Author Archives: Jack Wellborn

Apple Studio Display and Gaming PC Thunderbolt Weirdness

A question about whether it was possible to connect a gaming PC desktop to Apple’s Studio Display came up in a recent discussion. Using Apple’s premium display with a gaming PC is a weird setup. Not only does the Studio Display lack in ways important to gaming, it also can only be connected via Thunderbolt. […]

Replacing a Chin With a Bump

From Wesley Hilliard at AppleInsider: An engineer called “Technology Hunter” on Chinese social media site Bilibili attempted to redesign the 24-inch iMac with a uniform display bezel. He moved the chin to the rear of the display, enabling a Studio Display-like bezel. It’s an impressive mod, without a doubt, but is the resulting design better […]

Stage Manager on macOS Ventura

The car I learned to drive on had a manual transmission. That was over two decades ago, but learning on stick was still relatively uncommon among my peers. Driving a manual was (and still is) harder than an automatic. You have to time the clutch just right to get going lest the car stalls or […]

This is Fine

This paragraph by Scharon Harding at Ars Technica made me do a double take. Regardless of what I put it through, the Spectre stayed surprisingly cool for its size. After an hour-long stress test, for example, the only part of the chassis that was too hot to touch comfortably was its underside, although the keyboard […]

What Does Stage Manager Manage?

A reader recently sent me a screenshot of macOS Ventura’s onboarding prompt to enable Stage Manager (as of developer beta 5). Here’s what it says: Stage Manager Stage Manager arranges your recent windows into a single strip for reduced clutter and quick access. Focus on one window at a time and create sets by mixing […]

A Relationship With Strings Attached

Ron Amedeo over at Ars Technica put together an excellent overview of Google’s RCS, and why it’s not the same as standard RCS. Here’s what Ron had to say: Google tried to glom features onto the aging RCS spec, but if you consider those part of the RCS sales pitch, which Google does, now it’s […]

Nightly Time Machine

Nightly Time Machine is a small side project I have been working on for a few weeks to make Time Machine more usable with my laptop. From my Github: At its best, Time Machine is “set it and forget it” in that you should never really have to think about it until a backup is […]

Cycling Through Stacks in macOS 13 Beta 4

Apple did something clever with how stacked windows in the strip are cycled. When clicking on a stack of windows in the strip, Stage Manager prioritizes keeping the outgoing window on top of the stack. Assuming you have window A on the stage, and windows B, C, D are in the stack in that order. […]

Recent Stuff

Apple giveth and Apple taketh away. In macOS 13 developer beta 3, I was elated to see that Apple had named Stage Manager’s dingus on the left a “strip”. Imagine my surprise and disappointment to find that name erased and replaced with “Recent Apps”. I have a few quibbles with this change. First of all, […]

A Burger Without Heinz

John Gruber recently took umbrage with Wirecutter’s pick for best laptop. Here’s what he wrote: My longstanding complaint about The Wirecutter is that they institutionally fetishize price over quality. That makes it all the more baffling that their recommended “Best Laptop” — not best Windows laptop, but best laptop, full stop — is a Dell […]