John Gruber made an excellent and compelling argument for avoiding certain terms when describing the hateful, nationalist, far right party running the United States currently, and instead suggests we all do what we can to ensure the names they call themselves end up just as stigmatized. Our goal should not be to make fascist or […]
Author Archives: Jack Wellborn
My wife and I are big fans of the series Columbo, starring Peter Falk. The show had two separate runs. The first and much better original series aired on NBC in the 1970s while the latter still-sort-of-good revival aired on ABC about a decade later. Like every other program made for television before the age […]
Nathan Edwards, in a Verge article titled “I replaced Windows with Linux and everything’s going great1“, writes: First challenge: My mouse buttons don’t work. I can move the cursor, but can’t click on anything. I try plugging in a mouse (without unplugging the first one), same deal. Not a major issue; I can get around […]
Anil Dash recently made an observation on Mastodon that included a screenshot of an iPadOS 26 setup screen with a prompt showing three options: Full Screen Apps, Windowed Apps, and Stage Manager. While each option had a description, Stage Manager curiously was the only one that ended with “more…” As someone who has written quite […]
Matt Birchler recently did a nice YouTube video praising the open source tile manager AeroSpace. There is a lot to love about AeroSpace right from the get-go. While I definitely wouldn’t call it Mac-assed, since AeroSpace is for very advanced users and developers who are comfortable with text configuration files, my sense is that AeroSpace […]
In olden days computers had just two emotions. They either happily worked as expected or were too sad to boot. Computers today have a range of emotions, but tragically have no way to express them. That’s why our scientists developed MacMoji using the latest in sticker technology, so your favorite computers can finally convey exactly […]
There are two arguments some use to try and diminish Steve Jobs contribution to the Macintosh, and by extension all of desktop computing. The first and by far most common is to say that Jobs merely copied what he saw at Xerox Parc. While there is absolutely no doubt both the Macintosh and NeXT grew […]
The default of any physical space is clutter, in that keeping things tidy requires persistent concerted effort. People who succeed at sustained tidiness rely on systems, habits, and routines to reduce that effort. Disposing a single delivery box, for example, is much easier when a single process is defined for all delivery boxes. Even if […]
Those who have been following the rollout of Apple’s new Liquid Glass theme accuse Alan Dye and his team of designing user interfaces that look good in marketing materials at the expense of usability. That’s a fair criticism, but I don’t think “marketing” is the right way to frame it. In my mind, marketing interfaces […]
Seems like Microsoft is still migrating features from the old Windows Control Panel to its newer Settings app. Here’s Sean Hollister, at The Verge: But the Control Panel still can’t die. The latest features to migrate, as of today’s Technical Preview: clock settings; time servers; formatting for time, number, and currency; UTF-8 language support toggle, […]