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The Adventure-Features Edition Monday, November 7, 2022

What I Love And Hate About The Apple Watch Ultra After Six Weeks Together, by Jakob Schiller, Outside

After a few weeks of testing the Ultra I set up an interview with several top Apple executives who were involved with the development of the watch. All three had their talking points down pat, but it was useful to be able to get a little more behind-the-scenes information. One point they hammered home was that the Ultra is not just an adventure watch but an Apple product with adventure features, which I’ve come to agree with.

As with all of their products, Apple designers first made the Ultra a joy to use every single day, easy to figure out, and beautiful to look at. They then found a way to add in features that those of us in the adventure world would appreciate and use regularly.

Apple Says iPhone 14 Pro And iPhone 14 Pro Max Availability Is Very Constrained Following Factory Closures In China, by Benjamin Mayo, 9to5Mac

Apple today released a statement warning investors and customers that iPhone 14 Pro and iPhone 14 Pro Max availability is very constrained following recent factory closures due to recent COVID-19 restrictions in the region.

This means Apple is likely lowering shipment estimates for the critical holiday period, potentially impacting revenue figures for the quarter, and customers should expect longer wait times when ordering a new iPhone 14 Pro model at the moment.

Even With Record Profits, Apple Can't Buy Our Trust, by Dan Moren, Macworld

But that near-death experience left an indelible mark on the company. Like Scarlett O’Hara declaring that, with god as her witness, she’ll never go hungry again, Apple seems to labor under the paranoia that all these riches could someday suddenly vanish, leaving the company once again just steps from dissolution. The Titanic, after all, took under three hours to sink. (Not to mix my cinematic metaphors.)

That’s the main reason, I believe, that the company sat on a gigantic cash hoard for so long: it wanted a cushion to soften the blow if its business was yanked out from underneath it. It’s only relatively recently that the company’s embarked on its attempt to reach a “cash-neutral” position–something that’s proved remarkably difficult since it turns out it’s actually pretty difficult to get rid of the sheer amount of money it has.

Stuff

PowerPhotos 2.1 Review: Brings Even More Power To Photos Library Management, by Glenn Fleishman, Macworld

The app is the solution for many of the problems with Photos that people routinely write to us about at Mac 911. The program lets you merge Photos libraries, view multiple libraries without quitting Photos and re-selecting them (including in separate windows simultaneously), create libraries on external files, and move or copy images and videos among libraries without losing information you’ve added or edits you’ve made.

These Time-saving Apps Can Restore Your Workspace After Shutting Down Your Laptop, by Shubham Agarwal, Laptop Magazine

Your best option for managing Mac workflows is a straightforward app called Warp. With Warp, you can save your desktop sessions — the open windows and their locations on your screen at any moment — and restore them from your Mac’s menu bar.

What’s even handier is that Warp enables you to build separate presets. For example, when you click your “Work” preset, it will automatically launch all your enterprise apps and place them in positions you prefer for multitasking.

Notes

Apple’s Copyright Claims Ripped Down A Fan’s Archival WWDC YouTube Channel, by Emma Roth, The Verge

After Apple issued several copyright claims, YouTube took down an archival channel containing hundreds of decades-old videos from past Apple Worldwide Developer Conferences (WWDC). Brendan Shanks, the owner of the Apple WWDC Videos channel, says his account’s been permanently disabled after receiving well over three copyright strikes — the maximum number of violations you can incur before YouTube removes your account.

Apple’s Next Change For Siri: Dropping ‘Hey’ From ‘Hey Siri’ Trigger, by Mark Gurman, Bloomberg

If successful, the shift from “Hey Siri” to “Siri” would match Amazon.com Inc.’s Alexa, which requires to users to simply say “Alexa” rather than “Hey Alexa.” Google requires the prompt “OK Google” or “Hey Google,” but has been working to let users make follow-up requests without repeating the wake word.

By removing the “Hey” in “Hey Siri,” Apple would also, in turn, speed up back-to-back requests.

Bottom of the Page

Little things that I do not like on macOS Ventura:
The menu popup when selecting the "share" menu item in the contextual menu
The lack of GUI to set a schedule for my Mac to wake up and to go to sleep
The notification system still sucks
And so does the name macOS

Surprisingly to me, I don't dislike the new System Settings app. (Though, my opinion may change if I have to use this app often.)

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I also don't see why Apple is spending resources to try to shorten "Hey Siri" to just "Siri." But then, I am also not a big user of Siri. In fact, I am not even a regular user of Siri.

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Thanks for reading.