor that has been cited in the spread of the blazes is the seasonally strong Santa Ana winds.

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These blow from inland towards the coast and with speeds of more than 60mph (97 km/h) these are believed to have fanned the flames and embers across LA County.

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The likely impact of climate change has also been cited been blamed – although the exact circumstances remain unclear.

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Some 95% of wildfires in the area are started by humans, according to David Acuna, a battalion chief at the Californian Fire Service, although officials are yet to state how they think the current fires started.

My friend who lives in Pasadena sent me this yesterday along with a bunch of videos from her backyard. The next city over, Altadena is destroyed. Firefighters in Los Angeles are running out of water and don’t have enough engines. Her own neighbourhood looked like a scene from an apocalyptic movie. The sky was red and at least one house just a few doors down had been on fire. Three giant fires are still burning out of control in the worst fires in Los Angeles’ history.

Tim Cook’s personal donation of $1,000,000 to Trump’s bribe fund inauguration fund has left a bad taste in the mouth of Apple fans across the net.

First, the situation from Mike Allen via Axios:

Apple CEO Tim Cook will personally donate $1 million to President-elect Trump’s inaugural committee, sources with knowledge of the donation tell Axios.

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Why it matters: The donation reflects a long, collaborative relationship between Trump and Cook that included many meetings during Trump’s first term, and dinner at Mar-a-Lago last month.

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Other CEOs and companies have made seven-figure inauguration contributions in their efforts to build bridges to the incoming administration.

John Gruber via Daring Fireball:

It seems pretty obvious that it was Apple/Cook that leaked this to Axios, not Trump’s side, given the eye-roll-inducing “proud American tradition” spin, but more especially the nugget that only Cook personally, not Apple as a company, is contributing. That’s Cook asking for any and all ire to be directed at him, personally, not Apple. Good luck with that.

Marco Arment via Mastodon:

Is it that hard to believe?

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Why do we think Tim Cook couldn’t possibly support Trump, while all of these other billionaires support him for their own billionaire self-interests?

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Why do we keep making excuses for him?

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Why do we keep making excuses for Apple?

Nick Heer via Pixel Envy:

Call this what you want: bipartisanship, diplomacy, pragmatic, outright support, or “the spirit of unity”. But one thing you cannot call it is principled. We have become accustomed to business leaders sacrificing some of their personal principles to support their company in some way — for some reason, it is just business is a universal excuse for terrible behaviour — but all of these figures have already seen what the incoming administration does with power and they want to support it. For anyone who claims to support laws or customs, this is not principled behaviour.

Daniel Jalkut via Daniel Punkass :

On the occasion of Apple’s slithering CEO Tim Cook donating $1M to a neo-fascist insurrectionist, it’s FINALLY time to deploy the often overused expression “this never would have happened if Steve Jobs were still in charge.”

Monton Reece via Manton.org:

Tim Cook has led Apple to incredible success, but his words are hollow. Even the principles he seems to care most passionately about, like user privacy, are in doubt. I’m increasingly thinking it’s an act.

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I’ve been an Apple developer since the 1990s when the company was doomed. Fans propped up the company because we believed they were different. They focused on design and creativity. They were the rebels and troublemakers, trying to push the human race forward through technology.

\n

Most of the employees at Apple still care about these things. Tim Cook cares about appeasing a would-be autocrat and taxing developers in an app distribution monopoly. It’s time for new leadership.

Cabel Sasser via Mastodon:

I wonder how Tim would answer the question: “why are you donating to this one, but didn’t donate to the last one?”. That’d be fascinating to see.

It’s a sad day for Tim Cook, Apple, and the of course the USA. How can they expect the world to choke down their claim of American exceptionalism when its leaders both in and out of government are so transparently corrupt?

I finally discovered the secret for creating a smart album that only shows photos that do NOT have people or pets identified in Apple Photos on MacOS.¹²

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1. Create a smart album with the criteria “person/pet” -> “does not contain” -> =”A” (It will suggest a name from the database to place here but just change it manually.)
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2. Repeat creating rules using the same criteria but with the all the other vowels.
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3. Next create a rule for “person/pet” -> “is” -> “<blank>”. By blank I mean remove all characters from the textfield. This should filter out all of the photos without a face.
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4. Lastly create a rule for “photo” -> “is not” -> “screenshots”.
\n

Here is the smart album:

I also created one for unmarked GPS locations.

1. My source for this information comes via Apple Discussion Forums
2. It doesn’t work if at least one of the other people in the photo are named but it’s a pretty good start.

Happy 2025! Every year Andrea and I put together a playlist and use it as our go-to music for the year¹. If you’re signed in to Apple Music, feel free to enjoy our 2024 music playlist²:

I’ve also exported it using tunemymusic.com as 2024 Youtube playlist and converted it to My 2024 Apple Music Library in .CSV format.

1. Previously: 2023, 2022, 2021, and 2020 playlists.
2. otherwise it’s just a preview

2024 is the 11th year I’ve created a once a day video project. Lots of travel this year, lots of kids, and lots of fun. It’s a pretty good glimpse at the everyday routine of our lives.

Here’s a quick table of my most view posts in 2024¹

1. Previous year-end stats for 2023, 2022, 2021, and 2020

Every year since 2017, Vanity Fair has interviewed Billie Eilish about her life and career. They didnt release last year’s conversation but they are back this year with the eighth iteration.

It’s amazing that Vanity Fair picked Eilish for this project when they could have picked any number of up-and-coming stars from 2017. They got lucky picking not only the one who went supernova winning multiple grammies and maintaining popularity but who is also self-reflective, eloquent, and willing to talk about her emotions.

Mufasa: The Lion King: “Be prepared for a disappointing prequel.” — Matt Singer, ScreenCrush

The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim: “[Peter Jackson] proves here that if you scrape hard enough at the bottom of any barrel you will eventually damage the integrity of the entire barrel.” — Kevin Mahar, Times (UK).

Nightbitch: “[W]himpers slowly into the night, a fangless could-have-been.” — Tom Meek, Cambridge Day

Venom: The Last Dance: “The third and final episode in the Venom saga issues a third and final reminder that the world never really needed a Venom saga in the first place.” — Leigh Paatsch, Herald Sun (Australia)

Red One: “If this is what Red One is, don’t expect a Red Two.” — Matt Neal, ABC Radio (Australia)

Joker: Folie à Deux: “How dark and depressing is this movie? Let’s put it this way: If ‘Seven’ had musical numbers, it might get to where ‘Joker: Folie à Deux’ has set up shop.” — Sean P. Means, The Movie Cricket

The award-winning show will be returning to Apple TV+ on January 17.

The long awaited authorized documentary Becoming Led Zeppelin has finally released the first trailer:

From Angie Maroccio at Rolling Stone Magazine:

The film was first announced five years ago, then premiered at the 2021 Venice Film Festival. That same year, an early clip of “Good Times Bad Times” was released. In May 2024, the “hybrid docu-concert film” was acquired by Sony Pictures Classics.

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Making the film was challenging for MacMahon and writer-producer Allison McGourty, as hardly any footage from the band’s early years existed. Through their research, they were able to include unseen concert footage, including their early performances at the Fillmore West in January 1969 and the Texas Pop Festival in August 1969.

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“We spent five years flying back and forth across the Atlantic scouring attics and basements in pursuit of rare and unseen film footage, photographs, and music recordings,” McGourty said in a statement. “Then we transferred each piece of media with custom techniques, so that in IMAX, these 55-year-old clips and music would look and sound like they came out of the lab yesterday.”

Becoming Led Zeppelin will be released on February 7th, 2025 in 200 IMAX theatres.

My five-year-old came to me the other day with what sounded like breaking news.

“Santa is just a normal guy!” he exclaimed.

Frowning, I looked at him. I nodded and began wondering if I should have played up the jolly elf a little more.

“He’s just a normal guy who doesn’t even make the presents.”

Sadly, the Christmas magic is gone before it really even started. My thoughts wandered. Obviously the brand names and packaging are a dead giveaway. Good on him for figuring it out at five but he’s too young to be so cynical…

“He’s just a normal guy who doesn’t even make the presents — he just gets the elves to do all the work!”

Nevermind. The magic is alive and well.

On Thursday Apple announced financial results for its fiscal 2024 fourth quarter ended September 28, 2024.

From Apple Newsroom:

CUPERTINO, CALIFORNIA Apple today announced financial results for its fiscal 2024 fourth quarter ended September 28, 2024. The Company posted quarterly revenue of $94.9 billion, up 6 percent year over year, and quarterly diluted earnings per share of $0.97. Diluted earnings per share was $1.64, up 12 percent year over year when excluding the one-time charge recognized during the fourth quarter of 2024 related to the impact of the reversal of the European General Court’s State Aid decision.

Apple noted that it’s overall revenue was cut into deeply by the $10.1 billion fine related to Apple finally having lost a long-time tax case in the European Union.

See also Jason Snell’s charts.

After a not so great day teaching at a local high school I wondered about my choices that brought me here, a decade into my teaching career and back to subbing. I understood the irony in that if I just worked at that school more I would actually have better days but I couldn’t help but think I should just stick to the one school that I’ve really been loving this year even if it means not working every day.

I contemplated my day of students showing disrespect, constantly on their phones, and just plain refusing to even pretend to do the assignments as I walked out of the building. Though feeling sorry for myself, I noticed a student that I didn’t recognize chatting with a friend and said good afternoon to his friend. He looked up and said, “Hey, are you Jeff Milner?”

“Yes,” I said hesitantly, while wondering how in the world does he know my name.

His face lit up and he exclaimed, “You taught me how to draw, last year, in Eva’s class!” I remembered the class but I couldn’t believe I had made such an impression. After asking him to remind me his name, I headed out and thought, it’s moments like these why I actually do love teaching.

URL shorteners are a good idea when it comes to sharing a longer address that you know will need to be typed manually. They are a bad idea for anything that a user might want to use over a longer period of time.

Case in point, in 2018 Google deprecated its URL shortener and in July announced that it will also be sunsetting currently shortened URLs in August of 2025.

In 2018, we announced the deprecation and transition of Google URL Shortener because of the changes we’ve seen in how people find content on the internet, and the number of new popular URL shortening services that emerged in that time. This meant that we no longer accepted new URLs to shorten but that we would continue serving existing URLs.
\nOver time, these existing URLs saw less and less traffic as the years went on — in fact more than 99% of them had no activity in the last month.

\n

As such, we will be turning off Google URL Shortener. Please read on below to understand more about how this may impact you.

\n

Who is impacted?
\nAny developers using links built with the Google URL Shortener in the form https://goo.gl/* will be impacted, and these URLs will no longer return a response after August 25th, 2025. We recommend transitioning these links to another URL shortener provider.

It’s baffling that Google is as popular as it is as a citizen of the web when they seem to have no conception of respect for users or of the web itself. It’s also crazy that their advice is to just find a different URL shortener: NO! If you haven’t realized this yet, using a shortener breaks the web. Every time one of these shorteners goes under all of their collective use suddenly dies with it.

I guess people just need to learn you can’t trust Google. Don’t be evil… indeed.

Just in time for Thanksgiving¹, Cabel Sasser gave a talk at the 2024 XOXO Festival about the importance of appreciation for art and craftsmanship in this 20 minute talk. I’d say more, but trust me when I say the unfolding of this journey is worth it.

Hi, I’m Cabel. I was driving to Seattle and got hungry, so I stopped at a McDonalds in Centralia, WA. And when I went inside, I saw something incredible.

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Here, let me tell you my story:

Here’s a newly launched archive of nearly lost Wes Cook work.

1. Canadian Thanksgiving

One of the complaints I’ve heard about the Apple Vision Pro is that there isn’t enough content made for the device. Apple has been quietly working on it and today debuts the first scripted film captured in Apple Immersive Video.

From Apple News:

Submerged: This immersive fiction thriller, available to Apple Vision Pro users around the world for free, invites viewers onto a WWII-era submarine and follows its crew as they wrestle to combat a harrowing attack. This adrenaline-pumping thrill ride showcases the unique storytelling experiences made possible by Apple Immersive Video.

Here is the behind the scenes documentary:

This week I read an article in the Atlantic this week about the growing perception that today’s elite university students lack of ability to read books to the end¹.

Here’s an excellent follow-up / rebuttal by Carrie Santo-Thomas, a teacher interviewed for the piece.

I was not surprised by Horowitch’s hypothesis. She attributes undergrads’ lack of reading stamina to lowered expectations in high school literature curricula, specifically arguing that limiting full-length novels and replacing long-form content with excerpts and summaries has weakened readers’ constitutions. She, in turn, ascribes these instructional choices to the oppressive presence of standardized testing and the Common Core. And cell phones, always cell phones.

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It is a perfectly reasonable assumption, but it’s wrong. This is not to say that there aren’t external factors affecting students’ reading stamina, but to line up such a simple series of dominoes to topple oversimplifies a complex challenge and places undue blame on the shoulders of discerning young readers and the public school teachers who work tirelessly to support them.

1. Apple News Link

I tried signing up for a membership at the Lethbridge YMCA at the very last day of August to have my membership start in September. As I was about to sign up I learned that if I waited until September ¹ I would get seven days free and not have to pay fees to reinstate my account. I also learned that the pool would be closed for the majority of the month making my membership that month basically worthless ².

A month has passed, so after I skipped the bedtime routine with my kids I popped over to the Y today to sign up. The lady at the counter looked at me like I was crazy when I said I wanted the seven days free trial. I explained that I just called someone on the phone right before and they said I could get a prorated rate for October after the seven days are up. She responded that they don’t have a free trial for people that have already ever had a membership — they did have that exact promotion last month ³ but there wasn’t anything she could do for me. I was so irritated by the whole ordeal that I just thought I’ll do my swimming at the University, thank you very much, and I walked out of there.

When I arrived at the university I found their pool empty and undergoing maintenance that had no end date in sight ⁴. It’s looking more and more like a dryland training month for this swimmer. I wanted to exercise my body, instead all I got was an exercise in futility. At least I made it home in time to put the kids to bed.

1. ie. the next day
2. I only use it for swimming.
3. ie. yesterday.
4. It was supposed to be done on October 7th but they found more issues.

Last year I took a leave of absence from my job teaching grade five. This year I quit outright. I was a little back and forth about the idea knowing that I was leaving a permanent contract but ultimately what sealed the deal was that my hours were fluctuating every year and over the past few years had been shrinking and were now down to half time. When I asked my principal if there was any hope for me at the school she gave the most telling answer possible. She said nothing. It was a kick in the face.

Will I land on my feet? I guess it doesn’t matter too much when before I was just crawling through the mud anyway. I’m enjoying the flexibility of subbing and although the paycheque is weak we are doing fine.

David Friedman recently created a daily word puzzle called Gisnep! I’ve been hooked on it ever since I discovered it last week. As a non-coder, he created it using a form of guess-and-check programming with ChatGPT and other AI large language models.

Years ago I was inspired by his 50 States in 10 Minutes game and made my own copycats.

The kids played the claw machine today in downtown Whitehorse, Yukon. When I saw Andrea getting her $5 changed into tokens, I thought it was a total waste of money. Andrea’s $5 gave them each five tries to capture a stuffy. By some fluke of nature, my daughter Nesslin actually succeeded on her third try.

The two of them used up the rest of the tokens and, of course, Ian had nothing. He begged and cried for just one more go but we were insistent that there was no way we were dropping more cash on this thing. The kind little old lady who was running the machine volunteered one last token for Ian. I just shook my head thinking we’re only delaying the inevitable. I gave him a pep-talk that if he doesn’t win, that he’s going to accept the loss and move on.

Quite a few people had gathered around watching as Ian went for it, then a Christmas miracle happened. The crowd cheered as he dropped the exact stuffy he had been going for the whole time. The lady who gave him the token gave him a big hug and I have to admit, I was wrong: that $5 was money well spent.

Despicable Me 4: “Talk about despicable.” — Zaki Hasan, San Francisco Chronicle

Doctor Jekyll: “You don’t call a movie Doctor Jekyll and expect that we won’t know what’s going in it.” — Mark Dujsik, Mark Reviews Movies

The Instigators: “Cannot live up to the Ocean’s movies of which Matt Damon and Casey Affleck are two of the 11. Perhaps they should not attempt heists without Brad Pitt or George Clooney.” — Fred Topel, United Press International

Harold and the Purple Crayon: “A film that pays lip service to the importance of creativity without ever displaying a demonstrable shred of it during its seemingly interminable run time.” — Peter Sobczynski, RogerEbert.com

Trap: “Trap is crap.” — David Poland, Hot Button

From Apple News:

Apple today announced financial results for its fiscal 2024 third quarter ended June 29, 2024. The Company posted quarterly revenue of $85.8 billion, up 5 percent year over year, and quarterly earnings per diluted share of $1.40, up 11 percent year over year.

Quarterly revenue of $85.8 billion sets a new record for a third quarter reporting. The third quarter is traditionally Apple’s quietest time of year for earnings.

Throughout the call the executives hailed “Apple Intelligence” as an exciting headwind moving into future earnings reports.

Here are the Six Color Charts.

From Apple Newsroom:

Today, Apple Maps on the web is available in public beta, allowing users around the world to access Maps directly from their browser.

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Now, users can get driving and walking directions; find great places and useful information including photos, hours, ratings, and reviews; take actions like ordering food directly from the Maps place card; and browse curated Guides to discover places to eat, shop, and explore in cities around the world. Additional features, including Look Around, will be available in the coming months.

I think it’s worthy of saying “finally”!

Apple doesn’t hesitate taking the slow and steady approach when it comes to incremental improvements. If you’re still jaded by the less than stellar performance when Apple Maps premiered on iOS, it’s high time you start using the app. And starting now, if you’re wanting to share links to various locations or directions, you can do it on the web. It’s by far my favourite maps app.

(Previously: Apple’s New Map, Expansion #10 Canada)

The video game emulator Delta lets one play NES, SNES, N64, Game Boy, GBA, and Nintendo DS ROMs (which are easy enough to find online) on your iOS device. The newest version now supports iPadOS features such as full screen and runs multiple games at once. Thanks to airplay, the games can be streamed straight to your AppleTV or other supported device.

Trying to play old Nintendo titles with touch screen controls proved less than ideal but after I hooked up a bluetooth Xbox controller, I found the experience to be like I remembered. It gave me quite the dose of nostalgia. I still died on that very first Goomba in Super Mario Bros, though.

Jon Stewart, speaking in an interview on the The Town with Matthew Belloni podcast, reveals the moment he realized his relationship with the iPhone maker was destined for failure.

Yesterday, our six year old daughter along with our four year old son went on an adventure they had arranged for themselves.

My wife had just given them an old digital camera and they shot a few selfies with it. They also got new backpacks which they were quite excited about.

As I was getting ready for work I noticed they were up to something by the way they were whispering to each other with their new backpacks on and then kept quiet as I passed by them. I told them whatever they were up to, to cut it out and I headed out the door. I got a text from Andrea about a 10 minutes later on my commute to work:

The kids are just wandering around the neighbourhood somewhere. I’m about to get on my bike to go find them. I caught them at the corner walking away from our house with their backpacks on and yelled at them to come home and have breakfast now and they just kept walking like I didn’t even say anything. And they heard me because they turned around and looked at me while I was saying come home right now for breakfast

\n

After contacting friends and neighbours and talking to everyone she ran into looking for them she even contacted the police to keep an eye out for them. I was getting updates by text and it was pretty stressful — even my co-workers who I was keeping updated about the search were bothered. I got a text an hour and a half later that our friend Chelsea found Nesslin (still in her pajamas) walking alone heading back to the house about two blocks from home. It turns out they had decided Nesslin would walk Ian to preschool (about 2km away) without parent permission or notification. They knew the way from the many times that Andrea had taken them by bike in the Chariot bike wagon.

I was annoyed that the preschool didn’t call immediately when they arrived. Ian’s preschool teacher claims that when Ian arrived at school she asked him where his mom was to sign him in and he told her that she was in the parking lot and said you [the teacher] would sign him in yourself. Sounds pretty conniving and atypical of my son to say the least.

Ian claims that’s not what he said because he was actually excited to tell the teacher that they had walked by themselves. My co-worker thinks I’m silly to believe my son over his teacher but I know what he’s like and he was pretty annoyed that his story and her story didn’t line up. When I asked him if he had been worried about getting in trouble as he walked to school he said they talked about that but decided that their teacher would be proud of them for walking on their own. I don’t want to accuse they teacher of anything but I am still annoyed that I will probably never know for sure.

The kids knew that their mom would be mad but they were surprised at the lecture they got from me when I got home from work. We are strickly a no hitting family but I told them that a co-worker of mine suggested I give them each a spanking for what they did. I was relieved to see them take this suggestion really hard and as they both broke into tears, I felt like the message was well received.

Thursday’s press release from Apple Newsroom:

CUPERTINO, CALIFORNIA Apple today announced financial results for its fiscal 2024 second quarter ended March 30, 2024. The Company posted quarterly revenue of $90.8 billion, down 4 percent year over year, and quarterly earnings per diluted share of $1.53.

The three month year over year from Apple’s consolidated statement:

Despite earning less, the stock price jumped 6% on the news.

See the Six Color Charts.

I’ve been a fan of Matt Levine’s Money Stuff newsletter for the past few years. Today I learned that he and Katie Greifeld have started a new weekly conversational style Money Stuff Podcast based on his recent Money Stuff articles. In the first episode, Katie and Matt discuss a hot fund for private stocks, a clever/illegal crypto trade and super users of US government data. Also there’s some fake Cormac McCarthy.

Last Thursday the US Department of Justice announced it was suing Apple for monopolizing smartphone markets within the United States. I’ve spent the last few days trying to wrap my head around how much of this is hype and how much is a legitimate public concern?

From the Office of Public Affairs | US Dept. of Justice:

The complaint alleges that Apple’s anticompetitive course of conduct has taken several forms, many of which continue to evolve today, including:

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• Blocking Innovative Super Apps. Apple has disrupted the growth of apps with broad functionality that would make it easier for consumers to switch between competing smartphone platforms.
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• Suppressing Mobile Cloud Streaming Services. Apple has blocked the development of cloud-streaming apps and services that would allow consumers to enjoy high-quality video games and other cloud-based applications without having to pay for expensive smartphone hardware.
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• Excluding Cross-Platform Messaging Apps. Apple has made the quality of cross-platform messaging worse, less innovative, and less secure for users so that its customers have to keep buying iPhones.
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• Diminishing the Functionality of Non-Apple Smartwatches. Apple has limited the functionality of third-party smartwatches so that users who purchase the Apple Watch face substantial out-of-pocket costs if they do not keep buying iPhones.
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• Limiting Third Party Digital Wallets. Apple has prevented third-party apps from offering tap-to-pay functionality, inhibiting the creation of cross-platform third-party digital wallets.
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The complaint also alleges that Apple’s conduct extends beyond these examples, affecting web browsers, video communication, news subscriptions, entertainment, automotive services, advertising, location services, and more. Apple has every incentive to extend and expand its course of conduct to acquire and maintain power over next-frontier devices and technologies.

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After investigating the top five complaints…

Blocking Innovative Super Apps: Super Apps provide multiple services including payment and instant messaging services, effectively becoming an all-encompassing self-contained commerce and communication platform that embraces many aspects of personal and commercial life. At the same time they are taking Apple to task, regulators in the US and Europe have also expressed concerns about the overall power of the such super apps and appear to be giving mixed signals over their concerns of privacy and monopoly powers.

Suppressing Mobile Cloud Streaming Services: Although Apple originally put up some roadblocks for Microsoft and its Xbox streaming services, it is now allowed on iOS¹. Perhaps there are other services of which I’m not aware that apply here, but it sounds like this is an older grievance that has been rectified.

Excluding Cross-Platform Messaging Apps: Although iPhone’s green bubbles have been characterized as the epitome of Apple’s unfairness — reading into the complaint it appears it’s more about the lack of SMS support in public APIs so that other apps can choose to mix their own propriety message protocols with SMS the way iMessage does. I agree, Apple should open up both phone and SMS messaging for third parties.

Diminishing the Functionality of Non-Apple Smartwatches: This complaint boils down again to restrictions on the public API that Apple’s private APIs don’t have. Although I think it’s absurd to say third party smartwatches only run on bluetooth and “Apple recognizes users frequently disable Bluetooth on their iPhone without realizing that doing so disconnects their watch”² and has therefore allowed syncing to continue with Apple Watch while bluetooth is disconnected. But really… who frequently disables Bluetooth?

Limiting Third Party Digital Wallets: As explained in the briefing, “Digital wallets are apps that allow a user to store and use passes and credentials, including credit cards, personal identification, movie tickets, and car keys, in a single app.” The complaint alleges that if “financial institutions offered digital wallets, then users would have access to new apps and technologies without needing to share their private financial data with additional third parties, including Apple.” I’d rather share my private data with Apple who believes that privacy is a human right vs. the retailers who are notorious for tracking users.

It appears there might be some legitimate monopolistic behaviour even though Apple doesn’t have a 95% monopoly control of the market the way Microsoft did during the case in 1998. I suspect there will be a few concessions but even in that case, in which Microsoft was found guilty, the end result³ was basically a mere settlement promise from Microsoft to straighten up and fly right. The remaining mystery is, even if Apple is found guilty, will the cure actually be worse for consumers??

1. in select countries
2. emphasis mine
3. after appeals and technicalities

Jason’s fake restaurant idea made me laugh.

A couple of years ago, frustrated by a takeout Italian sandwich with unevenly distributed fillings, I had a wonderful, life-changing idea: chopped sandwiches. It’s like what you get at those chopped salad places but instead of chopping up all the ingredients and putting them into a bowl, you put them between two slices of bread or in a hoagie roll or whatever. That way, you get all of the elements of the sandwich — cheese, tomato, lettuce, dressing/mayo, onion, whatever — in every single bite. Yum.

It also made me hungry.

The documentary “Objectified” is 15 years old and to celebrate, the producers have made the film free to watch from March 14-17.

Objectified (2009, 75 minutes) is a documentary film about our complex relationship with manufactured objects and, by extension, the people who design them. What can we learn about who we are, and who we want to be, from the objects with which we surround ourselves?

It’s a great little film at a great price, from Gary Hustwit the director of Helvetica¹.

(via)

1. I thought it odd that the hard coded subtitles in Objectified were something so close but not Helvetica. If it’s a joke, I don’t get it.

It was my 45th birthday today. We celebrated with pizza and ice cream cake.

Here’s to another 45!

The other day the news leaked that The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints had purchased the Kirtland Temple.

Kirtland, not Kirkland, and not a “miracle”, after all, it turns out it’s true you can buy anything in this world for money, but still it’s a historic sale.

From The Church News:

Today, Tuesday, March 5, 2024, the responsibility and ownership for the Kirtland Temple, several historic buildings in Nauvoo, and various manuscripts and artifacts officially transferred from Community of Christ to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints for an agreed-upon amount. Together, we share an interest in and reverence for these historic sites and items and are committed to preserving them for future generations.\n

Rumour has it the agreed upon amount is a whooping $192.5 million USD. Included in the sale:

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• The Bible used in the Joseph Smith Translation
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• Manuscripts of the Joseph Smith Translation
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• Seven letters from Smith to his wife Emma
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• A history of the church written by John Whitmer
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• The original David Rogers portraits of Joseph and Emma Smith
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• The cornerstone of the Nauvoo House, used to store the original Book of Mormon manuscript
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• The original door of Missouri’s Liberty Jail, where Joseph, Hyrum, Sidney Rigdon, Lyman Wight, Alexander McRae, and Caleb Baldwin were famously held captive.
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• A document with the title of ‘Caractors,’ which are alleged to contain a sample of inscriptions from the gold plates. (In 2017, the church bought the printer’s manuscript of the Book of Mormon from the Community of Christ for $35 million — an amount one historian called a bargain.)
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• Joseph Smith’s writing desk from the Kirtland Temple.
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• Emma Smith’s walking stick.
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• The home of Sidney Rigdon and wife Phebe.
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• The Smith Homestead
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• The Mansion house
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• The Nauvoo house
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• The Red Brick Store
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• Other homes and significant documents that belonged to early members.
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This video about the news leaking explains how it went down:

Madame Web: “The real culprit here is the greed manifested by studio suits who keep hawking cheap knockoffs. ‘Madame Web’ feels like a random collection of half-baked ideas thrown into the air and allowed to land, with the cynical assumption that we’ll buy any lazy hack-work that is Spider-Man adjacent. Kill me now.” — Peter Travers, ABC News

Bob Marley: One Love: “If you’ve never heard of Bob Marley before watching the picture, you might know even less about him when the end credits roll.” — Brian Orndorf, Blu-ray.com

Lisa Frankenstein: “Overall, Lisa Frankenstein remains a lifeless genre effort needing a spark of electricity.” — Eric Marchen, Rogers TV

Land of Bad: “Despite solid and brutal action throughout, the longer this goes on, the storytelling choices put one in a land of confusion” — Robert Kojder, Flickering Myth

Players: “Director Trish Sie’s middling and at times mawkish film not only makes us hate the game, but also its players.” — Courtney Howard, Variety

Cabel Sasser won an auction of Dixieland jazz 78rpm records and found a long lost song cut from Cinderella:

My goal was to preserve some never-before-heard recordings of an incredible Dixieland jazz band made up of mostly Disney employees, the Firehouse Five Plus Two. But along the way, I accidentally discovered an incredible lost song that was cut from Walt Disney’s Cinderella. And you’re about to hear it too. Let’s go…

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Read on cabel.com/2024/02/13/firehouse-five-and-the-cinderella-surprise/

Last night Jon Stewart returned as temporary Monday host of The Daily Show. After creative differences with the executives at Apple Tv+ concerning Stewart’s material ending the show before its third season, the polically minded comedian has returned to Comedy Central to host once a week leading up to the election.

Here’s his first episode back:

For the past couple years I’ve been trying to get my best time swimming a kilometre under 16:00. I’m still not there and obviously it’s not quite the same level as Casey’s three-hour marathon dream but the video definitely resonates in so many ways:

(via Waxy)

As Apple Vision Pro, Apple’s revolutionary spatial computer, arrives in stores across the United States, Casey has a cute review:

And if you want a more serious deep dive, check out Daring Fireball’s take or MKB’s video:

Apple today announced earnings revenue of $119.6 billion. Investors and analysts weren’t expecting any records after Apple warned that revenue would be flat following the longest sales slump in the last couple decades but, it turns out, it was their second biggest revenue report ever.

From Apple Newsroom press release:

CUPERTINO, CALIFORNIA Apple today announced financial results for its fiscal 2024 first quarter ended December 30, 2023. The Company posted quarterly revenue of $119.6 billion, up 2 percent year over year, and quarterly earnings per diluted share of $2.18, up 16 percent year over year.

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“Today Apple is reporting revenue growth for the December quarter fueled by iPhone sales, and an all-time revenue record in Services,” said Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO. “We are pleased to announce that our installed base of active devices has now surpassed 2.2 billion, reaching an all-time high across all products and geographic segments. And as customers begin to experience the incredible Apple Vision Pro tomorrow, we are committed as ever to the pursuit of groundbreaking innovation — in line with our values and on behalf of our customers.”

Tim Cook also hinted at some upcoming announcements in AI.

As we look ahead, we will continue to invest in these [Vision Pro] and other technologies that will shape the future. That includes artificial intelligence, where we continue to spend a tremendous amount of time and effort, and we’re excited to share the details of our ongoing work in that space later this year.

Apple has long been working on custom chips that specialize in machine learning but were caught somewhat flat-footed at the speed and popularity of large language models. Perhaps Siri will finally get the overhaul we’ve been waiting for since her introduction on the iPhone 4s in October of 2011. It will be interesting to see the reveal at WWDC this June.

As always, the pretty charts via SixColors.

When you first look at Pong Wars you might think, neat… but I get it. However, if you watch for a couple of minutes you’ll find yourself routing for one side or the other and become mesmerized with the back and forth nature of the game.

(via Waxy)

Yesterday marked the 40th anniversary of Steve Jobs unveiling the Macintosh, the first successful mass-marketed computer with a graphical user interface. My first “Mac” wasn’t until my 2015 MacBook Pro but as a third grade kid my parents got me an Apple II¹ which I loved and on which I learned to code BASIC.

Pricing for the original Macintosh started at $2,495, equivalent to over $7,000 today. Key specs and features included an 8 MHz processor, 128 KB of RAM, a 400 KB floppy disk drive for storage, and serial ports for connecting a printer and other accessories.

1. Technically it was a third party clone of an Apple II but at that age I didn’t really know the difference