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The Calm-Elder-Statesman Edition Sunday, December 4, 2022

Tim Cook Charm Resolves Twitter Spat Yet China Crisis Rumbles On, by Patrick McGee, Financial Times

Cook’s low-key, behind-the-scenes manoeuvring since taking over from Steve Jobs in 2011 has been instrumental in solidifying Apple’s position as the world’s largest company.

His role as Big Tech’s calm elder statesman has been put to the test over the past month amid huge disruption at the world’s largest iPhone factory in Zhengzhou, China, which has been hit by violent protests over stringent Covid policies.

[...]

Cook had a chance to clarify on Thursday when a journalist confronted him in Washington, asking whether he supports Chinese citizens’ right to protest. His response suggested his diplomatic skills were reaching a limit: he ignored her.

Stuff

Party Trick: Newer iPhones Allow You To Measure Someone's Height Instantly, by Joe Rossignol, MacRumors

iPhone 12 Pro and Pro Max, iPhone 13 Pro and Pro Max, and iPhone 14 Pro and Pro Max models feature a LiDAR Scanner next to the rear camera that can be used to measure a person’s height instantly in Apple’s preinstalled Measure app.

New Apple American Dream Store Opens With Huge Crowd, Exclusive Tote Bag For Shoppers, by Chance Miller, 9to5Mac

Those who attended today’s grand opening were gifted a special tote bag from Apple, featuring a colorful Apple logo inspired by the artwork used for this store.

Use This App To Watch Nearly Any Streaming Service On Mac, by Andrew Orr, AppleInsider

Friendly Streaming Browser has a near-universal picture-in-picture video viewer that works with most sites, unlike other browsers such as Safari. As a result, users can scroll through social media while watching a video, or create art in Photoshop while following a video tutorial.

This High-End Mechanical Keyboard For Macs Is Just My Type, by Michael Calore, Wired

It’s very expensive, but it’s the best match for a Mac I’ve found yet. If you spend most of your waking hours typing, a professional accessory like this is worth the investment.

Develop

Adventures In Advent Of Code, by Dave DeLong

I’ve been participating regularly in Advent of Code for the past couple of years. It’s one of the highlights of my holiday season. The puzzles are fun, the stories are appropriately ridiculous, and it’s a neat way for me to keep the cobwebs brushed off some of the things I learned years ago that I don’t regularly use. Every year there are puzzles that take me a couple of minutes to solve, and puzzles that take me hours: I will forever curse the Intcode puzzles from 2019.

Last night’s puzzle was something new. The problem itself was pretty straight-forward (finding values that are common in multiple collections), but it resulted in a 45-minute debugging session that culminated in finding a bug in Swift’s implementation of Set.intersection(_:).

Bottom of the Page

Without taking out my measuring tape, I've tried to use the Measure app on my iPhone to... well... measure if I can move a shelf from one table to another.

Turns out: the app says yes, reality says no.

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Thanks for reading.