{ "version": "https://jsonfeed.org/version/1", "title": "editorial on Tyler Knows Nothing", "icon": "https://www.gravatar.com/avatar/aefe2471dd17582d4028c3cf27b70b0b?s=96&d=https%3A%2F%2Fmicro.blog%2Fimages%2Fblank_avatar.png", "home_page_url": "https://tylerknowsnothing.com/", "feed_url": "https://tylerknowsnothing.com/feed.json", "items": [ { "id": "http://tknblogs.micro.blog/2026/03/05/macbook-neo-yeah-go-ahead.html", "title": "MacBook Neo? Yeah, go ahead and buy it!", "content_html": "\"The\n

“MacBook Neo Hands-On… Watch BEFORE You Buy!”

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“New $599 MacBook Neo! What Apple Didn’t Tell You”

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“BEFORE you buy the MacBook Neo…”

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“Apple’s $599 MacBook Neo is GREAT (..or is it?)”

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The headlines on countless YouTube videos say it all… right? It’s compromised! Apple didn’t tell you everything! Don’t make the wrong choice! It’s madness, per usual, as influencers scramble to carve out a potentially contentious position on Apple’s new affordable laptop, the MacBook Neo.

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It’s all bunkum, if you ask me.

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These influencers are the same people who complain when their $1200 Pro phones aren’t also the best cameras ever and shocked when a base M4 Mini can edit their 4K ProRaw videos as well as the $15,000 Mac Pro they bought a few years ago. They will tell you that the MacBook Neo will be good enough for email, messaging, simple spreadsheets, and “casual” browsing, whatever that is (is there extreme browsing?).

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Again… bunkum.

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Then one individual on social media said this, “That MacBook Neo is going to crash and burn the first time someone tries to open passwords.app”.

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I responded, “What an odd take. The A18 Pro is from the iPhone 16 Pro. I imagine Passwords opens just fine on that since my 14 Plus (A15 Bionic) and 12 Mini (A14 Bionic) also have no issues opening Passwords. It’s a $600 laptop, from Apple, for average users, of which most humans are. And you’re not going to get a workstation that can edit feature films for $600. From any vendor using any chip technology. Just saying.”

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To which they rejoined with, “this is tongue in cheek because it opens terribly on many existing M chip laptops without 16 or more ram. Why did you feel the need to defend Apple, especially along arguments I had not raised?”

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This is just nonsense. The wife has an 8GB M1 Mini, which is a little less performant that the MacBook Neo’s A18 Pro, and we haven’t seen it chug or catch fire, and she has more than 100 tabs open in Chrome. Not kidding. It runs for weeks between reboots and runs just fine. Of course, she only runs a few apps. I run twelve or more on my 16GB M1 Mini and no, Passwords does not cause any lag at any time.

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What I’d like you to take away from this is that you decide what you need, and if it’s an every day laptop that isn’t being used to edit major motion pictures or render complex 3D scenes, you’ll likely be just fine. You’ll be able to watch videos, run all the apps that come with the system, and a lot more. If I were to ask you about Thunderbolt and your answer is “What’s that” or “I’ve heard of it, I think”, then I would be shocked if the MacBook Neo wasn’t capable enough for your needs.

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$600 for an Apple laptop is a fantastic deal, and if the success of the M4 Mini (also $600) is any indication, the Neo will also sell well. Before the Rampocalypse (thanks, AI TechChads) you could regularly pick up an M4 Mini for under $500, and I don’t see a reason why the Neo won’t go on sale frequently as vendors vie for your dollars.

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PROTIP: Amazon historically loves to sell these at less than other sale prices, so keep an eye open. Just keep in mind that prices on everything are up, so keep an eye out for Apple sales that bundle three years of AppleCare+ with the system for less than $640, which is an excellent deal.

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So, for the price of a cheap, plastic-clad PC laptop bundled with Windows 11 and all that includes (ads and Copilot AI and more nonsense), you get a milled aluminum 13" laptop with Apple’s legendary build quality and up to sixteen hours on a charge because it runs with the efficiency of an iPhone 16 Pro. Instead of being primed for disappointment from influencers who would never, ever consider spending as little as $600 (in today’s money) to buy one for themselves, just get what you want.

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That’s what I’ll be doing. In Indigo, of course.

\n", "date_published": "2026-03-05T14:18:14-07:00", "url": "https://tylerknowsnothing.com/2026/03/05/macbook-neo-yeah-go-ahead.html", "tags": ["Apple","editorial"] }, { "id": "http://tknblogs.micro.blog/2025/06/24/a-word-to-the-weiss.html", "title": "A Word to the Weiss | An Unauthorized Reprint", "content_html": "

David Ellison has quietly courted Bari Weiss for a possible role at CBS News—a move that hints at how he may steer the network if his merger goes through.

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by Oliver Darcy - June 24th, 2025 [Source]

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David Ellison and Bari Weiss. Bari Weiss (Status Illustration/Leigh Vogel/Alberto E. Rodriguez/Getty Images)

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Late last year, during a trip to New York City, David Ellison quietly made time for a meeting that said as much about his worldview as it did about his interest in media. According to people familiar with the matter, the Hollywood scion set time aside on his busy calendar to meet with Bari Weiss, the founder of The Free Press. Ellison, like a number of C-suite executive types, has long been an admirer of Weiss’ style of journalism, I’m told, viewing her as one of the more compelling voices in the shifting landscape of independent journalism.

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During the meeting, Ellison, who is set to control CBS News once the Paramount Global–Skydance Media deal closes, expressed strong interest in recruiting Weiss to work in some capacity with the network, according to people familiar with the matter. I’m told that Ellison appeared to leave a wide range of options on the table, signaling that he sees Weiss as a valuable addition while he considers how to put his stamp on the news division. While a management role is not said to be on the table, it would not be out of the range of possibilities that she could be named as an on-air contributor or even perhaps given a coveted correspondent position on “60 Minutes.”

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That said, it’s unclear whether the discussions between Ellison and Weiss ever advanced beyond the meeting late last year and a representative for Skydance declined to comment. Weiss did not respond to a request for comment. Regardless, the fact that the conversation occurred at all offers an early glimpse of Ellison’s thinking and how he plans to reshape the storied news organization, once home to the likes of Walter Cronkite and Edward R. Murrow.

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In recent years, Weiss has become a major star in right-wing media, known for assailing mainstream institutions as out of touch and under the trance of the “woke” left. Weiss has also gained significant notoriety for chastising and portraying mainstream news outlets, including CBS News, as biased instruments of the progressive elite. While Weiss might be popular in certain circles, many journalists view her unfavorably, criticizing both her tactics and views.

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That Ellison would entertain bringing her into the fold signals not only his appetite for shaking up the network, but also the kind of voices he might turn to. Not only does Ellison appear to be interested in looking beyond traditional broadcasting talent, but he appears to be on board with introducing voices that have made their names by relentlessly criticizing—or outright bashing—the legacy press.

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Indeed, the Weiss outreach offers one of the first tangible clues as to how Ellison might seek to chart a new course for CBS News, given that he has remained largely silent in public about his vision for the network. While Ellison hasn’t spelled out his plans, he’s recently been spotted ringside at UFC fights alongside Donald Trump as he seemingly tries to win over the president for government approval of his protracted merger. Taken together, the actions suggest Ellison may be comfortable moving the network in a direction that aims to appeal more to right-leaning audiences—whether because of his personal preference, the current political moment, or both.

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Of course, inside CBS News, the journalists are on edge about what their new parent company will do with the organization, particularly after network boss Wendy McMahon and “60 Minutes” chief Bill Owens both resigned earlier this year in protest over corporate interference. Morale inside “60 Minutes,” I’m told, is at a nadir, with staffers uncertain what the future holds for the crown jewel of American broadcast journalism. Moreover, broadly throughout the organization, staffers are anticipating the new owners will seek to implement budget cuts when they get the keys to the palace—and they’re not wrong to harbor such worries.

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For now, however, Ellison’s exact plans for CBS News remain unclear and the Skydance team is holding those cards close to the vest. But his meeting with Weiss—and the broader questions it raises about the kind of talent he might seek to bring in—is sure to add to the unease already coursing through the newsroom. What is certain is that CBS News is making its way through a period of profound uncertainty, as employees wait to see what is in store for them, just around the corner.

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My Words

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It’s a really bad time to be putting critical reporting like this behind a paywall. I’ll take it down if asked, but I believe everyone needs to be able to read this, not just those in the know or who can afford to. The oligarchy has been working hard for a very long time to grapple back their stranglehold over the American economy. The ultra wealthy are snapping up anything of value, monetary, production, competitive, and messaging platforms alike, in order to have greater control over what we see, hear, buy, have access to, and otherwise consume, and not for the betterment of society. Read this. Share this. We clearly can’t stop it, as much as the courts can stop the Trump Administration from breaking the law and the Constitution, but if we know, we can stop watching CBS altogether. #capitalism #journalism #uspol #editorial

\n", "date_published": "2025-06-24T20:38:56-07:00", "url": "https://tylerknowsnothing.com/2025/06/24/a-word-to-the-weiss.html", "tags": ["journalism","politics","capitalism","editorial"] }, { "id": "http://tknblogs.micro.blog/2025/05/25/iapwe-wont-leave-us-alone.html", "title": "IAPWE won't leave us alone!", "content_html": "\"Auto-generated\n

We are being harassed by the International Association of Professional Writers and Editors, also known as IAPWE. We signed up for memberships a few years ago, then cancelled after our first year. We found no benefit to the membership. Now, despite cancelling everything we could find on PayPal, speaking with the credit card servicer who can do nothing, and emailing IAPWE over and over and over again, they continue to charge us.

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We both subscribed using PayPal, and we’ve no clue how they got our card details to charge us directly! I’m going to assume they can see all those details in the PayPal dashboard, which is frightening. The image above is a receipt from earlier this year, but the charges have not stopped.

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This has been going on for over a year now, and we can’t stop it. We’ve considered cancelling the card, which is provided to my wife by her professional union, if this continues. Our emails to them used to get professional responses claiming they would stop, but now they don’t even bother to respond, even to threats of legal action. At least cancelling the PayPal accounts has stopped that vector.

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I am posting this as both a warning against considering membership with IAPWE as well as a reminder of the almost complete lack of control we have over our money. It’s utterly maddening. Be careful, please. It’s not the amount they’re trying to take, but the principal. If they do this to enough unsuspecting people, they could be making a lot of free money if it turns out they are indeed a scam operation. #capitalism #PSA #moneymatters #personalfinance #writing #writers

\n", "date_published": "2025-05-25T17:57:34-07:00", "url": "https://tylerknowsnothing.com/2025/05/25/iapwe-wont-leave-us-alone.html", "tags": ["writing","capitalism","editorial"] }, { "id": "http://tknblogs.micro.blog/2025/05/08/are-apple-silicon-macs-too.html", "title": "Are Apple Silicon Macs too good?", "content_html": "\"Auto-generated\n

In his latest video Luke Miani asks if #Apple made their new machines too good. Across two polls, having run a second one to verify the results of the first, respondents strongly indicated they had no intention of upgrading their early M-series Macs. I have a feeling Apple fully expected that, however. Watch the video on YouTube. We have three Mini’s, two M1 and one Intel, and have no need to upgrade them anytime soon. I may desire an M4 Mini, but I don’t need one. What is behind this?

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To understand this there are, I believe, two different, unrelated factors that need to be taken into consideration:

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    \n
  1. Apple’s primary drivers of revenue are the #iPhone, the App Store, and services.
    2. \n
  2. There are millions upon millions of #Windows users who might choose to move to Apple rather than be forced upgrade to Windows 11 but cannot since their hardware is incompatible, because #Microsoft has chosen to enshittify their desktop with ads and #AI, or both.
    3. \n
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Apple’s personal computer marketshare has long been around 20% with Microsoft dominating for literal decades with 72% of the PC market. But it’s critical to understand that a decade ago Microsoft had well over 80%, and it continues to slowly decay. The iPhone plays a significant role in the fact that Apple has a $2.5T valuation, as consumers tend to upgrade every two years, giving Apple a mostly reliable playing field to project consistent revenues.

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NOTE: Microsoft has a similar market capitalization to Apple but the important distinction is that Microsoft engages in a wide range of markets, including corporate software and services, as well as the Xbox and video games publishing, all of which contribute to the company’s bottom line. Apple still competes by offering a mere fraction of the models and verticals of its rivals.

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That consistency is crucial. It allows Apple to not only sit back and just let their Mac users be Mac users and upgrade as they please, but also breathing room for some mild experimentation with various services and hardware. The iPhone Mini was available for the iPhone 12 and 13 then cancelled to be replaced by the Plus model, which has been around longer than the Mini. And the next rumored experiment will be the iPhone Air which may appear this October. They’ve also got enough in the bank to allow them to pivot and shift based on unforeseen market fluctuations or, in the case of component availability, weather the less than stellar rollout of the moderately underwhelming M3 processor.

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And Apple isn’t blind. I’m quite sure that one major consideration in their calculations is Microsoft and their recent “efforts” to tank their own success. Users are unhappy with Windows 11 and in October of this year Microsoft will be ending support for the far more popular Windows 10. Many users are even downgrading to Windows 10 to escape the oppressive changes in Windows 11. In addition, the upgrade to Windows 11 requires support for TPM 2.0 which will “relegate” millions of unsupported systems to be discarded or sold for cheap, an outcome that is exciting many nerds over the prospect of a torrent of dirt cheap or free computers which can happily and securely run #Linux and other operating systems. Linux is an easy and capable migration path, but being honest with ourselves, most Windows users won’t go this direction.

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I think Apple knows this. For one, they’ve maintained a stability in offerings that is appealing when compared to Microsoft’s numerous radical shifts over the years, the frequency of which has started to turn off consumers. Second, Apple has been aggressive in allowing resellers to offer significant sale pricing and even has an exclusive deal with Walmart to sell new M1 Macbook Air base models for $700 and which is on seemingly permanent sale for $650. In most of Apple’s history this is unprecedented, as they have for decades required resellers to match their own pricing and not offer sales. Finally, Apple’s resale value for their Intel models has dropped precipitously and used M1 and M2 machines are a lot more affordable than they used to be, presenting an enticing option for budget buyers.

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Apple, for the most part, has played the long game. Pixar focused on getting one particular element perfected for each film so they might add that element to their toolbox for later films like fur in Monsters Inc. and the ocean in Finding Nemo. Apple has done much the same, working on iterations of various elements of their systems, refining them until they meet their internal expectations for excellence. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that Steve Jobs ran both and had, with help from others to manifest his vision, been instrumental in forming the foundations of two entire industries. Ingest that in whatever form you prefer.

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The short answer to the question posed by Luke is no. The suggestion that CEO Tim Cook and the entire team at Apple could have miscalculated that the potential longevity of their products could cause Apple, one of the wealthiest corporations on planet Earth, to disintegrate or fall into the doldrums of relevance is in itself a miscalculation of what Apple is and how it operates. Is Apple flawless? Hell no. Most recently, I think they horribly miscalculated both the retail price and consumer interest in Apple Vision. There are other failures dotting Apple’s history, as well.

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On the other hand, they basically own the tablet market. Full stop. They swap first and second place with Samsung for mobile phone volume, and Samsung has to make dozens of models to compete with Apple. AirPods are stupid popular. The Apple Watch has a huge chunk of the smart watch market. Apple is doing well, and all whilst offering a fraction of the options of others they compete with.

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#tech #technology #opinion

\n", "date_published": "2025-05-08T16:31:24-07:00", "url": "https://tylerknowsnothing.com/2025/05/08/are-apple-silicon-macs-too.html", "tags": ["Apple","editorial","technology"] }, { "id": "http://tknblogs.micro.blog/2025/04/17/i-am-not-an-illustrator.html", "content_html": "\"Trumpenstein\n

I am not an illustrator or an artist of any kind, but I’ve been messing with images for decades. However #Adobe sucks ass so instead I’ve been using Pixelmator since 2010 or so. I made this in Pixelmator Pro for macOS 15. #TFG #satire #funny #art #idiocracy #EndFascismNow #DeposeTrump #SaveAmerica

\n", "date_published": "2025-04-17T20:05:20-07:00", "url": "https://tylerknowsnothing.com/2025/04/17/i-am-not-an-illustrator.html", "tags": ["politics","editorial","satire"] }, { "id": "http://tknblogs.micro.blog/2025/03/10/there-is-a-very-dear.html", "content_html": "

There is a very dear price we will pay if we allow our elected leaders to keep leaning into the Overton Window #TFG smashed open. In other words, the #Democrats need to be taught what #FAFO really means and now, not in 2026. #uspol rimaregasblog42.substack.com/p/those-w…

\n", "date_published": "2025-03-10T13:47:28-07:00", "url": "https://tylerknowsnothing.com/2025/03/10/there-is-a-very-dear.html", "tags": ["politics","editorial"] }, { "id": "http://tknblogs.micro.blog/2025/01/18/a-month-for-a-single.html", "title": "$15 a month for a single newsletter is unsustainable", "content_html": "\"An\n

#journalism #dollarnomics #editorial - Tyler K. Nothing reporting.

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DATELINE INTERNETOPIA - #Substack has created a mythology in the form of the $15 a month newsletter. The claim was that it would help support independent writers who have been driven out of organized news gathering by capitalist greed’s desire to “trim the fat” (meaning people who cost money they’d rather have in their Cayman bank accounts), but the model is unsustainable. In reality, all it does is net Substack more revenue.

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Of course, they need that larger cut to support the now far more bloated model that appears to include completely free hosting of a blog, unless you want to use your custom domain, and then you’ll have to cough up $50… and then do it yourself. Yeah. You pay them to then do all the legwork. Liberating, indeed.

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Whinging about fees nobody else charges aside, most newsletters are asking for $15 every single month. That doesn’t get you an entire newspapers worth of content, but the words of one contributor. And Substack doesn’t offer discounts for subscribing to multiple newsletters, so if you pay for three newsletters you will be forking over $45 a month.

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That comes to $540 a year which is more than double what we pay annually to heat our water and dry our clothes. Imagine floating an entire newspaper’s bullpen at those rates so one person could stay up-to-date with the news! Not that I would, but I can get a subscription to the Pasadena Star-News for $3.50 a week. That’s an actual newspaper with lots of contributors, sections, resources, and whatnot and it’s still a buck less a month than that single newsletter.

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We can’t do this. It won’t work. We cannot continue to rely on insanely wealthy oligarchs owning all of our local and national news, whose collective bias against a free press has become increasingly clear over the past few years, to transmit that bias into our consciousness on a daily basis.

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If there is one thing we can do as, and I’ll use the word yet again, a collective, it is to subscribe to an organic virtual bullpen of writers to produce open source news that everyone could benefit from, regardless of how deep (or shallow) their pockets are. Several such collectives would be even better. And let’s start it at $5 a month with a sliding scale so readers can select a contribution they can afford.

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The mainstream media, popularly known as the MSM in various circles, and the internet as a whole, has been slowly and methodically subsumed by the rich and powerful and turned into outlets for their increasingly unhinged desires to terraform society into something better suited to their wants and needs.

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Look no further than Elon Musk’s acquisition of Twitter and its rapid descent into madness. More recently Mark Zuckerberg has announced the end of fact checking on Facebook and other Meta platforms for reasons that are plainly disingenuous. X is much smaller than Facebook, but Facebook and Instagram represents 5 BILLION USERS.

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If Mark is able to influence a mere 1% of his global userbase, that’s 50 MILLION people.

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That’s just insane.

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A solution requires two parties, creators and readers. We have the creators, but readers need to step up and be willing to pay a small monthly fee knowing that it will go towards the production of quality, reliable, fact-checked news gathering. Getting everything on the internet for free is a zombie shambling around a china shop, smashing everything and making a chaotic mess of things and we need to put it down, for good.

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After all, you get what you pay for.

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For more on my concept of Dollarnomics, read here and here.

", "date_published": "2025-01-18T20:41:25-07:00", "url": "https://tylerknowsnothing.com/2025/01/18/a-month-for-a-single.html", "tags": ["journalism","editorial","Dollarnomics"] }, { "id": "http://tknblogs.micro.blog/2025/01/01/substack-charging-for-setting-up.html", "title": "Substack charging for \"setting up\" custom domain names you own is extortion", "content_html": "\"A\n

That sour, disappointed look flooded onto my wife’s face. She was upset. I asked her what was wrong, and she explained to me that her Wordpress stats weren’t working like they used to. I poked around and couldn’t find anything obviously amiss in the Jetpack plugin settings, so I told her it was likely a glitch and would clear up. About a week later I got the email.

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Wordpress had determined that my wife’s social justice and political analysis blog (https://rimaregas.com) was now deemed a commercial website and that she’d need to pay up in order to continue getting the vital stats she needs to run her site. It is important to note here that we don’t use Wordpress hosting, but Name.com website hosting, so her Wordpress installation is effectively self-hosted, and self-hosted sites have, for many years, been free of the capitalism of the official Wordpress hosting platform run by Automattic.

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And how, you might ask, did they determine that the blog was now considered “commercial”? By asking for donations…

\n\"A\n

Automattic has been shifting the goal posts and clearly want to start milking the self-hosting crowd after spending more than a decade making Jetpack a vital component in almost any Wordpress installation, especially for small bloggers. We didn’t need any of the paid upgrades and the free services offered were more than sufficient. Rima preferred to remain on the blogging platform she’d become accustomed to, but this thing with the stats was the final straw. So, she decided to migrate away from Wordpress and selected Substack, the popular newsletter self-publishing tool that has grown into a blogging platform of its own, as her new platform.

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I looked over everything. I combed through the settings and documentation to understand how everything worked and to verify a wide range of items like compatibility with Wordpress post imports and migrating her list of subscribers. One feature I even checked was if Substack had the ability to assign her domain name to her blog, and I was pleased to discover that indeed it did. I worked through the various tasks of getting everything configured for her and to essentially become a mirror of her Wordpress website which, after setting up the aforementioned custom domain with our DNS registrar, would be shut down.

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In retrospect I’d made one critical mistake, however… I’d never clicked the link to setup the custom domain.

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In all the years I’ve been blogging and working with Wordpress and setting up websites and whatnot I have never once come across what I saw in the image at the top of this post. I’ve seen far lower prices (around $5-10) and even annual fees, but these have always been for commercial systems designed for corporations, and you always expect that kind of chicanery in the enterprise realm, but not on the consumer internet. I’m not a networking guru or anything like that, but I do know that setting DNS (Domain Name Services) to point one address at another address is, in short, a zero cost proposition.

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The anger that welled up in me at the thought of having to pay $50 for an automated process that requires no technician involvement and what amounts to a tiny change in a text file on my registrars DNS server which is then propagated to other DNS servers (99.9% of which are not run by Substack) across the entire internet was profound. In fact, I am the one who does all the work, so I’m paying Substack $50 and then doing the work myself? The concept is literally insane. There is no reality in which Substack’s DNS servers are overburdened by custom domain name configurations. Period.

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But Rima had already committed and we weren’t going to turn back, so we haven’t, but we also haven’t dropped half a C-note for the privilege of getting to use the domain name we own on her blog. $50 is precious to us, but we will find a time at which we can do it. It just rankles that Substack has chosen to make free revenue from a service that isn’t even their own and costs them nothing to implement.

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Caveat emptor, I guess.

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PS: Go check out rimaregasblog42.substack.com for some quality writing and to see what Rima’s tracking.

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#capitalism #technology #editorial #substack #dns #enshittification

", "date_published": "2025-01-01T17:19:38-07:00", "url": "https://tylerknowsnothing.com/2025/01/01/substack-charging-for-setting-up.html", "tags": ["capitalism","editorial","technology"] }, { "id": "http://tknblogs.micro.blog/2024/12/09/i-think-sam.html", "content_html": "

I think Sam Elliot kinda nails it… to the wall… with his special brand of gravitas and casual Southern snark. #politics #TFG #capitalism

\n\"\"\n", "date_published": "2024-12-09T16:19:32-07:00", "url": "https://tylerknowsnothing.com/2024/12/09/i-think-sam.html", "tags": ["capitalism","editorial"] }, { "id": "http://tknblogs.micro.blog/2024/12/09/reality-has-unveiled.html", "content_html": "

Reality has unveiled its new slogan for the next era of humanity!

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BUCKLE UP

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whee. #sarcasm #FML

\n", "date_published": "2024-12-09T09:43:58-07:00", "url": "https://tylerknowsnothing.com/2024/12/09/reality-has-unveiled.html", "tags": ["editorial"] }, { "id": "http://tknblogs.micro.blog/2024/11/21/um-wow-okay.html", "content_html": "

Um. Wow. Okay… So, it’s a banana… and it’s taped to a wall… with a strip of standard silver duct tape. And it just sold at auction for $6.24 MILLION DOLLARS. Aside from being the easiest art to forge, I applaud artist Maurizio Cattelan for creating “Comedian” since it pokes the art industrial complex in the eye and the winning bid makes fools of every last art “speculator” out there. It also peeks under the veneer of stupid we’re running on these days. #art #banana #stupid www.nbcnews.com/news/us-n…

\n\"\"\n", "date_published": "2024-11-21T17:11:15-07:00", "url": "https://tylerknowsnothing.com/2024/11/21/um-wow-okay.html", "tags": ["capitalism","editorial"] }, { "id": "http://tknblogs.micro.blog/2024/06/27/im-done-with.html", "title": "I'm done with Microsoft Windows", "content_html": "

\n

As of May 31st, 2024 when Microsoft announced Windows Recall, I have a single physical machine, and no virtual machines, with any version of Windows installed and that will not be changing as long as Microsoft remains on the path they're forged for themselves. The one machine which has Windows 10 is a Dell Venue 8 Pro which needs a dongle to install another operating system, and I need to find the dongle. Once I find the dongle, Windows is gone, gone, gone. Why would I go through so much trouble getting rid of Windows?

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In short, mostly Windows 11 and that I'll have to pay to get support for Windows 10 in October of 2025, but also everything Microsoft is doing now that is clearly anti-consumer. Let's dig into the demonstrable reasons:

\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
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There are organizations in various parts of the US that take donations or older computers, refurbish them, and sell for cheap or donate them to families in need. One fantastic resource is

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Digitunity's AFTRR location map

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which lists US and Canadian organizations that take computer donations, refurbish them, and provide them to people and families in need. Another resource is the

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list of organizations at Impactful.Ninja

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, which is up-to-date as of 2024. If you have more resources, comment on this post to let me know and I'll add them if they check out :)

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I am, first and foremost, a Mac guy. I've been using Apple computers since the early 80's, and my first full-time Mac was an Apple PowerBook 145b in the early-90's. When I started writing professionally in the late-90's I'd added a PowerMac 7300/200 and a Newton MessagePad 130 to my stable. Despite my technical editing and revision contracts were predominantly for Windows books, I used my PowerMac to run Windows 95 and 98 in Connectix's Virtual PC to complete my work, and never once disappointed an editor (except when I missed deadlines, of course). It was a potent combination for the time.

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In the early 2000's I started fiddling with Linux, taught myself how to build my own system based on Caldera's OpenLinux using internet resources and, using a Packard-Bell desktop running Citrix MetaFrame, served Windows apps to my Linux desktop over our home network. I ended up cruising on Macs and Linux machines almost exclusively through to 2011 when my MacBook Pro was stolen from a Starbucks.

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It was quite the blow. And I had begun to be disenchanted with Apple at that time, so I dove into the PC ecosystem and Windows 7. I then struggled through Windows 8 until Windows 8.1 and 3rd party utilities improved it, then migrated to Windows 10 when the betas became stable. But in recent years, Microsoft has been backsliding from many of the advances they'd made during the Windows 10 era.

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Then Windows 11 was introduced when Microsoft had strongly suggested that they were doing to drop the number scheme and just keep updating Windows continuously. That alone made people upset, but in the beginning it was much like Windows 10 with a new desktop experience that was... novel.

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It didn't take long for that novelty to start wearing thin, however. Microsoft dropped the ball on a number of exciting projects like the Surface Duo, yet another in a long line of mobile device flops they've attempted following their initial success in the 2000's, and the Hololens, their mixed reality headset that was supposed to usher in a new age of computing, but is now only available for enterprise customers. In fact, Microsoft has bombed on a shocking number of projects over the years.

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Ultimately it is the general air of disrespect and disdain for users that is wafting from Redmond in 2023-2024 that has finally irretrievably soured me on Microsoft. While I dislike absolutes, I find it highly unlikely that Satya Nadella will turn make significant changes to the plan he's been ushering in, at least not without facing down a sizeable consumer backlash that will threaten stock prices and spook investors.

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I guess we'll just have to wait and see if it comes to that.

", "date_published": "2024-06-27T13:10:01-07:00", "url": "https://tylerknowsnothing.com/2024/06/27/im-done-with.html", "tags": ["editorial"] }, { "id": "http://tknblogs.micro.blog/2023/12/28/apples-notes-cannot.html", "title": "Apple's Notes cannot be exported, and that's wrong...", "content_html": "\n

Ok, this is annoying. Apple Notes is a wonderfully capable notes app that allows you to bulk import all manner of rich text file formats, even entire Evernote exports, and organize them the way you like... with one exception. If you want to stop using Notes, you have to leave everything you created in Notes behind, or export them one by one.

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\nI have over 300 notes. \n

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\nThis is not only annoying but terribly wrong of Apple. I shouldn't have to explain why. I didn't spend a few thousand dollars on Apple gear to lose control over the data I create. I have personal notes, drafts of articles, detailed project concepts, musings, recipes for loads of gluten-free foods, and a bunch more categories. And now that I'm not using Apple Notes anymore... er. No. That's not right. Now that I don't use Apple Notes anymore I am forced to keep it around in order to retain all that material I generated or saved from various web pages.

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I am now using Drafts ($20/year on the App Store), also known as Drafts 5 for iOS and iPad, which has been around for a very long time, from what I understand. Using the app, I can see why. It's a powerfully fast and capable notes capturing tool that allows me to create a new note with a simple keystroke so I don't lose the bright spots of inspiration that, today, seem to fritter away all too quickly. In a 24-hour period I've already created thirteen notes with over 2,000 words combined.

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There is, however, nothing I can do about all the notes I have in Apple Notes since the damnable thing won't let me grab them all wholesale. If I can offer any advice, it would be to not engage Apple's Notes app for any reason because if at any point you need to get them out, you will not be able to do so without spending a load of personal time exporting them to PDF... the only export option. 

\n

Unacceptable, Apple. Unacceptable.

\n

---

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If you enjoyed what you just read and would like to support be for $1 a month, click here for my Ko-Fi page.

", "date_published": "2023-12-28T18:49:23-07:00", "url": "https://tylerknowsnothing.com/2023/12/28/apples-notes-cannot.html", "tags": ["Apple","editorial"] }, { "id": "http://tknblogs.micro.blog/2023/12/24/how-jj-abrams.html", "title": "How J.J. Abrams broke Star Trek", "content_html": " \n
\nStar Trek: The Next Generation 30th Anniversary Print by Dusty Abell, Copyright © 2017, Roddenberry Entertainment Inc. Reprinted with permission. All Rights Reserved. Dusty Abell is a comic artist who has pencilled countless comic books, is an illustrator, and has been involved in the animation industry as a character designer since 2000. He has worked on productions such as Batman: Return of the Caped Crusader, Batman vs. Two-Face, Young Justice, Mike Tyson Mysteries, King of the Hill, The Official Handbook of the Invincible Universe for Robert Kirkman, the creator of The Walking Dead, and many, many others.\n
\n
\n

The first Star Trek television show, known colloquially as The Original Series, ran from 1966 to 1969. The series, produced by Paramount Television and both commissioned by and broadcast on NBC, had its moments with episodes that broke critical new ground, like the first inter-racial kisses in Season 1’s introduction to Khan Noonien-Singh, “Space Seed,” and the more frequently cited kiss between Kirk and Uhura in Season 3 episode “Plato’s Stepchildren.”

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Then there were other episodes that kicked down granny’s door, broke her fine china, and peed in the foyer. Some common examples are from the third season, the premier called “Spock’s Brain,” and two weird “ensemble antagonist” episodes, a gaggle of space hippies in “The Way to Eden” described by Grace Lee Whitney (Ensign Rand) as a “clinker” and a throng of amnesiac tweens mind-controlled by a used car salesman generously blended with the ghost of a megachurch preacher in “And the Children Shall Lead”.

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Series creator, Gene Roddenberry, clearly had luck on his side. NBC paid to have a pilot made and didn’t like it, but made the unusual decision to commission a second, which would become the Star Trek we know today. That luck, and an “organic” fan write-in campaign, would get them through a cancellation threat in the middle of the second season, but a second “organic” campaign would fail, and Star Trek was cancelled during the third season.

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Star Trek however would go on to become quite popular in syndication, something I can directly attest to as I was a young lad in the 70’s. The intense popularity would prompt Roddenberry to team up with Filmation to create an animated series that ran on Saturday morning for twenty-two episodes over two seasons in 1973 and 1974. Later, the animated series that was broadcast also as Star Trek would become known as Star Trek: The Animated Series, and would represent the unofficial fourth and fifth seasons of The Original Series, at least according to the most devoted Trekkers/Trekkies.

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It wouldn't be until 1979 that The Motion Picture would propel Star Trek from the syndication juggernaut it had become into an honest-to-goodness, multi-format franchise.

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Let’s slow our roll a bit, my peeps. If I were to detail the development and production of ST:TOS, this article would take you a few hours to read. Instead, I’ve outlined a rough sketch of events sufficient for you to have context. If you’d like to know more about the history of Star Trek, check out the Wikipedia pages where there is an embarrassment of content, including entire pages for each episode of every series. At the very least, peruse the pages for The Original Series and The Animated Series, as those tales are fascinating. -Ed.
\n
\nStar Trek - Wikipedia
Star Trek is an American science fiction media franchise created by Gene Roddenberry, which began with the eponymous…en.wikipedia.org\n

The adventure begins… again

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Star Trek: The Motion Picture managed mixed reactions from fans and critics alike, often noting that it lacked in traditional action set pieces and contained far too many special effects shots, a concept that seems alien in 2022. It turns out that the film was based on an episode of a cancelled Star Trek: Phase II series expanded into a feature film, which might explain why there are many long, experiential sequences that pad the run-time. It’s difficult to get two hours of story out of a teleplay meant to fit into a one-hour time slot. Despite this, fan interest was quite strong. The film made enough at the box office to warrant a sequel, and that turned out to be just what the struggling franchise needed. What came next would become one of the most beloved films of all time, Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan.

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That simple twist of fate which brought together the right people at the right time to create something that astonished and delighted fans of the original series would form the new foundation of an epic theatrical run and almost enough energy to spin Star Trek into four new TV series. Each series would be less popular than the last with TNG and DS9 battling for most beloved, but only TNG’s crew shifted to cinematic releases, bowing with 1994’s Star Trek: Generations.

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\nNOTE: We Trek fans love our acronyms. For the remainder of this article I will be referring to each series by its acronym. The general rule of thumb, if you’d not noticed yet, is ST for Star Trek followed by a colon, then an acronym from the series title, like so: Star Trek: The Next Generation (ST:TNG), Star Trek: Deep Space 9 (ST:DS9), Star Trek: Voyager (ST:VOY), and Star Trek: Enterprise, which didn’t get a catchy acronym that would stick. As such, the original series would be TOS or ST:TOS and the animated one, TAS or ST:TAS. In context, you drop the ST: to leave the remaining unique identifier. -Ed.
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Paramount weren’t just twiddling their thumbs following the end of TAS, as they would release four theatrical films over the next seven years, 1979’s Star Trek: The Movie, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan in 1982, Star Trek III: The Search for Spock in 1984, and Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home in 1986. The first four films primarily focused on the TOS cast, but also started roughly sketching out the Trek universe, establishing many of the rules, the foundations of the United Federation of Planets, and relationships between the races, both complementary and contentious. You know, world building.

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Energized by the popularity of ST:TOS in syndication and the first four feature films, Wrath of Khan and Voyage Home proving to be box-office blockbusters, Paramount began to develop a new television series that would become Star Trek: The Next Generation. Unhappy with the offers from ABC, CBS, and NBC and passing on an anemic offer from the newly minted FOX network, Paramount instead opted to retain full control, offering Star Trek: The Next Generation to independent stations under a barter syndication contract known as First-Run Syndication.

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\nAn explanation of Barter Syndication excerpted from the TNG Wikipedia entry: The stations sold five minutes of commercial time to local advertisers and Paramount sold the remaining seven minutes to national advertisers. Stations had to commit to purchasing reruns in the future, and only those that aired the new show could purchase the popular reruns of the Original Series.
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For the new show, the TNG production team developed a more refined version of the episodic format established by TOS, where episodes would show a crew working together to solve problems through the lens of current events and cultural sentiment of the time, many of the themes being universally familiar. Far more than a mere monster-of-the-week format, Roddenberry wanted to create a universe where interpersonal conflict was a thing of the past, establishing in the production bible that crew mates weren’t guided by greed, lust, or power, opting instead for a more congenial fellowship.

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The first season didn’t go well. Many of the writers from TOS were producing scripts that didn’t fit into Gene’s ideals and, as a result, Roddenberry reportedly “rewrote” the first fifteen episodes of the first season so they would adhere to his rules. Critics were unimpressed. DVD Journal’s Mark Bourne said at the time, “A typical episode relied on trite plot points, clumsy allegories, dry and stilted dialogue, or characterization that was taking too long to feel relaxed and natural.\" Patrick Stewart’s acting was applauded, however, and a number of key serial story arcs would be introduced, as well as some of the series’ most iconic recurring characters such as the god-like Q and Data’s evil twin brother, Lore.

\n
“A typical episode relied on trite plot points, clumsy allegories, dry and stilted dialogue, or characterization that was taking too long to feel relaxed and natural.”
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Following a debut season that would have seen a lesser property cancelled, TNG would go on to become one of the most influential television shows of all time and establish the tone and values for the next two decades of Trek.

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From 1987’s launch of TNG until the premature cancellation of Enterprise in 2005 Star Trek was kind of a big deal. Some Trek luminaries regularly graced the pages of gossip rags, People, TV Guide, and other media outlets of the time, filled with glitzy paparazzi photos and talk about coming episodes. TNG had transitioned to feature films rather seamlessly with First Contact being the block buster it was and the hype around the new Trek for a new millennium.

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2002’s Star Trek: Nemesis, the fourth film in the TNG run, didn’t do well, however, and the franchise would go mostly dormant for another seven years before J.J. Abrams 2009 Star Trek introduced a new take on the characters from TOS. Not only did “JJ” (I’m not typing those periods every time, people) bring a whole new style and tone to the franchise, but would create a new alternate future-history with the so-called Kelvin Timeline.

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This radical departure from established canon had two significant effects. One, clearly unhappy with the retro-future chic of i, JJ dragged NCC-1701 “Enterprise” far, far, FAR into the future, one of the principle hallmarks of the reboot. This also had an unintended effect. When Paramount was seeking to reinvigorate the Trek TV franchise for their new streaming platform in partnership with CBS (now Paramount+) they leaned into the esthetic that JJ brought with the films, kickstarting the multi-season debacle that is Discovery, but I’ll get to that soon enough. Two, it kicked the original canon to the curb in favor of a more bombastic, action-oriented approach helmed by a collection of actors portraying, albeit excellently, caricatures of the beloved characters they were reprising, while lacking much of the nuance and “humanity” that Kirk, Spock, Bones, Scotty, Uhura et al. brought to the table through all of the films.

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JJ’s 2009 Star Trek would use the Trek wireframe, but fill it with action set pieces and coded witty banter designed to stereotype the characters to whom they were supposedly paying homage. American audiences ate it up like so much candy and, as it is in today’s Hollywood, two more films were made, neither of which were very good. Certainly gorgeous and packed to the gills with action set pieces, but still lacking any of the true soul of Star Trek.

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So, what IS Star Trek?

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Well, one thing Trek is not is any one thing. I’m not great with philosophy. To make this easier on me, watch this fantastic video from Wisecrack, a YouTube channel that discusses all manner of things through the lens of philosophy.

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\n Sorry to give you homework, but this piece is already going to cost you 20 minutes. Besides, how terrible is a nice video interlude, really.

The one thing that Jared (you should watch the video, seriously) glossed over was the fact that no one ideology rules anything. Even if the Borg were to exist, they would not be able to create an entirely homogeneous universe from end to end. In canon, the “Q” would likely stop them, as we “lower” beings, at the very least, provide the Q some modicum of entertainment, while recognizing that change in inevitable.

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Take the Borg Queen as an example. She is, in a very real sense, a singular force who has her own wishes and desires and she obsesses over them to the point of her own destruction, as we see in Star Trek: First Contact. She presented as an avatar of absolute dictators like North Korea’s Kim Jung Un, an individual who, through a force and terror structure handed down to him by his progenitors, decides the fate of every single soul living within the borders of “his” country.

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And yet, if this was the root of what makes Star Trek, then the Borg would be the only antagonist to face the Enterprise crew, backed by the ideals of The Federation of Planets and its all-encompassing Prime Directive. No, Star Trek is so, so much more, as through 700+ episodes of TV and a bevy of feature-length films (minus JJ’s works) we see depictions of just about every ideological stance humans have invented as seen through it’s own lens; humanism.

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Trek, then, imagines an egalitarian future that is not free of crime and sorrow and violence, but one that responds to those things with restraint and understanding and, as necessary, force. Does Star Trek represent a true utopia? Of course not. As with the Borg, it’s simply not possible. Living beings, regardless of how well we might be able to work together, will always have differences, and from that will spring all manner of conflict, and we all know what happens when there’s conflict. Unresolved conflict eventually leads to violence. Always…

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But there’s more…

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Trek isn’t just a platform for developing thesis around philosophy. There are more esoteric aspects of the functional aspects of how Pre-Abrams Trek was produced. The easiest way to illustrate that is with a bullet list:

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  • \nTolerance — the bridge crew in TOS included a Russian… DURING THE COLD WAR. The aforementioned black+white kiss happened on TOS. In all things, the crews of Trek are tolerant until someone’s rights are being abused, at which point they tend to break the rules to make it as right as possible.
    • \n
  • \nEmpathy — the protagonists of Trek feel bad for others who are being hurt, but retain their human flaws. TOS Kirk wished for the death of the Klingon race after one Klingon killed his son, but he would later fight tooth and nail to save them. When one of the crew is taken over by a malevolent force, something that happens frequently, they don’t judge the individual for something they could not control. When they get a distress call, they rush to help. Caring for others comes first.
    • \n
  • \nLogic — paramount to Vulcan culture is the suppression of their decidedly hyper violent emotional aspects to lean into logic, as cold and impersonal as it is. And yet, that doesn’t override the egalitarian humanism. It complements it. Kirk, Picard, Sisko, Janeway, and Archer had foils in the form of their bridge crews, each of which challenged their initial impulses with alternative views of the same events occurring in each episode. These captains would then distill their collective brain power into a string of decisions that would result in a desired outcome, typically one that would save or, at the very least, improve the lives of the people determined to be in need.
    • \n
  • \nTechnological Egalitarianism — not necessarily ideological in nature, the technology and science presented throughout the Trek universe, up until JJ Abrams took the helm, was an operational expression of critical thinking. Within the rules of Trek, the crews would work together to figure out a problem, determine the best course of action to correct it, and implement a plan to achieve the desired goal. This would often require the use or manipulation of some technological aspect of the Trek universe, and Trek production teams would use real scientists to paint at least a somewhat accurate scientific solution based on as much reality as possible. There were, in almost no uncertain terms, any “magical” solutions that just worked without making some kind of sense. Some episodes slipped. Nobody’s perfect.
    • \n
  • \nIndividualism, not Socialism — Contrary to popular belief, a Trek future is not one of Socialism but of empowered, cooperative individuals enabled by an egalitarian collective understanding. This can be illustrated by the simple fact that, when faced with a crisis, Trek Captains break the rules to do the right thing and, while they pay the consequences, they are never diminished as an individual. We see this most consistently in Star Trek: Voyager where Captain Janeway no longer has a direct connection to The Federation. And yet, despite the vast gulf of space between Voyager and Earth, the crew struggles to maintain the values of the Prime Directive.* This shows the audience that individuals, not socialist constructs, are the ultimate arbiters of applications of their own power. There are rules, but smart people know that there can’t be enough rules to satisfy all issues, so some of them must be bent on occasion.
    • \n
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* Thanks for the inspiration, CameronHarwick.com\n
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In a impossible nutshell, Trek is… complicated, and it’s fiction that merely illustrates an imagined future where equality is paramount, life is sacrosanct, power is moderated, self is recognized, and about a billion other truisms. And yet, one ideal rises above all others; humanism. I must call it humanism because I don’t know a word that describes the same thing as applied to multiple sentient alien species. Star Trek, as a whole, does its damnedest to make everyone matter.

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A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Reboot…

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\nA Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum - Wikipedia
A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum is a musical with music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim and book by Burt…en.wikipedia.org\n

Much like the farcical Broadway show with a very similar name from 1962, JJ’s Star Trek is itself a farcical take on the original canon, starting with TOS and ending with Enterprise. “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum” was inspired by ancient Roman farces and heavily flavored with vaudevillian antics.

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While the musical does lean into social commentary and satire, JJ’s intended his Trek to be a reintroduction of the Trek Universe to newcomers, according to Abrams himself. A read through the Wikipedia entry for the 2009 film titled simply Star Trek is telling. The “Production” section is littered with casual Hollywood justifications for all of the changes made, and how JJ’s team just knew it would work to make the characters relatable and the story exciting.

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Never mind that these characters, established over fifty-plus years of material, had already been established, deeply relatable, and I’ll be damned if Trek wasn’t already exciting.

\n
\nStar Trek (film) - Wikipedia
Star Trek is a 2009 American science fiction action film directed by J. J. Abrams and written by Roberto Orci and Alex…en.wikipedia.org\n

So, canon be damned, JJ and Co. decided to effectively toss everything nuanced and substitute common, work-a-day Hollywood tropes.

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I think it’s the dismissive insult of flippantly casting aside decades of work by hundreds of cast and crew to maintain canon spanning fifteen productions that bothers me the most. The universe of Star Trek is as rich, deep, and diverse as Tolkien’s Silmarillion, from which can spring an endless array of possible stories that would have thrilled and engaged moviegoers, but instead we were served an admittedly gorgeous extended episode of Miami Vice in Space packed stem to stern with eye-straining lens flares accompanying Michael Bay-inspired action set pieces. If, however, you watch it like watching a Star Wars movie, ironically or tragically the preferred franchise of JJ Abrams, it is a fun film.

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The fun would end with Star Trek Into Darkness, though, as it would tackle rebooting the much beloved and revered character arc of one Khan Noonien Singh, utterly annihilating it in the process. Khan, now a white dude in the form of the otherwise brilliant Benedict Cumberbatch, is overwhelmingly unrecognizable, even when we learn his character’s true name and purpose. Nothing about Into Darkness resonates in any way, shape, or form with Star Trek: Wrath of Khan aside from the exceedingly clumsy tropes that were yanked from the original source material and turned into a “twist” at the end that again insults any and all fans with even passing knowledge of the landmark Trek film.

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Star Trek Beyond, directed this time by serial Fast & Furious helmer Justin Lin, is on an entirely different level of tangent as it features one of the largest structures ever built by the Federation, Starbase Yorktown, an impossibly huge, transparent behemoth that was clearly [pun alert] unrealistic in light of the fact that this is supposed to have been constructed during James T. Kirk’s early years in the captain’s chair and therefore, prior to events in The Original Series.

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And if all this wasn’t enough, the mood around Trek was already darkened by the passing of screen legend Leonard Nimoy (TOS Spock) and that actor Anton Yelchin (who played a delightful Pavel Chekov) had been killed in a tragic vehicle accident a month before the film’s release.

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Despite positive critical and audience reviews, however, Beyond effectively bombed at the US box-office as it couldn’t hold up to pressure from Jason Bourne and Suicide Squad. It’s also quite likely that the decline in ticket sales was due to the existing fan base starting to have an increasingly bad taste in their mouths from the effects of JJ’s radical changes to canon. That sour taste would be the unwanted gift that just kept on giving as, a few years later, CBS and Paramount would start to spin up new streaming properties, starting with Discovery which would be the keystone to their line-up on the then shiny new CBS All Access, now re-branded as Paramount+.

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J.J.’s Series of Unfortunate Events

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Mirroring the excessively disastrous manner in which the blockbusting success of Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight film trilogy would inform Warner’s DCEU with overly dark and brooding tones that weren’t appropriate for the IPs they were applied to, JJ’s Trek films and Kelvin timeline would inject a cancer throughout Paramount’s Trek productions, namely Discovery. Read this excerpt from the Wikipedia entry for the series:

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\nThe series begins around ten years before the events of Star Trek: The Original Series, when Commander Michael Burnham’s recklessness starts a war between the United Federation of Planets and the Klingon Empire. She is court-martialed, demoted, and reassigned to the USS Discovery, which has a unique means of propulsion called the “Spore Drive”. After an adventure in the Mirror Universe, Discovery helps end the Klingon war. In the second season they investigate seven mysterious signals and a strange figure known as the “Red Angel”, and fight off a rogue artificial intelligence. This conflict ends with the Discovery traveling to the 32nd century, more than 900 years into their future.\n
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\nThe USS Discovery finds the Federation fragmented in the future, and investigates the cause of a cataclysmic event known as the “Burn” in the third season. Burnham is promoted to captain of Discovery at the end of the season, and in the fourth season the crew helps rebuild the Federation while facing a space anomaly that causes destruction across the galaxy.\n
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As a life-long Trekkie, this reads like the fever dream of a nine year-old who watched a few episodes of TOS for the first time while playing with crayons while binging on Mountain Dew and Ho Ho’s. The thing that frustrates me the most however is the “Spore Drive”, a magical solution which, like the improbability-powered Heart of Gold from Douglas Adams’ satirical and hilarious Hitchhiker’s Guide to The Galaxy books, allows the titular Discovery to instantly jump anywhere, just with more accuracy and fewer fantastical, physics-defying side effects (like turning into couches or being made of yarn until improbability normalizes.) And how, in a time occurring before the events of TOS, do they manage this? Why, with magical, space-breathing giant tardigrades, of course.

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I’m not kidding.

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Yes, JJ. Magical space yeti bears. Seems legit.
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In short, JJ’s ridiculously callous abandonment of the core values and world building established over 50 years of Star Trek canon on television, the big screen, books, comics, and video games transmogrified the franchise into a caricature of itself. Paramount clearly felt that the popularity of 2009’s Star Trek film meant that’s what people wanted to see for Trek’s future.

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I honestly don’t want to talk about Picard, as much as it pains me to say so. It’s just an expensive disaster of a show that learned everything from JJ and finally had to end with a 3rd season that both delighted and horrified long-time fans. The following article gives you a good rundown of the issues.

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Picard's Star Trek Death Was Completely Pointless
Star Trek: Picard killed off Jean-Luc in season 1, before a swift resurrection that had no bearing on season 2, will it…screenrant.com \n

So, what now?

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The original title to this article was going to end with “…and how to fix it.” It seems, however, that I don’t need to offer any suggestions. Paramount seems to have gotten the message.

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Star Trek: Lower Decks would kick off things in a very unexpected way in August of 2020, just as the Pandemic was kicking into first gear. As you can likely see, it’s animated, but it’s not for kids. It’s what is currently termed Adult Animation, as in Family Guy, Rick & Morty, and BoJack Horseman, to name a few, and yet it hews to canon and convention, if unconventionally. It’s well worth a watch.

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If that wasn’t weird enough, October 2021 would see the premier of Star Trek: Prodigy, this time for a younger audience and getting Kate Mulgrew to voice Captain Kathryn Janeway, the character she played for seven seasons of VOY. It is a surprisingly well written premise that explores their part of the universe following the same rules as a regular Trek series from a very unique perspective. It’s wonderfully fulfilling for humans of any age.

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Then, in a turn wholly unexpected, there came Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, which has brought an all new take to TOS and TNG style story telling with their heads firmly in canon. In all honesty, I expected to be treated to something akin to Discovery for SNW, but my wife and I were shocked, I tell you. From the first moment, the series has honored almost everything I ever wanted in a new Trek series since Enterprise, all while delivering a fresh, new spin on the episodic formula.

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And all without falling too far into the traps of JJ’s Kelvin-verse. Sure, the sets are phenomenal and appear far more advanced than TOS, but they’ve dialed out the magical clap-trap and the eye-searing lens flares to powerful and enjoyable effect.

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I won’t spoil any more. Just watch it.

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The obligatory summary

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There’s really not a lot to say, but thanks to all of the people working on the productions of Lower Decks, Prodigy, and SNW. Your love of the Trek Universe honors the fans who have come to love Star Trek over the past half Century.

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Additionally, I believe it’s important to deconstruct the things that break so we can understand why they break, or in this case, were broken.

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That pretty much sums it up. Hope you enjoyed reading :)

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If you enjoyed what you just read and would like to support be for $1 a month, click here for my Ko-Fi page.

", "date_published": "2023-12-24T16:32:18-07:00", "url": "https://tylerknowsnothing.com/2023/12/24/how-jj-abrams.html", "tags": ["television","movies","editorial"] }, { "id": "http://tknblogs.micro.blog/2023/12/14/mediums-stats-arebroken.html", "title": "Medium's stats are broken, so I left...", "content_html": "


\n
\nThis is my stats page. This is not helpful.\n
\n

Much like today’s other causes of cultural constipation such as race relations, government, cold medications, etc., etc., ad nauseam, the page you see above appears functional, but is not.

\n

Sure, you can click on things and you can see numbers and charts, but none of it is functional to the point where you can derive real, usable data regarding any of the indicated data points.

\n

Take the chart above for example. The Views chart only shows you how many articles were “viewed”, but not which articles. It’s just a number. The Claps indicate how many times the Clap button was clicked, but not by how many users. You need to click the number of claps (as seen in the image below. Yes, it’s that tiny, gray thing at the bottom right corner of the screenshot.) on the article stats page to see that information. Pointing at the clap icon unnecessarily informs you are unable to clap your own article. Just make it all open the list of clappers, Medium, or put the data on the stats page. Astonishingly, readers are allowed to Clap as many times as they like, so those 10 claps for the first Mac OS piece are from two people. TWO!

\n

Click, click, click, instead of all on the stats page itself. Annoying. Confusing. Unhelpful.

\n

In order to see story stats, I need to open another page which opens in a new tab, like below, and it only shows stats for the single, selected story. Why?

\n
\n
\n
This is the top of the article stats page for the Mac OS piece.
\n

Finally, some stats that make some sense? Well, somewhat, if it weren’t buried. Take a look at the following image:

\n
\n
\n
The call is NOT coming from inside Medium’s house.
\n

Traffic source is crucial! Why is it at the bottom of a secondary stats page? We may never know, but it’s quite incompetent, in my estimation.

\n

Medium clearly has the data, and they previously displayed it on the main stats page. Take a look at my most read story:

\n
\n
\n
Not all instances of certain internet memes qualify as “nice”.
\n

As I just mentioned, this data, or at least a form of it, used to be on the Stats page. It was taken out sometime last year when Medium changed their Partner Program to open it to all, and has been terrible ever since. It needs to be fixed, Medium. We need to see our stats in an easy-to-consume manner. This mess hampers our understanding of what is working with readers and what is not.

\n

It’s not like it’s rocket science.

\n

---

\n

If you enjoyed what you just read and would like to support be for $1 a month, click here for my Ko-Fi page.

", "date_published": "2023-12-14T21:22:17-07:00", "url": "https://tylerknowsnothing.com/2023/12/14/mediums-stats-arebroken.html", "tags": ["editorial"] }, { "id": "http://tknblogs.micro.blog/2023/12/14/apples-butterfly-keyboard.html", "title": "Apple's Butterfly keyboard tragedy \u0026 potential e-waste disaster", "content_html": "


\n
\n
Without official unit sales numbers from Apple, we have no idea how many hundreds of thousands of these machines are in the wild.
\n

I am a life-long fan of Apple. Born in ‘68, I grew up in the thick of the consumer electronics and personal computer boom of the late 70's. Keeping to myself at times, loudly evangelistic at others, a shame-free Mac Ex-pat, reluctant Windows user for a decade, and always the staunch critic, my fandom runs deep. From my early experiences with Apple ][e machines, to all of the Macs I’ve had since, and arriving at now with the two Mac Minis on my desk, one an M1 and the other a last-gen Intel model, I have had my most satisfying and productive years on Macs.

\n

Fortunate for me that I missed Apple’s Butterfly Keyboard era, then.

\n
The saga of Apple's bad butterfly MacBook keyboards is finally over
After the new 13-inch MacBook Pro, Apple has finally stopped trying to fix the butterfly keyboard on its laptops. After…www.theverge.com \n

In case you were unable to dodge that particular bullet and bought yourself one of these cursed machines, you’ll find the following link disappointing (In short, the deadline to participate passed March 6th, 2023):

\n
In re MacBook Keyboard Litigation Settlement Website | Homepage
Welcome to the Apple MacBook butterfly keyboard class action settlement claims website. File a Claim, Key Dates, FAQs…www.keyboardsettlement.com \n

In a nutshell, the Butterfly keyboards on a range of Macbook, Macbook Pro, and MacBook Air models from 2015 to 2019 were atrocious (SEE: model list below). The fancy new keyboard failed far more frequently than the Magic keyboards that came before, and necessitated costly, complex repairs at Apple service centers to replace the parts, only for them to break again… and again… and again.

\n

At first Apple tried to ignore the problem away, likely thinking they could engineer themselves out of the corner they’d gotten themselves into with later revisions. None of the refinements made any lasting change, however. In the end, Apple offered all owners free fixes for up to four years from purchase, and then settled a Class Action lawsuit brought by a group of very annoyed owners. If you qualified, you’d get up to $395, which isn’t much of a consolation after spending a few thousand bucks (or more) on a laptop with a terminally faulty primary input device.

\n

Sadly, the debut of the temperamental technology also marked the triumphantly tragic return of a 12\" model, it’s first since the PowerBook G4 12\" from 2005. Because of Intel’s terrible low-power mobile chips of 2015 and the soon-to-be-unusable Butterfly keyboard, the 12\" was doomed before it even had a chance. 2016 would see the Butterfly brought to the foundational 13\" and 15\" MacBook Pro models, and two years later would see the failure-prone keyboard shoehorned into a significant refresh of the very popular MacBook Air. Later in 2019, Apple would restore the Magic keyboard for it’s final Intel machines and in 2020 would roll out the first of their Apple Silicon machines.

\n

The following is a list of models so you know which to avoid purchasing used:

\n
    \n
  • 2015–2017: MacBook
    • \n
  • 2016–2019: MacBook Pro
    • \n
  • 2018–2019: MacBook Air
    • \n
\n
\nSOURCE: MacsX.com, Which MacBooks have the butterfly keyboard?\n
\n

What’s going to happen to all this potential computing power?

\n

That’s the question, isn’t it? March 2023 is when Apple legally washed their hands of the whole affair. If you want the keyboard replaced now, you have to pay full fare of over $700… each and every time it fails. I doubt many will opt for this, and most, if not all, have likely already moved on to Apple Silicon models, now that Apple has nearly completed it’s transition away from Intel’s hot and anemic CPUs.

\n
\n
\n
Apple still sells the last of the Intel-based MacBook Pros on Amazon for an eye-watering $2,800. And that gets you 16GBs of RAM and an anemic 512GB SSD, neither of which can be upgraded after purchase, unless you have god-like soldering skills, proprietary Apple parts authorization tools. In other words, no soup for you.
\n

We can speculate. Some have likely been packed in a closet in a fit of frustration at having to replace a machine that should have lasted years longer. Others will put them up for sale on eBay or similar sites and pass them on to some unsuspecting sap or, with a disclosure, at a steeply discounted price. Others could be donated or given away. I imagine, however, that a lot will eventually end up in a landfill or an e-waste facility.

\n
\nASIDE: For the more creatively inclined, some might even be used to test gravity by throwing it out an open window. Also, please don’t. It’s likely illegal.
\n

It’s a shame, really. While Intel’s mobile silicon consumes a lot of power, runs hotter, and offer significantly less run-time and performance when on battery compared to Apple’s M-series of chips (we’re now up to M3 as of October 2023) they are still very capable machines, that are only useful if you connect an external keyboard. It is patently absurd to me that countless thousands of otherwise functional computers where everything else works cannot be reworked in some fashion to facilitate many years of productivity they would otherwise not provide.

\n

I dislike, however, dumping on stuff without offering some suggestions for how said woes might be rectified, so here’re a few off the top of my head:

\n
    \n
  • Engineer a replacement keyboard for these devices that works on a more reliable technology. Maybe take some inspiration from gaming portables like the Game Boy, which uses conductive rubber. It may not type very well, but it will type.
    • \n
  • Create an external case for the motherboard so it can be used as a desktop machine. Make one that includes the battery so it can be portable.
    • \n
  • Retrofit the displays from 15\" models so they can work as an external display. There are already kits for older 5K iMacs so they can be used as monitors.
    • \n
  • Extract the Magic Trackpads, insert them into a case and modify them to work with USB-C.
    • \n
  • Slot several of the same model into custom, vertical racks and use them for low-cost development nodes or clusters.
    • \n
  • Repurpose a personal machine as a Plex TV server for your home. There are many options for vertical laptop stands on Amazon.
    • \n
  • In fact, there are several tasks a closed MacBook can perform: 3D printer manager, Thunderbolt JBOD manager, print server, network firewall, file server, retro video game emulation station, jukebox, etc. Even as a Windows machine or virtual machine server.
    • \n
\n

A Mac is a computer, and computers are great for computing. To see the potential for many thousands of these machines dumped into landfills because they don’t have working keyboards boggles the mind. You’d think that Apple would feel compelled to provide more comprehensive restitution for the losses incurred by the buyers of these perpetually faulty systems.

\n

Of course, that’s not what happened. I’d be shocked if people didn’t feel cheated by the now wealthiest corporation on Earth. Despite Apple’s compensation, they haven’t had to bear the burden of their mistakes, not when $50 million is a drop in Apple’s cash bucket.

\n

All I can offer at this point is hope. Hope that clever peeps will step up and figure out how to make good use of these machines and share those plans with the world. Hope that the contents of these machines don’t end up in Chinese toxic e-waste dumps. Hope that Tim Cook himself might step up and direct Apple to devise their own solutions.

\n
China: The electronic wastebasket of the world | CNN
Did you ever wonder what happens to your old laptop or cellphone when you throw it away?www.cnn.com \n

Now, wouldn’t that be something.

\n
\n

If you like my work, please consider checking out my Ko-Fi page. The only membership option is $1 a month and that will not change. You don’t need to contribute as I make all my content freely accessible, but it helps :)

", "date_published": "2023-12-14T21:17:36-07:00", "url": "https://tylerknowsnothing.com/2023/12/14/apples-butterfly-keyboard.html", "tags": ["Apple","editorial"] }, { "id": "http://tknblogs.micro.blog/2023/12/14/i-dont-like.html", "title": "I don't like my mechanical keyboard", "content_html": "


\n
\nThe Keychron K5 SE Low-Profile Mechanical Keyboard is anything but low profile. It’s also a clicky, sloppy, error-prone mess for a writer who taught himself to touch type using his own system.\n
\n

CLACK CLACK CLACK… TIKTIKTIKTIKTIK… CLACK CLACK… TIKTIKTIK… AUUUUUUGGGHHHH!!!

\n

Tap tap, goes my Keychron K5 SE. It takes nigh on nothing to press a key, an advantage I’m sure is prized by gamers more rabid and entrenched than myself, but when I’m writing I’m forced to BACKSPACE to repair something that was rendered illegible every third or fourth word. So, I’m typing this review on my Dell tablet PC with a typecover-style input device, and my typing accuracy rockets back up to normal levels.

\n

I’m a touch typist in the loosest of terms. I taught myself, but not using normal methods, but through repeated familiarity of decades of writing on computers. That part of my life started in 1995 when I got my first laptop, a gift from a friend. It was an Apple PowerBook 145B and it’s keyboard is still utterly glorious. (Yes, I still have it.)

\n

Earlier this year, my $120 Logitech MX Keys for Mac gave up the ghost after two short years. As a professional nerd, I have a large collection of keyboards, so I pulled one out and looked for something new. After years of reading and viewing extensive plaudits from pundits showering mechanical keyboards in adoration, I decided it was time to try out something a bit more modular. There had to be something to mechanical keyboards, right?

\n

After all, how could millions of gamers be wrong?

\n

The Keychron K5 SE is a very well built keyboard with a clean, attractive design. It supports macOS and Windows layouts and even supplies the key caps to facilitate the swap. To that end, they also include a combination keycap and switch puller. In Bluetooth mode, you can select from three different devices with a key combination or you can switch to USB mode for a direct connection.

\n
BONUS COMPLAINT: For some reason, Keychron chose to locate the Function (FN) key on the right end of the keyboard and integrated the Bluetooth selection keys with the 1, 2, and 3 keys. Logical, but now a forced two-handed operation instead of an easy one-handed move had the FN key been located to the left end, as most are. So, Keychron, stop that, please.
\n

It is supposed to be a low profile keyboard, but it’s also a mechanical one, so there exist limitations imposed by the technology alone. I get that, and it is quite thin, as you’d imagine, but to get that full, deep key travel, the stroke has to be rather long. As you can see in the image below, it’s not as low profile as a standard low profile typer.

\n
\n
\n
Yes. Each key cap travels almost entirely to the deck. These switches are referred to as “North Facing” as the LED light is only emitted towards the top of the keyboard, and not all the way around. The LEDs also shine up into the key caps and illuminate the legend. Those are called “Double Shot” keys because, I think, they inject one mold for the key and then another for the legend, using a translucent material. Clever. The LEDs appear blue in images, but are white.
\n

It could be the decades I’ve been typing on Apple and laptop keyboards. It could be that I never took typing classes and have since relied on my own muscle memory. It could be that the spacing between keys or the type of switches I chose are to blame. I don’t know, and despite efforts, I’ve been unable to learn much more. And no, I haven’t asked a mechanical keyboard expert. I’m not even sure where I’d find one, outside of numerous YouTube channels.

\n

It’s not that it’s broken. It’s not. It works quite well, if it has some weird charging and Bluetooth issues on occasion, which facilitated my move to cabled USB mode. I also don’t use the Bluetooth switching mode. I had that on my MX Keys for Mac and used it for a good while, but kept forgetting to switch and would have to clean up the mess I’d create on another device. Additionally, I find the shocking orange keys to be neat, but somewhat clash with the clean two-tone grey of the rest of the keyboard.

\n

What I wanted was a new keycap set like the hundreds of varieties I’d seen for mechanical keyboards on eBay, Etsy, and Amazon. Some beautiful, others insane, even more just average, but lots and lots of options. It turns out, however, that low profile is not a common term in mechanical keyboard circles. I don’t know if it’s because they are unpopular or just a new concept, because trying to find keycaps is to find about a paltry smattering of options.

\n

Counting on Keychron to be helpful turned out to be an erroneous assumption. Combing through the site yielded little more than additional frustration as they only offer a handful of options for their own keyboard. Have a standard mechanical keyboard? You’re in luck, as they offer forty eight variations in stock and another fifty variants that are so popular they are sold out.

\n

No keycaps for you, I can hear Seinfeld’s Soup Nazi shrieking.

\n

Other than that, the switches I selected suck because I don’t know what to choose and all I’ve ever heard about these things is from the same voices telling me how amazing mechanical keyboards are. When picking the keyboard, I selected the Gateron Red switches because, as the following chart shows, they are supposed to be quiet.

\n
\n
\n
If, to get a reasonable typing experience, I need to get the Gateron Blues, I don’t want them. These “quiet” Reds aren’t anywhere near quiet. I can only imagine how loud the clicky Blues are. Ugh…
\n

In the end, all I can say is that I don’t like my mechanical keyboard. I don’t believe my dislike is predicated on some failure in design, a lack of quality, or any functional benefits that simply don’t favor my typing style. My fingers are apparently geared to prefer laptop-style, lower profile key that have decent travel, but nowhere near as much as a mechanical type. On a laptop keyboard, my fingertips glide over the surfaces of adjacent keys.

\n

I can’t do that on the K5 SE.

\n

I don’t know. I likely just have to give it time. It’s not like the damn thing is my only keyboard, but it’s one of the only ones of the many I have that I need to carefully position myself in front of and fingers on in order to get decent, less error-prone typing.

\n

Maybe someone can tell me which switches I should get!

\n

---

\n

If you enjoyed what you just read and would like to support be for $1 a month, click here for my Ko-Fi page.

", "date_published": "2023-12-14T21:06:59-07:00", "url": "https://tylerknowsnothing.com/2023/12/14/i-dont-like.html", "tags": ["editorial"] }, { "id": "http://tknblogs.micro.blog/2023/12/14/i-desperately-want.html", "title": "I desperately want a lightweight OLED Switch", "content_html": "

" “>

\n
\n
\n
Just make a bigger one, Nintendo.
\n

It was a mistake that when I finally bought a Switch, I got a Switch Lite. Sure, it’s a gorgeous indigo blue, but I’m old and the screen is too small. So, I bought an OLED Switch. It was also likely a mistake when instead of returning the Lite, I put it on a shelf and forgot about it. I’d made my new OLED Switch my main, so I’d just forgotten about its little brother.

\n

A few months back, I was sorting through some stuff and found it. I pulled it out again and stuck in my Mario+Rabbis Kingdom Battle cartridge. I didn’t put it down again for three hours.

\n

I’ve now found myself picking up the Lite more often, despite the small screen and my old eyes.

\n

Mario+Rabbids doesn’t have a lot of tiny text, so it’s easy to play on the smaller display. The same goes for most of the popular Nintendo first-party titles like Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, Mario Golf Super Rush, Kirby and The Forgotten Land, Luigi’s Mansion 3, and Captain Toad Treasure Tracker, to mention just a few that I have played on both systems.

\n

Now, I’ve never played my Switch OLED for longer than an hour and a half. While I do love it, I don’t like everything about it.

\n
    \n
  • The Joycons are slightly above average, but the ergonomics are definitely the worst among the major console and controller makers offerings. I have a simple TPU slip-on case for the Lite that adds grips. There are no usable options for Joycons that I’ve found. There are loads of 3rd party options, but I shouldn’t have to spend more money to comfortably use the thing I already paid for and they’re all full cases, ungainly in some manner, or ridiculous looking. How hard is it to make snap-on parts for Joycons?
    • \n
  • I don’t play fighting games, but I do hate the Switch D-pad. It’s not even a D-pad, but a copy/paste operation of the A/B/X/Y buttons from the right Joycon. I thought I hated the disc-type the most, but this loose collection of unconnected buttons don’t feel right and sit far too low on the Joycon. It’s annoying. On the other, very awkward hand, the D-pad on the Switch Lite is phenomenal, likely because it’s the same D-pad as the New 3DS.
    • \n
  • The dock is a waste of plastic and I’d not be surprised to find that some people still think it has another processor inside to make the Switch run faster and at higher resolutions when in TV mode. I hate to shatter your fever dream, but no. They could easily reduce it in size by at least 60% and still get the job done. It’s waste and it’s irresponsible and Nintendo can do much better.
    • \n
  • Then there’s the headline; it’s heavy. No, it’s not terribly weighty, but compared to the Lite, it’s a chonker. And all of this extra weight comes from the Switch’s primary functional gimmick, to switch from handheld to console mode. Many parts of the tablet section are made from aluminum, and the Joycon rails are also metal. In stark contrast, the Lite uses an all-plastic shell that has the added benefit of being easily colored, and joycons that are integrated.
    • \n
\n

So, here’s what I propose. Easy, really. Just super-size the Lite. A Lite XL, or LL if you hale from another continent, if you will. Make it $269, because that’s a nice price, and stop selling the OG Switch.

\n

Yeah. That’s pretty much it. Just do that, and we’re fantastic, Nintendo :)

\n

\n
", "date_published": "2023-12-14T19:26:43-07:00", "url": "https://tylerknowsnothing.com/2023/12/14/i-desperately-want.html", "tags": ["editorial"] }, { "id": "http://tknblogs.micro.blog/2023/12/14/francis-dunnerys-lets.html", "title": "Francis Dunnery’s Let’s Go Do What Happens | Album Stories", "content_html": "

" “>

\n
\n
\n
\nEveryone calls him Frank. Let’s Go Do What Happens was released in 1998.\n
\n
\n

I’m quite sure that it was early Fall in Vermont; leaf turning season. It drew the leaf peepers and they brought their money. We didn’t turn in those circles, or any circles for that matter. We spent time at home or at school or with the baby or at various jobs. She worked at the Vermont State Department of Corrections for a time. I worked at the nearby IBM plant for a spell. I attempted another go at college. I’d like to think we failed each other.

\n
\n
\n
\n Have a listen to the album while reading this piece.

The radio station that had to be on in the car at the time was The Point FM, de rigueur for any self-respecting AAA aficionado. Where else was one to catch up with the latest singles from Big Head Todd & The Monsters, R.E.M. or Dave Matthews Band, note the dates for a coming Phish show, or score a tip on hemp floor mats or locally roasted coffee (yes, that Green Mountain Coffee.)

\n

I honestly don’t recall the track from this album I heard on the radio that caused me to suddenly know I had to own it, but it could have been any of them. Normally, I have at the very least, a sense of which track, but not this one. All I know is I got in the car, drove down to the Sam Goody (I think, might have been a Wherehouse) off the 189 at Shelburne, and bought the cassette. I slapped it into the tape deck and listened to it all the way home.

\n

Thank you, Auto Reverse.

\n

Little did I know at the time, but Francis Dunnery was to become a very important figure in my one-person chapter of Tyler’s Music Appreciation Society. In 1998, however, I didn’t place as much importance on music as I would later in life, specifically in regard to my progressive self-education. Hell, at the time I hadn’t yet come to grips with The Blues and still had a stunted understanding of Jazz.

\n

I knew at the time, however, that Dunnery spoke to me with his lyrical content, compositional style, sound, and his distinctive vocal quality. I’ve come to understand this as Storyteller Syndrome; my principle thesis on progressive rock. In a nutshell, that one thing that sets progressive apart from its core genre is story telling. Most people think that “Prog Rock” is epic long tracks with soaring guitars, complex beats, and tales of space ships and wizards. I propose that couldn’t be further from the truth.

\n
Rocks songs are about love and loss. Prog rock songs are about stories. — Tyler Regas, 2020
\n

Even the most epic prog rock band of all time forever and ever, known to mortals as Rush, moved away from 15 minute long tracks and tales about hobbits and dragons to more socially conscious fare packaged into tighter, radio-friendly formats. In 1973, Yes released Tales from Topographic Oceans, four songs stretched over two albums, and completely radio-hostile. Just a decade later, and Yes would have a huge radio hit with Owner of a Lonely Heart. I don’t think anyone would argue that Yes should be disavowed. That would be absurd.

\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n

Now, I won’t try to suggest that any song that tells a story is progressive. No. It’s more than that. It has to be something new but retain principle elements of rock music, to take that music in a new direction, and evoke a reaction in the listener, one that provokes new avenues of thought or introspection, through storytelling or other narrative structures. This can even be done instrumentally. Just take a listen to any of Simon Phillips’ Protocol albums, Plini, or Arch Echo.

\n
\n
\n
\n Tell me that Biplane to Bermuda doesn’t paint an interesting picture…
\n
\n
\n Lush, hard prog rock instrumental soundscapes.
\n
\n
\n If you love Animals As Leaders but miss recognizable song structure.

In a way, we get to witness Dunnery’s trajectory through the late stages of the Golden Age of Progressive through his stint as frontman for influential UK band It Bites and into his solo albums. Not well known outside of the UK, It Bites is what I personally recognize as the last of the original progressive rocks bands of the golden era of prog. Most notable of his solo efforts is 2016’s Vampires release on Band Camp where he makes what he had originally intended for certain It Bites tracks quite clear, if you know what I mean. They have since come to terms.

\n

The late 90’s, however, were different for me. Not having the benefit of hindsight, we carried on with whatever priorities we had at the time, and that was taking care of Leah and making sure we could pay the bills. The writing work had started to take off and the local clients we consulted for were stable. We only had the issues facing us at the time and had no idea that, in just a few years the Twin Towers would fall and seven years after that America would experience the biggest financial collapse since The Great Depression.

\n

It seems that time really doesn’t have an impact. We’re still facing disaster, only it’s different and worse and our fault since we let that buffoon Trump get elected in the first place, but that’s beside the point. These days there’s plenty to be concerned about and for. We don’t know what’s going to be coming around the next corner, and it seems like we come to a new one several times a day. Even as we turn into 2021, we’re still exhausted by the chaos of it all, everything a question mark.

\n

Back then, however, I just enjoyed listening to the music. Not that I knew at the time, but I had that luxury. We all did. I think we all can again, at least for a few moments.

\n

Just start up the album. It’s at the top of the page in case you forgot. Sit back in a comfortable chair and just listen.

\n
Think about the chord progression.
\n
Think about the beat.
\n
The rhythm.
\n
Tonality.
\n

Think about the lyrics, the story being told. Don’t worry about understanding it all just yet. Instead, let yourself sink into the music and just enjoy it, and nothing else, for a track or two. Do this once a day for two weeks.

\n

Doctor’s orders.*

\n

* I am not a doctor.

\n

\n
\n", "date_published": "2023-12-14T16:03:06-07:00", "url": "https://tylerknowsnothing.com/2023/12/14/francis-dunnerys-lets.html", "tags": ["music","editorial"] }, { "id": "http://tknblogs.micro.blog/2022/06/03/can-we-please.html", "title": "Can we please end the stupid \"Natural\" vs. \"Reverse\" scrolling debacle?", "content_html": "

" “>

\n
\n

I am quite well versed in the extensive history of the operating system wars. Apple effectively created the home computer industry, and Microsoft has been doggedly chasing after ever since. This is not a new story in the slightest.

\n

Historical documents tell us that Steve Jobs managed to arrange a tour at Xerox’s Palo Alto Research Center, frequently called Xerox PARC, which had been tasked by their parent company with developing a wide range of modern computing technologies for the future. The PARC teams were responsible for laster printers, Ethernet, the desktop paradigm for graphical user interfaces, e-paper, Very Large-Scale Integration or VLSI, the process which made all of the computer chips we use today even possible, and the Alto, among other things.

\nA Xerox Alto II on display… somewhere. Unfortunately, the contributor didn’t note where they had taken the picture, so it’s anyone’s guess, though likely a computer museum… again, somewhere.

The Alto II was an amalgam of all of the technologies developed at PARC and was effectively a “desktop” computer. The idea might seem insane when you look at the literal behemoth above, but this where we were back then. The Alto II was never released as a product for the general public and only 2,000 were built, mostly deployed inside PARC with some distributed to universities. Many believe that the Mac team’s exposure to the work on the GUI at PARC helped them break through some of their final stumbling blocks before the release of the Macintosh in 1984. I’m pretty sure we’ve all seen the Super Bowl commercial…

\n
\nThe truth about Steve Jobs and Xerox PARC
or are there many \"truths\"? One of the foundation myths of Apple was that Steve Jobs and a team of developers working…latimesblogs.latimes.com\n

There was, however, one more piece of radically new hardware that had been invented a decade earlier by a bloke named Douglas Englebart at the Stanford Research Center which brought it all together, a device that would become known worldwide as…

\n
…The Computer Mouse.
\nThe inventor of the computer mouse, Douglas Englebart, never profited from his invention. During an interview, he said “SRI patented the mouse, but they really had no idea of its value. Some years later it was learned that they had licensed it to Apple Computer for something like $40,000.” Not a great deal, peeps…

Avoiding the rabbit hole…

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So as to avoid a long(er) narrative about the history of the mouse, let’s leave it there and move to this piece’s raison d’être; the mind bogglingly silly problem of computer mouse scroll wheel scrolling directions.

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\nYou try to use fewer words to describe it whilst insuring all readers know what you’re talking about! I’m open to suggestions.
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I’m quite sure most casual users who have always used a Mac or a Windows machine likely haven’t given a single thought to which direction the document in the display scrolls when you roll the scroll wheel up or down or drag two fingers across a trackpad. It’s kind of a thing that most people get. Kids learn all this stuff before they can string words together, for crying out loud!

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But for users like myself who use both macOS and Windows operating systems, it’s a pain. (For the record, I’m also a Linux power user. Mint, Pop, and Fedora, in that order.) Here’s why:

\nTake a look at Kunal Rathore’s excellent article on the Mac’s natural scrolling versus Windows’ established reverse scrolling implementation, including a lovely animated illustration to, uh… illustrate the difference for those who have withstood the awesome attraction of “the other side”.

As you can plainly see, they just do the opposite. It’s not like you can iterate on a linear motion control. It goes up. It goes down. There’s not a lot of room for creativity. If you take a look at the Mouse settings in macOS and Windows you’ll start to see where the problem lies. Let’s look at macOS 12.4 “Monterey” and how it handles scrolling options:

\nWHAT? The Mac makes this an OPTION???!!! I sense the Windows user inside me starting to get nervous…

Well, how does Windows handle this, then? Let’s take a look at my HP EliteBook running Windows 10 and it’s scroll wheel options:

\nI like Dark Mode. Sue me.

As you can see, the only options for controlling the scroll wheel in Windows are to tweak how quickly and how far it scrolls when you twiddle the control, but not direction.

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Grrr.

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Yes. All this is the fault of Microsoft…

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So, I think we can all agree that this is rather silly, has no place as an issue on computers made since 2010 (so, we’re 12 years late), and is just dirt easy to fix. And no, I don’t want any registry hacks or 3rd party utilities. It’s built into everything else, so yeah. Clearly, everyone else seems to have cracked the code, as it were.

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I’m not a coder on any level, but if programmers can make mistake that lose people hundreds of millions of dollars and fix that epic screwup, I’m quite sure Microsoft can add a scrolling direction option toggle to a Windows update coming sometime this year, and that’s being generous.

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I’d be willing to wager a farthing and a nice six-pack of gluten-free beer that a couple of their superstar hackers could whip up a fix in an afternoon. Tell “Up” and “Down” to do the opposite.

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Ooooooooooo! Rocket Science!!!

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I’d be interested in hearing how or why this would not be a feasible endeavor. Both pragmatic and loony answers are welcome. I only have two rules; have fun. be nice.

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The Conclusion…

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It’s time. Get it done, Microsoft.

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PS: The violence in America is intensifying. There are reports of mass shootings coming in daily now. The Laguna Woods shooting was just a few miles from our home. There are very clear signs that America is heading towards some kind of event or series of events that will likely change life in this country forever. I’d much rather it be a march on the Capitol for a protest of epic proportions than another mass shooting.

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PPS: One way we can look at this is via representation, one of the core tenets of the foundations of American society. Most Americans are represented, at least the ones who aren’t homeless, an illegal immigrant, or Black. Those should be easy red flags. Then divide them into Democratic, Independent, and Republican silos. There’s more red flags. They’re everywhere you look. We keep divvying ourselves up into little groups of people who should get more than everyone else. And we know very well that the big group with the most rabid desire is the white supremacy movement. Another is the National Rifle Association. I get it. It’s easy to get them mixed up.

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PPPS: When reflecting on the tragedy of these terrible times when some of our “representatives” choose to dissemble in the face of the slaughter of nineteen 9–11 year olds in the name of their god, the gun, remember that the NRA membership is less than 2 million… in a country of 330 million.

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PPPPS: How’s that for representation!

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\n", "date_published": "2022-06-03T12:00:00-07:00", "url": "https://tylerknowsnothing.com/2022/06/03/can-we-please.html", "tags": ["editorial","technology"] }, { "id": "http://tknblogs.micro.blog/2022/02/26/americas-most-underrated.html", "title": "America's most underrated musical genius | Bruce Hornsby", "content_html": "

" “>\nBruce Hornsby with The Grateful Dead performing at Soldier Field on July 4, 2015 in Chicago. Jay Blakesberg/Invision for the Grateful Dead/AP Images

I’m not going to go into a long, winding diatribe about how and why and when Bruce became a humble god living among us mortals. He’d just deny it. Instead, I’ll show you.

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Hell, this is from 1999. There’s another 20 years of new stuff to take in from there, and he’s still going. Not now, of course. Pandemic, anyone?

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You certainly know him from the title track from his debut album, The Way It Is, but that was back in 1986. What did he do from 1986 to 1999? Hmm…

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  • The Way It Is (1986)
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  • Scenes From The Southside (1988)
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  • A Night On The Town (1990)
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  • Harbor Lights (1993)
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  • Hot House (1995, a personal favorite… fantastic album)
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  • Spirit Trail (1998)
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Not to mention countless live shows, playing with the Grateful Dead (a lot.)

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So, after this show, what more can you expect to find? Take a look…

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  • Here Come The Noisemakes (2000, a collection of live recordings from 1998 to 2000 as the Noisemakers would become his new band)
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  • Big Swing Face (2002)
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  • Halcyon Days (2004)
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  • Intersections (2006, an essential box-set of loads of unreleased material, live and studio)
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  • Ricky Skaggs & Bruce Hornsby (2007, some freaking amazing bluegrass)
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  • Camp Meeting (2007, an album of jazz tracks!, very lovely)
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  • Levitate (2009)
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  • Bride of The Noisemakers (2011, another live collection I can listen to all day long)
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  • Rehab Reunion (2016, where Bruce spends more time playing the dulcimer, and it’s amazing)
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  • Absolute Zero (2019)
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For a more complete listing of almost everything Bruce has done, check out his discography on Wikipedia.

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Bruce is a freaking space wizard. He’s a master at two-handed piano, and incorporates that skill into many tracks, like Spider Fingers from the Hot House album, and he loves to improvise when playing live, as you can see here…

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Here’s the album version. See if you can pick out how each hand is playing…

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Then, there’s all those times Bruce played with The Grateful Dead, and The Dead were always great with bootlegging, so here’s a show from 1990… with Bruce on the keys…

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\nGrateful Dead Live at Madison Square Garden on 1990-09-20 : Free Borrow & Streaming : Internet…
Set 1 Feel Like A Stranger, Althea, It's All Over Now, Ramble On Rose, El Paso, Brown Eyed Women, Greatest Story Ever…archive.org\n

All in all, Bruce makes fantastic music and I think you’ll love it all as much as I do, considering there’s tons to choose from. And if you love live shows as much as I do, then check out Nugs.net where you can purchase official “bootlegs” that are simply wonderful. There are numerous free shows to pick from, and they offer a lot of FLAC versions for most shows, all recorded from the board and sounding FABULOUS!!

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If, when you look up from a five hour binging session are surprised that so much time has passed, I’ll happily take the blame ;)

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\n
\n", "date_published": "2022-02-26T13:00:00-07:00", "url": "https://tylerknowsnothing.com/2022/02/26/americas-most-underrated.html", "tags": ["music","editorial"] }, { "id": "http://tknblogs.micro.blog/2022/02/26/ive-gone-back.html", "title": "I've gone (back to) Mac \u0026 why you should, too.", "content_html": "

" “>\nAn overview of Apple’s technologically significant M1 chip architecture. Neato torpedo…

Back in 2009, I needed to have the CPU repasted in my MacBook Pro as it was running hot. Ill-advised in retrospect, I poked around Craig’s List until I settled on someone offering repair services that I felt I could trust. I spoke to him on the phone a few times, and we arranged to meet. I dropped off the laptop, we chatted jovially for about ten minutes, and then I went home.

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I never saw that machine again.

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I had been a contented Apple user since the (very) late 1970’s, but as the 2000’s wore on, my satisfaction had been whittled away by a range of issues like Apple’s pricing, the rise of the walled garden, and limitations preventing me from using non-Apple gear, of which I have a lot. As a working writer, the most pressing issue of the time, however, was that I had $600 to get a replacement machine so I could get back to work. It took me four years to save up the $2,400 for it in the first place and a used machine wasn’t going to cut it. I had no choice. I had to buy a Windows machine.

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I started with an HP ProBook I picked up open box at Microcenter for $600. It was okay. After a couple of years it became nigh unusable for my Team Fortress 2 gaming, so I got another $600 open box deal at Microcenter, this time a Lenovo Flex 3 with discreet graphics. To its credit, my wife still uses it to this day. It’s slow as hell, but she won’t give it up. Not blowing a ton of cash on these machines, however, allowed me to save up another chunk of cash and, happy with Windows 10 at the time, I dropped $1,800 on my first gaming laptop, an Alienware 15 R3 with an 8GB GTX1060 graphics card. Despite all my research, it turned out to be something of a shitbox and now sits in a drawer with a dead battery that’s really hard to replace. So, early on in the Pandemic, I bought an open box HP Elitebook 840 G6 for way less than it’s street value. And yes, it was also $600. If you’re curious, I don’t have any particular affinity for the number 600, just hilarious coincidence.

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Just don’t buy Dell. Period. They’re crap and only care about their enterprise & their hot XPS laptop, which they recently sabotaged with a hideous new industrial design. Typical Dell, am I right?
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Now, more than a decade later, I have a new M1 Mac Mini on my desk, an iPhone 12 Mini in my pocket, and a 2013 MacBook Pro I got from a friend. Yes, I still have the HP EliteBook 840 (running the thoroughly disappointing Windows 11 which I’m planning to downgrade back to Windows 10), but I’ve barely used it since I got the Mac Mini, aside from taking the time to charge it up and make sure it has all updates. And it was an easy switch, as most of my tools are online, run from my web host or on my NAS, and/or have long been cross-platform. With a little practice I was back in the groove.

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So, what prompted this sudden turn-around?

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The first thing that caught my eye was the then new iPhone 12 Mini. I’d been an avid Blackberry user for years before migrating to the iPhone 4s, but when I lost my MacBook Pro to stupidity, I started trying out Android devices as they integrated better with Windows. Those early days were harsh, and after working through a range of Android devices, I eventually circled back to Blackberrys with BBOS 10 which had Android app support. I’m pretty sure you already know how that ended, which is when I bought my first truly great Android device, the OnePlus 2. Following that was an LG v30, then a Samsung A70, and saw that these things were getting too damn big. That iPhone 12 Mini spoke to me, so I bought one.

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Just one month later in 2020, Apple shocked the world with the announcement of the first M1-powered systems. For the second time in years, I was excited for something from Apple. After ingesting an unhealthy number of YouTube videos issuing test after test illustrating the M1's astounding superiority and efficiency after having been held in thrall by the iPhone 12 Mini for six months, I felt it was time to dip my toes back into Apple’s newly inviting waters.

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I pulled the trigger in early 2021.

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There was more to my decision-making, though. I’d been monitoring the battle between Epic Games and Apple in hopes that the Cupertino behemoth would start opening up more of iOS. I’d also acquired the aforementioned 2013 MacBook Pro from a friend and was pleasantly surprised to find that it ran the then current macOS just fine, which reminded me of Apple’s legendary reliability and long life.

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Microsoft had just rolled out Windows 10 to “correct” the Windows 8/8.1 Start Menu debacle and were doing all kinds of amazing new stuff. I’d come to believe that Apple and Microsoft had switched places, something like a Silicon Valley version of Freaky Friday (Phreaky Phriday would be an apropos title for the film). Microsoft’s efforts were exciting and full of promise, while Apple was building ludicrously expensive cheese graters, spending five years apologizing for the atrocious “Butterfly” keyboard, ignoring their other keyboard “innovation,” the TouchBar, figuring out more important things to remove, and not much else of interest.

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Apple’s moneymaker was the iPhone and from the outside looking into Apple’s legendarily opaque operations, their mobile Golden Goose appeared to receive all of Apple’s focus. The Mac had been left to Apple’s chief designer Jony Ive and his bizarre, experimentally unnecessary proclivities, which are exemplified more by the removal of features that forced the creation of new revenue streams (i.e., AirPods, removing the wall charger from iPhone boxes, etc…) than the work-a-day aspects of technological evolution. When Steve Jobs called for the removal of the floppy drive from the original iMac, it was because he predicted that the CD-ROM drive would replace the older, slower, less capacious storage medium.

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Steve Jobs was right…

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Why did Jony Ive, Apple’s design chief, remove the headphone jack. Were people not using headphones anymore? Were headphone jack modules too big for their thin, innovative industrial designs? Were Apple’s customers demanding true wireless earbuds? No. None of these things were true. They did it because it meant they could sell far more over-priced AirPods and make a load more money over including a cheap pair in the box. And with the removal of the charging adapter, they outright claimed it would contribute to saving the planet, when it’s just another accessory being monetized and whose packaging adds even more waste to our overflowing landfills.

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So, you might be asking yourself why, amid all this chaos, would I jump ship… again? I mean, if Apple is doing all this shady crap with their walled garden and taking a 30% cut of sales from the App Store and everything else, why would I again immerse myself into Apple’s “flawed” ecosystem after swimming in the warm seas of Windows for a decade? Well, for one, that ecosystem isn’t as flawed as it was in 2009. Two, it’s complicated for a raft of personal reasons I’ve already touched on. It hasn’t helped that, after a few years of reliable innovation, Microsoft itself has been sending mixed signals about their future plans, and those signals are confusing. They were doing phones, then not. They were doing ARM-based Surface tablets, then those shriveled up when their performance failed to meet expectations. They were going to bring augmented reality to the masses with the HoloLens. Where the hell’s that thing?

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In my opinion, I believe that Cook and Ive had a disagreement on the ultimate direction of Apple after the six long years of the Butterfly Keyboard debacle, rising thermals from Intel parts as well as their inability to get past 10nm processes, and languishing sales that were at odds with Ive’s industrial design desires. All new systems essentially roll-back Apple’s design ethos to pre-2016 forms with the iPhone 12 cloning the wildly popular iPhone 5 and the new Late-2021 MacBook Pro’s sporting the new M1 Pro and Max chips recalling the look and, more importantly, most of the ports from the pre-Butterfly designs and ditching the TouchBar for full-size function keys.
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I’ve long understood that corporations do what they do for themselves and their shareholders. Many of them recognize that being somewhat responsive to the needs of their customers and producing products that people actually want to buy is easier than… doing the opposite (ahem, Dell.) I’ve also come to understand that it’s all just noise. The industry is what it is, and until consumers actually speak with their wallets, something we most decidedly do not do, Apple and Microsoft and every other gigantic corporation will continue to do as they please. So, until we put our money where our collective mouths are, we have to base our purchasing decisions on something.

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Instead, we must focus on who is making the most compelling technological innovations, the chip design that takes years and years and thousands of super smart people who know math and physics and science and programming, to offer the features and forward-thinking I consider when deciding which path I’ll follow. After Microsoft has effectively abandoned any semblance of a desire to innovate to focus on reliable, consistent revenue generation, the tea leaves say that Apple’s silicon will be the one to watch for the coming decade.

\nMy desktop as of today, Feb. 20th, 2022, with labels. Kinda looks like a cockpit, no?

I mean, come on! I’ve got a $1,500 Mac Mini on my desk that can reportedly often match or exceed the performance of a Mac Pro “Cheese Grater” costing ten thousand dollars or more! The guys over at Max Tech on YouTube haven’t been able to sell their $15K Mac Pro while performing most of their editing on a 24\" M1 iMac. It’s insane the leap in power and efficiency Apple has brought to the table, and they’ve only just started.

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I’d be an idiot not to ride that wave…

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Of course, I’m not everyone. I’m a writer with casual gaming tendencies. I don’t push my hardware that much anymore. Back in the early 00’s I was running a Citrix MetaFrame server in the garage office we had at the time. I’d tired of Windows and was running Caldera OpenLinux on my desktop, but still needed Windows apps to write Windows books and had $30k of Citrix’s enterprise software sitting around from a previous book, so I put it to work. Prior to that, I was using Macs exclusively, and worked on Windows material using Connectix’s Virtual PC. I’d say that at least 25% of my Windows-based work was done using systems other than Windows. Clever girl.

\nIt’s hilarious that my wife found this as I am writing this article. This is an actual Beta 2 disc I used for my work on some of the books of the time. The server was running Windows 2000 Server, which was running the Citrix MetaFrame software serving Microsoft Office apps to my Caldera OpenLinux desktop system while I ran XP in Virtual PC on my PowerMac 7300/200. So very meta when meta wasn’t even meta yet…

Times, for better or worse, have changed, and so has technology. Whilst I remain an avid humanist and decry corporate efforts to commodify the planet and its contents for the lascivious pleasure and seemingly bottomless enrichment of the 1%, I do love me some sweet, sweet computer hardware and high-quality software. As previously mentioned, even after being separated for nigh a decade, I eased back into using macOS like putting on an old pair of comfortable shoes. All of the basics hadn’t left me, and I only needed to retrain myself on the lesser used functions involving shortcuts and modifiers. Windows did a number on me in that regard, but it’s all about getting stuff done and how little your OS gets in your way.

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To that end, macOS is aces. Windows has gone through many significant changes in the last twenty years. Windows 7 was the penultimate exemplar of the classic Windows UI. Windows 8, however, decided to rip off its clothes and run through City Hall with a picket sign reading “Mission Accomplished” before getting tackled by cops and made to put on pants before Windows 10 came to bail it out. But even Windows 10 couldn’t commit to Microsoft’s own legacy, and now Windows 11 is breaking everything in order to be more Apple-like. Had you not use a Mac lately, you might think that this means Windows is ultra-modern and macOS is languishing in the past, but that’s simply not the case.

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Using a Mac may retain the familiarity of classic System 7’s form coupled with the modern sensibilities of Mac OS 10.4 “Tiger” but it also contains a dizzying array of functionality improvements and new features. Apple simply didn’t see the need to change the basic conceit of the macOS user interface and user experience of its venerable OS. The Mac is both of the future while paying deep homage to the past. I’m inclined to think that anyone familiar with macOS of a decade or more ago should have a similar experience to mine. Microsoft, on the other hand, can’t even figure out what to do with their control panel items.

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Today’s application climate does, however, play a significant role. I don’t think my switch back to the Mac would have been possible without the internet’s comprehensive shift towards web-enabled and web-powered apps. As Apple has been able to maintain a 15% share of the desktop market (which includes laptops) and a large percentage of Mac users are creatives, lots of apps are cross-platform. It also doesn’t hurt that the iPhone and iPad are both juggernauts of their respective markets.

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All this exposition, for what again?

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When all is said and done, what is it that I now derive from the new M1 Mac Mini mounted vertically on my desk that I couldn’t have gotten from my three year old 8th Gen HP business laptop running Windows 11? Peace of mind for one. Windows 11 is a mess. Just search for “Windows 11 problems” and you’ll find an endless slew of examples. Here’s one that Forbes just posted about the other day:

\nCool, man… Click to read the article. NOTE: You get four free reads if you don’t already subscribe.

This might even sound familiar since it seems like the vast majority of Windows updates offer some kind of flag on the field that even Microsoft can’t predict before it ushers the baby code into the dark world of uncontrolled component drivers. Is it any wonder the Redmond giant wants to clamp down on hardware diversity? Apple has been doing it for decades, and their reliability numbers are significantly better than Microsoft’s.

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That’s not to say Macs don’t have issues. They do, just far less frequently, at least in my experience. I generally go weeks without restarting my Macs. Windows 10 was good for a few days, but Windows 11 has been a near daily reboot cycle on the EliteBook (which has good driver support), mostly because of stupid errors, app errors, and persistent UI faults that won’t go away until you IT Crowd the damn thing. The worst I’ve seen on the M1 Mac Mini is easily fixed with restarting the faulty app itself.

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I’ve got about fifty tabs open in seven tab groups on Safari, am running eight to ten applications, have a range of support apps running in the background, and it’s just peachy. It doesn’t get loud, like, at all. I don’t think I’ve ever heard the fan. It also never slows down, no matter how much I load up the system. Everything remains perfectly responsive and if there are any faults, they’re typically from an app’s services, poor coding practices, and/or lagging online content.

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I’ve also not had to worry about legacy apps. Rosetta 2, the translation system that converts x86 code to ARM and back again (there’s a Bilbo joke in there somewhere) is seamless. Literally seamless. I honestly don’t know if I have any non-native apps installed. I might, and they just run. No popups, alerts, weird icon flags, or anything. I also haven’t had the need to use Windows virtualized. Sure, I had it installed in Parallels, but just to goof around in the ARM version of Windows 11. I haven’t fired it up in months.

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(For the record, I just did so I could update it and I’m having to wait for Parallels and Windows to perform all their updates before I can start using it. The entire process took half an hour, not for lack of performance, but because Windows takes forever to get anything done. Even in 2022, Windows Update chokes on its own dependencies where updates fail on the first try because something else didn’t get updated first, and this isn’t limited to Beta versions. Super fun.)

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What do you tell people about upgrading to Apple Silicon?

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Just do it. Unless you use one or more tools that work only on Windows in an x86 hardware environment or are a PC gamer, just do it. You don’t need to spend $1,500 like I did, either. I got 16GBs of RAM and 1TB of storage space, but I always over buy as I generally get more years of use out of the expenditure rather than getting what I need in the moment. It’s also important to understand that with Apple’s new chip architecture you are stuck with whatever RAM and storage space you select at the time of purchase as those components are now integrated into the processor.

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The vast majority of users will do fine with the baseline 8GBs of RAM and 256GBs of local storage. Two Thunderbolt 4 ports on the back ensure that large, high-quality external drives are fast, and they’re way cheaper than buying more storage from Apple. Here are some additional pointers about getting (back) into the Mac in the 20’s:

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  • There’s a rumored Apple Event coming on March 8th. Wait until then to see what they roll out. Any new M-series chips will be incrementally better than last gen parts, but it’s always best to get the latest hardware if you can. You will derive performance, efficiency, and feature benefits from the changes Apple makes to the previous iteration. Then again, it’s not always about the performance, but the value.
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  • \nRegularly check MacPrices.net for updates on sales. It’s best to keep a tab open to the Latest Deals page. Base model M1 Mac Minis can get down to $650, which is a steal for a machine that will get official support for seven years and actually last longer. Seriously. Also, get AppleCare. It’s worth it because Apple makes it worth it. Be patient, and you can get open box deals for as low as $550. My Late-2013 15\" MacBook Pro is officially supported to the previous major version of macOS. That’s NINE YEARS, of support. Windows 8 and 8.1 was out for only four years, three if you count the fact that Windows 10 was released one year before Microsoft ended support for 8.1 in 2016. Windows 11 was released six years later in 2021. As of yet, we don’t know how Microsoft will arrange support for Windows 10, which works on all PCs, and Windows 11, which is only supported on PCs with TPM 2.0 modules and a few other requirements. That’s not a good look, Mr. Nadella.
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  • Do NOT buy any MacBook with a TouchBar. They were made from 2015 to 2019 and have the atrocious Butterfly keyboards which fail if you cough lightly or dust anything within ten feet (fifteen feet if the lid is closed.) The only exception is the 13\" M1 MacBook, and if you’re looking at that, just get a MacBook Air. Apple replaced the function keys with a touch display, and then ignored it, so its effectively useless. So, unless you plan on using it as a laptop with an external keyboard or like replacing parts frequently, just avoid them. The article below gives you a rundown of which models to avoid when shopping for used deals.
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\nWhich MacBooks have the Butterfly Keyboard?
After introducing the Butterfly keyboard in 2015, Apple persisted with it for 4 years until mounting customer…macsx.com\n
  • Reflect on what Microsoft has done for you lately, or to you if you’re in a particularly salty mood, and recognize that these are all just computers that perform tasks for you. They aren’t pantheons or ideological camps, despite appearances. They’re machines and you likely need one to perform tasks. I suggest the Mac because of their qualities and benefits over buying Windows. With a Mac you know what you’re getting. With a Windows box, god knows what they slapped into that box, or how poorly. There are plenty of pre-built PC horror stories. Laptops aren’t spared, either, as manufacturers use a wide range of parts they could get deals on, even in the same model, often making driver management a maddening crap shoot.
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I recently posted a piece discussing the lowly, but highly functional keyboard shortcut and the idea that keeping your hands on the keyboard is the key to efficiency, but it also serves to illustrate yet another core advantage Apple’s macOS has over Windows.

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\nAre keyboard shortcuts really more efficient than a mouse?
As a Mac user, there is one very specific admonition from Windows and Linux users I hear frequently; too much mouse…tylerknowsnothing.medium.com\n

This is clearly my personal opinion, but I’ve found the Mac to be a solid, all-around, thoughtful computing ecosystem that has remained consistent for decades and reliable to a refreshing fault. While we may pay a premium, something that rankles to this day and I will complain about until Apple addresses it, you get a system that will last for many years longer than the competition. And if you care about such things, Apple products have excellent resale value, making upgrades far less onerous for your wallet. Then again, I’ve found it difficult to give up my old gear when the time comes for said upgrades. That could be why I still have a MacBook Pro from 2013 in active use and a load of my old Mac stuff in storage, including my PowerBook 145b, the machine on which I started my writing career

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Apple Silicon is an evolutionary revolution…

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Marketing and PR types like to sling the word “Revolutionary” around a lot when describing their marginally improved products. In many cases it’s pure hyperbole, but Apple’s ARM-based systems, starting with the M1 with it’s base, Pro, and Max variants are more than the sum of their parts. Under the hood it may be an ARMv8.4 architecture part derived from their iPhone processors, but Apple’s chip engineers have built a new architecture that leapfrogs all of the current work being done in CPUs.

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Intel’s 12th generation Core processors are damned fast, but to achieve that performance they suck up a ton of power to get there and fall flat when unplugged. Meanwhile, Apple’s M1’s sip 30 watts of power and perform exactly the same plugged in or on battery power and can last a day on one charge. It’s not magic and they didn’t create new technologies the likes of which we have never seen before, but they did learn from their experiences designing and improving the iPhone. And all this after Steve Jobs had vocally denied having a phone in the works at all before gleefully announcing it on stage at San Francisco’s Moscone Center in January of 2007.

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Those first iPhones used more standard ARM designs, but by 2010 Apple would roll out their 45nm (“thicc” in nerd parlance) A4 chip with a single 32-bit core that had been designed in-house. One decade later, the 64-bit A14 Bionic sports six performance and four efficiency cores built on a 5nm process with a quad-core GPU and a 16-core AI processor as well as a small constellation of support cores. The M1, derived from the A14 chips, can run for up to 18-hours in a $999 MacBook Air while still offering desktop-grade professional video editing functionality. If they can do that, I’m pretty sure they can handle YouTube videos and writing emails.

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Some people would call these innovations a “sea change,” myself included. I think if Steve were alive he would be blasé about it, having planned for it years in advance. He was prescient about so many things, removed older technologies at the right time to push the industry towards adoption of incoming technologies, and kept everything he could as close to his chest as possible to limit tipping off the competition. When Cook and Ive took on his role jointly it became clear they didn’t share Steve’s deep insight, likely born of his relentless research into coming innovations. In other words, Jobs was playing 4D chess while Cook and Ive were still trying to figure out checkers, at least until Ive left Apple to start his own design firm.

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\nApple Executives Discuss How Apple Silicon Achieves Steve Jobs' Goal of 'Making the Whole Widget'
In a new interview with Om Malik, Apple's software engineering chief Craig Federighi, marketing chief Greg Joswiak, and…www.macrumors.com\n
\n“Steve used to say that we make the whole widget. We’ve been making the whole widget for all of our products, from the iPhone, to the iPads, to the watch. This was the final element to making the whole widget on the Mac.” — Greg “Joz” Joswiak, Apple CMO
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It’s clear that one thing survived Jobs passing, though; the plans laid to make the “whole widget.” Apple ditched the PowerPC because IBM was incapable of fabbing a part that could run cool enough for a PowerBook, and the move to Intel parts was just a stopgap along the way to said widget. As I spoke of earlier, the removal of the headphone jack to replace it with egregiously overpriced Bluetooth earbuds was an entirely cynical, capitalistic thing to do in the same vein as taking the charger out of the iPhone box and packaging it separately while claiming to be saving the planet, but really just creating nearly twice the landfill entrée per device sold through. (Pro Tip: You are allowed to change the box design, Apple.)

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Apple’s secrecy strikes again. Microsoft suddenly flounders?

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Back in the mid-2010’s, as Apple was spinning further and further away from the path Jobs had set them on, Microsoft was having a kind of renaissance with new CEO Satya Nadella who, with CPO Panos Panay’s emotionally engaging presentation style, sold us on a new age of innovation that would be issuing forth from Redmond. Windows 10 had a whole new Agile-based release process, they were working on the HoloLens Augmented Reality glasses, and talking about bringing a new (not) phone to market. They showed off hot new gear in September 2020 like the (not a phone, per se) Surface Duo and the never-shipped Surface Neo tablet while the HoloLens moved upmarket as a consumer-unfriendly enterprise device priced at nearly $5,000.

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Then in a November 2020 event, Apple drops a bomb; the all-new, didn’t-see-it-coming M1 chip slotted into the fanless MacBook Air and the fanned MacBook Pro 13\" and Mac Mini. The surprise event seemed sufficient to push Microsoft off course, and they didn’t correct well. With their ARM-based hardware and software initiative struggling to keep its head above the water in the ankle-deep shallows of a calm lake, Apple’s successes with their shift to Apple Silicon effectively bullied their competition into handing over their floaties. But I don’t think this indicates that Apple has any real power over Microsoft, only that Microsoft’s efforts weren’t as thought out as we’d hoped. This is nothing new, however, as Microsoft has had issues keeping the lumbering juggernaut on its tracks for many, many years.

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\nApple Event
Watch the latest Apple keynote stream, and check out the archive of special event announcements for our products and…www.apple.com\n

As a consumer, the take away here should be that Apple is offering a well-supported, stable, secure, and capable platform that meshes extremely well with the tens of millions of iPhones and iPads that reside in the hands of Windows users, and Microsoft has not seemed capable of correcting course in a timely manner. I don’t think these factors will cause a mass exodus from Windows, but it certainly won’t help Microsoft maintain their massive lead over Apple in the installed user base.

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I know this is a lot to think about.

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I think the two most important things you should take away from this are that the Internet has had a profound effect on cross-platform compatibility and that Apple is doing some amazing things. Whether they will pan out in the future is only for the future to know, but from what I see, the best bet most of us have for a real value in computing gear has started to shift from the WinTel (Windows on Intel) industry towards the Mac.

\nApple’s traditional marketshare has been 14%. It’s now 16% while Windows has been steadily declining, something that’s easier to see with a larger data set. [SOURCE: statcounter]

Of course, Apple’s not going to jump from 16% marketshare to overtake Microsoft’s 76% anytime soon, but the Cupertino company has laid the foundation.

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From my perspective, that foundation’s far beefier than Microsoft’s for the foreseeable future. Let’s agree to meet up in 2032 to discuss.

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PS: Let’s keep Ukraine in our thoughts. That sovereign country is being attacked by a thug who knows nothing but violence. I normally try to be positive and constructive in these postscripts, but this time is different. The Russian Kleptocracy needs to come to an end and the Russian people and the peoples of the former Soviet states must be freed from Putin’s mob-inspired tyranny of lies, murder, and police violence. Even the Russian citizenry know this is wrong. They’re out there protesting when they know they face violent arrest. Nearly 2,000 have been arrested already.

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PPS: Be kind to each other. We can do it if we just try. So, try harder, for all our sakes.

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\n", "date_published": "2022-02-26T13:00:00-07:00", "url": "https://tylerknowsnothing.com/2022/02/26/ive-gone-back.html", "tags": ["Apple","editorial"] } ] }