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HYPERCRITICAL
There are two caveats about this toaster oven. First, it’s bigger than you might expect: 16.5 inches wide, 13 inches deep, and 9.5 inches high. Measure your counter space before purchasing this beast. Second, the knob-feel is terrible: loose, imprecise, unsatisfying. Asa
HYPERCRITICAL: ABOUT Hypercritical is written by me, John Siracusa.I’m a software developer, podcaster, and freelance technology writer. I started writing for Ars Technica in 1999, where I reviewed every major release of OS X until 2014.A complete list of my Ars Technica articles is available on my author page.I’ve also written for Macworld and The Magazine.. This site is not the first thing to bear the name HYPERCRITICAL: HYPERCRITICAL APPS Front and Center lets you control the window layering policy on your Mac. In “Classic” mode, clicking on a window brings all the windows in that app to the front, just like it did in classic Mac OS. In “Modern” mode, only the clicked window comes to the front. In either mode, Shift-click on a HYPERCRITICAL: GREAT GAMES It’s mostly just a list, with some information about how and where to play each game. The games are listed in no particular order. Journey. What Remains of Edith Finch. Sayonara Wild Hearts. Inside. Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons. Firewatch. Ico. HYPERCRITICAL: FRONT AND CENTER A: Front and Center lets you control the window layering policy on your Mac. In “Classic” mode, clicking on a window brings all the windows in that app to the front, just like it did in classic Mac OS. In “Modern” mode, only the clicked window comes to the front. HYPERCRITICAL: SWITCHGLASS SwitchGlass adds a dedicated application switcher to your Mac. You can customize its appearance, size, and position on each attached display, including hiding it on selected displays. It pairs perfectly with Front and Center, supporting configurable click and Shift-click actions on app icons in the floating app switcher.SwitchGlass is available for $4.99 on the Mac App Store. HYPERCRITICAL: CODE HARD OR GO HOME Code Hard or Go Home. April 12, 2013 at 7:53 PM by John Siracusa. When Apple decided to make its own web browser back in 2001, it chose KHTML / KJS from the KDE project as the basis of its rendering engine. Apple didn’t merely “adopt” this technology; it took the source code and ran with it, hiring a bunch of smart, experienced developers HYPERCRITICAL: JONY IVE According to any reasonable set of quantifiable measures, Jony Ive departs Apple as the greatest product designer who has ever lived. His hit products sold in vast numbers and were fundamentally transformative to both the company he worked for and the world at large. We all know their names: iMac, iPod, iPhone, iPad. HYPERCRITICAL: FILL YOUR TV A TV test image displayed correctly: the shapes in the corners are squares, the green box is visible. If you’re viewing this post on a Retina display, the thin lines extending from the squares in the corners should be crisp and pixel-perfect. Send this image to your HDTV, however, and this is what you’re likely to see: This is howyour TV
HYPERCRITICAL: OS X REVIEWED Nearly 15 years ago, I wrote my first review of Mac OS X for a nascent “PC enthusiast’s" website called Ars Technica.Last fall, I wrote my last.Though Apple will presumably announce the next major version of OS X at WWDC this coming June, I won’t be reviewing it for Ars Technica or any other publication, including the website you’rereading now.
HYPERCRITICAL
There are two caveats about this toaster oven. First, it’s bigger than you might expect: 16.5 inches wide, 13 inches deep, and 9.5 inches high. Measure your counter space before purchasing this beast. Second, the knob-feel is terrible: loose, imprecise, unsatisfying. Asa
HYPERCRITICAL: ABOUT Hypercritical is written by me, John Siracusa.I’m a software developer, podcaster, and freelance technology writer. I started writing for Ars Technica in 1999, where I reviewed every major release of OS X until 2014.A complete list of my Ars Technica articles is available on my author page.I’ve also written for Macworld and The Magazine.. This site is not the first thing to bear the name HYPERCRITICAL: HYPERCRITICAL APPS Front and Center lets you control the window layering policy on your Mac. In “Classic” mode, clicking on a window brings all the windows in that app to the front, just like it did in classic Mac OS. In “Modern” mode, only the clicked window comes to the front. In either mode, Shift-click on a HYPERCRITICAL: GREAT GAMES It’s mostly just a list, with some information about how and where to play each game. The games are listed in no particular order. Journey. What Remains of Edith Finch. Sayonara Wild Hearts. Inside. Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons. Firewatch. Ico. HYPERCRITICAL: FRONT AND CENTER A: Front and Center lets you control the window layering policy on your Mac. In “Classic” mode, clicking on a window brings all the windows in that app to the front, just like it did in classic Mac OS. In “Modern” mode, only the clicked window comes to the front. HYPERCRITICAL: SWITCHGLASS SwitchGlass adds a dedicated application switcher to your Mac. You can customize its appearance, size, and position on each attached display, including hiding it on selected displays. It pairs perfectly with Front and Center, supporting configurable click and Shift-click actions on app icons in the floating app switcher.SwitchGlass is available for $4.99 on the Mac App Store. HYPERCRITICAL: CODE HARD OR GO HOME Code Hard or Go Home. April 12, 2013 at 7:53 PM by John Siracusa. When Apple decided to make its own web browser back in 2001, it chose KHTML / KJS from the KDE project as the basis of its rendering engine. Apple didn’t merely “adopt” this technology; it took the source code and ran with it, hiring a bunch of smart, experienced developers HYPERCRITICAL: JONY IVE According to any reasonable set of quantifiable measures, Jony Ive departs Apple as the greatest product designer who has ever lived. His hit products sold in vast numbers and were fundamentally transformative to both the company he worked for and the world at large. We all know their names: iMac, iPod, iPhone, iPad. HYPERCRITICAL: FILL YOUR TV A TV test image displayed correctly: the shapes in the corners are squares, the green box is visible. If you’re viewing this post on a Retina display, the thin lines extending from the squares in the corners should be crisp and pixel-perfect. Send this image to your HDTV, however, and this is what you’re likely to see: This is howyour TV
HYPERCRITICAL: OS X REVIEWED Nearly 15 years ago, I wrote my first review of Mac OS X for a nascent “PC enthusiast’s" website called Ars Technica.Last fall, I wrote my last.Though Apple will presumably announce the next major version of OS X at WWDC this coming June, I won’t be reviewing it for Ars Technica or any other publication, including the website you’rereading now.
HYPERCRITICAL: THE ART OF THE POSSIBLE The Art of the Possible. June 20, 2020 at 11:30 AM by John Siracusa. Ever since the story broke, I’ve had one overriding thought about the Hey.com App Store rejection controversy. It’s a point I’ve already tried to make on a recent episode of ATP and on Twitter. Before WWDC arrives with its own wave of Apple-related news, I’dlike to
HYPERCRITICAL: FRONT AND CENTER Front and Center. January 8, 2020 at 7:31 PM by John Siracusa. By the time Mac OS X was first released in 2001, I had been using what would eventually be known as “classic” Mac OS for seventeen years. These were seventeen formative years for me, from the ages of 9 to 26. The user interface of classic Mac OS was as ingrained in me as Star HYPERCRITICAL: CODE HARD OR GO HOME Code Hard or Go Home. April 12, 2013 at 7:53 PM by John Siracusa. When Apple decided to make its own web browser back in 2001, it chose KHTML / KJS from the KDE project as the basis of its rendering engine. Apple didn’t merely “adopt” this technology; it took the source code and ran with it, hiring a bunch of smart, experienced developers HYPERCRITICAL: TOP GUN The upcoming sequel to the 1986 classic Top Gun has reminded me of a favorite memory from my youth. When I was a kid, I spent a lot of time looking over the TV listings. Each daily newspaper had the TV listings for that day, but there was also a weekly TV guide that came with theSunday paper.
HYPERCRITICAL: FILL YOUR TV A TV test image displayed correctly: the shapes in the corners are squares, the green box is visible. If you’re viewing this post on a Retina display, the thin lines extending from the squares in the corners should be crisp and pixel-perfect. Send this image to your HDTV, however, and this is what you’re likely to see: This is howyour TV
HYPERCRITICAL: HYPERCRITICAL Hypercritical. May 6, 2009 at 7:52 AM by John Siracusa. As far back as I can remember, I was told I would grow up to be an artist. By age six, my obsessively detailed renderings of Mechagodzilla, et al. were already drawing attention from adults. By the time I was eight years old, my parents had been persuaded by teachers and friends to enroll HYPERCRITICAL: SELF-RELIANCE Self-Reliance. March 19, 2013 at 7:58 PM by John Siracusa. The mobile market, everyone agrees, is the technology industry’s future. What’s not so clear is which company is best positioned to thrive in that future. For smartphones in particular, the traditional metricsare confusing.
HYPERCRITICAL: THE ROAD TO GEEKDOM Ask a room of computer geeks how they came to deserve this appellation and you’ll likely hear many similar stories. “I got my first computer when I was very young. HYPERCRITICAL: ANNOYANCE-DRIVEN DEVELOPMENT I’ve been watching House of Cards, the new TV series available exclusively on Netflix, which reportedly outbid HBO, Showtime, and others for the rights to the show.This is part of Netflix’s ongoing effort to “become HBO faster than HBO can become us.”That quote, from Netflix’s chief content officer Ted Sarandos, neatly draws the battle lines between the old and new worlds of TV. HYPERCRITICAL: THE CASE FOR RAID I’ve been thinking about The Intel Macs of the Future (say it with lots of reverb) for the past two posts. So far, I’ve pined for blackPower Macs, a sub
HYPERCRITICAL
There are two caveats about this toaster oven. First, it’s bigger than you might expect: 16.5 inches wide, 13 inches deep, and 9.5 inches high. Measure your counter space before purchasing this beast. Second, the knob-feel is terrible: loose, imprecise, unsatisfying. Asa
HYPERCRITICAL: ABOUT Hypercritical is written by me, John Siracusa. I’m a software developer, podcaster, and freelance technology writer. I started writing for Ars Technica in 1999, where I reviewed every major release of OS X until 2014. A complete list of my Ars Technica articles is available on my author page. I’ve also written for Macworld and TheMagazine .
HYPERCRITICAL: GREAT GAMES It’s mostly just a list, with some information about how and where to play each game. The games are listed in no particular order. Journey. What Remains of Edith Finch. Sayonara Wild Hearts. Inside. Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons. Firewatch. Ico. HYPERCRITICAL: SWITCHGLASS A: SwitchGlass adds a dedicated application switcher to your Mac in the form of a floating window that shows an icon for each running app. Here’s how it works in its default configuration: Click an app icon to bring all windows from that app to the front. Hold down the Shift key while clicking an app icon to bring just one window from that appto the front.
HYPERCRITICAL: FRONT AND CENTER A: Front and Center lets you control the window layering policy on your Mac. In “Classic” mode, clicking on a window brings all the windows in that app to the front, just like it did in classic Mac OS. In “Modern” mode, only the clicked window comes to the front. HYPERCRITICAL: THE ART OF THE POSSIBLE The Art of the Possible. June 20, 2020 at 11:30 AM by John Siracusa. Ever since the story broke, I’ve had one overriding thought about the Hey.com App Store rejection controversy. It’s a point I’ve already tried to make on a recent episode of ATP and on Twitter. Before WWDC arrives with its own wave of Apple-related news, I’dlike to
HYPERCRITICAL: FRONT AND CENTER Front and Center. January 8, 2020 at 7:31 PM by John Siracusa. By the time Mac OS X was first released in 2001, I had been using what would eventually be known as “classic” Mac OS for seventeen years. These were seventeen formative years for me, from the ages of 9 to 26. The user interface of classic Mac OS was as ingrained in me as Star HYPERCRITICAL: CODE HARD OR GO HOME Code Hard or Go Home. April 12, 2013 at 7:53 PM by John Siracusa. When Apple decided to make its own web browser back in 2001, it chose KHTML / KJS from the KDE project as the basis of its rendering engine. Apple didn’t merely “adopt” this technology; it took the source code and ran with it, hiring a bunch of smart, experienced developers HYPERCRITICAL: TOP GUN The upcoming sequel to the 1986 classic Top Gun has reminded me of a favorite memory from my youth. When I was a kid, I spent a lot of time looking over the TV listings. Each daily newspaper had the TV listings for that day, but there was also a weekly TV guide that came with theSunday paper.
HYPERCRITICAL: JONY IVE According to any reasonable set of quantifiable measures, Jony Ive departs Apple as the greatest product designer who has ever lived. His hit products sold in vast numbers and were fundamentally transformative to both the company he worked for and the world at large. We all know their names: iMac, iPod, iPhone, iPad.HYPERCRITICAL
There are two caveats about this toaster oven. First, it’s bigger than you might expect: 16.5 inches wide, 13 inches deep, and 9.5 inches high. Measure your counter space before purchasing this beast. Second, the knob-feel is terrible: loose, imprecise, unsatisfying. Asa
HYPERCRITICAL: ABOUT Hypercritical is written by me, John Siracusa. I’m a software developer, podcaster, and freelance technology writer. I started writing for Ars Technica in 1999, where I reviewed every major release of OS X until 2014. A complete list of my Ars Technica articles is available on my author page. I’ve also written for Macworld and TheMagazine .
HYPERCRITICAL: GREAT GAMES It’s mostly just a list, with some information about how and where to play each game. The games are listed in no particular order. Journey. What Remains of Edith Finch. Sayonara Wild Hearts. Inside. Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons. Firewatch. Ico. HYPERCRITICAL: SWITCHGLASS A: SwitchGlass adds a dedicated application switcher to your Mac in the form of a floating window that shows an icon for each running app. Here’s how it works in its default configuration: Click an app icon to bring all windows from that app to the front. Hold down the Shift key while clicking an app icon to bring just one window from that appto the front.
HYPERCRITICAL: FRONT AND CENTER A: Front and Center lets you control the window layering policy on your Mac. In “Classic” mode, clicking on a window brings all the windows in that app to the front, just like it did in classic Mac OS. In “Modern” mode, only the clicked window comes to the front. HYPERCRITICAL: THE ART OF THE POSSIBLE The Art of the Possible. June 20, 2020 at 11:30 AM by John Siracusa. Ever since the story broke, I’ve had one overriding thought about the Hey.com App Store rejection controversy. It’s a point I’ve already tried to make on a recent episode of ATP and on Twitter. Before WWDC arrives with its own wave of Apple-related news, I’dlike to
HYPERCRITICAL: FRONT AND CENTER Front and Center. January 8, 2020 at 7:31 PM by John Siracusa. By the time Mac OS X was first released in 2001, I had been using what would eventually be known as “classic” Mac OS for seventeen years. These were seventeen formative years for me, from the ages of 9 to 26. The user interface of classic Mac OS was as ingrained in me as Star HYPERCRITICAL: CODE HARD OR GO HOME Code Hard or Go Home. April 12, 2013 at 7:53 PM by John Siracusa. When Apple decided to make its own web browser back in 2001, it chose KHTML / KJS from the KDE project as the basis of its rendering engine. Apple didn’t merely “adopt” this technology; it took the source code and ran with it, hiring a bunch of smart, experienced developers HYPERCRITICAL: TOP GUN The upcoming sequel to the 1986 classic Top Gun has reminded me of a favorite memory from my youth. When I was a kid, I spent a lot of time looking over the TV listings. Each daily newspaper had the TV listings for that day, but there was also a weekly TV guide that came with theSunday paper.
HYPERCRITICAL: JONY IVE According to any reasonable set of quantifiable measures, Jony Ive departs Apple as the greatest product designer who has ever lived. His hit products sold in vast numbers and were fundamentally transformative to both the company he worked for and the world at large. We all know their names: iMac, iPod, iPhone, iPad. HYPERCRITICAL: APPEARANCES Additional appearances on other podcasts and websites: Random Trek #230: Rapture (DS9) with John Siracusa – March 11, 2021. The Talk Show #309: Pinkies on the Semicolon – February 27, 2021. Mac Power Users #575: Talking Parity with John Siracusa – February 14, 2021. The Talk Show #305: “Star Wars: The Mandalorian” HolidaySpectacular
HYPERCRITICAL: GOOD PRODUCTS The Breville BWM640XL Smart 4-Slice Waffle Maker is $350. This is a ridiculous amount of money to spend on a waffle maker. It’s huge and heavy. And I personally prefer thinner waffles with more, smaller squares. (The Breville makes four waffles that are over an inch thick, each with 25 squares.) HYPERCRITICAL: THE ART OF THE POSSIBLE The Art of the Possible. June 20, 2020 at 11:30 AM by John Siracusa. Ever since the story broke, I’ve had one overriding thought about the Hey.com App Store rejection controversy. It’s a point I’ve already tried to make on a recent episode of ATP and on Twitter. Before WWDC arrives with its own wave of Apple-related news, I’dlike to
HYPERCRITICAL: CODE HARD OR GO HOME Code Hard or Go Home. April 12, 2013 at 7:53 PM by John Siracusa. When Apple decided to make its own web browser back in 2001, it chose KHTML / KJS from the KDE project as the basis of its rendering engine. Apple didn’t merely “adopt” this technology; it took the source code and ran with it, hiring a bunch of smart, experienced developers HYPERCRITICAL: SWITCHGLASS SwitchGlass adds a dedicated application switcher to your Mac. You can customize its appearance, size, and position on each attached display, including hiding it on selected displays. It pairs perfectly with Front and Center, supporting both click and Shift-click actions on app icons in the floating app switcher.SwitchGlass is available for $4.99 on the Mac App Store. HYPERCRITICAL: THE ROAD TO GEEKDOM Ask a room of computer geeks how they came to deserve this appellation and you’ll likely hear many similar stories. “I got my first computer when I was very young. HYPERCRITICAL: FILL YOUR TV A TV test image displayed correctly: the shapes in the corners are squares, the green box is visible. If you’re viewing this post on a Retina display, the thin lines extending from the squares in the corners should be crisp and pixel-perfect. Send this image to your HDTV, however, and this is what you’re likely to see: This is howyour TV
HYPERCRITICAL: OS X REVIEWED Nearly 15 years ago, I wrote my first review of Mac OS X for a nascent “PC enthusiast’s" website called Ars Technica.Last fall, I wrote my last.Though Apple will presumably announce the next major version of OS X at WWDC this coming June, I won’t be reviewing it for Ars Technica or any other publication, including the website you’rereading now.
HYPERCRITICAL: HYPERCRITICAL Hypercritical. May 6, 2009 at 7:52 AM by John Siracusa. As far back as I can remember, I was told I would grow up to be an artist. By age six, my obsessively detailed renderings of Mechagodzilla, et al. were already drawing attention from adults. By the time I was eight years old, my parents had been persuaded by teachers and friends to enroll HYPERCRITICAL: TECHNOLOGICAL CONSERVATISM Technological Conservatism. April 7, 2013 at 1:04 PM by John Siracusa. Technology can be a surprisingly ideological topic. In politics, the spectrum of belief is right on the surface: conservative/liberal, right/left. In tech, that same spectrum exists, but it’s rarelydiscussed.
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HYPERCRITICAL
-------------------------SWITCHGLASS
February 12, 2020 at 8:12 PM by John Siracusa When DragThing was finally left behind—after _24 years _ of service—by macOS Catalina’s lack of support for 32-bit apps, I knew I’d miss many of its features. I missed its (optional) modification of the Mac’s window-layering policy so much that I made my first Mac app, Front and Center , to replace it. My second Mac app, SwitchGlass , also replaces a feature I miss from DragThing. (Thank you, James Thomson , for unwittingly kickstarting my Mac development efforts.) SwitchGlass adds a dedicated application switcher to your Mac. You can customize its appearance, size, and position on each attached display, including hiding it on selected displays. It pairs perfectly with Front and Center , supporting both click and Shift-click actions on app icons in the floating app switcher. SwitchGlass is available for $4.99 on the Mac App Store.
To learn more, please read the FAQ . I wrote SwitchGlass and Front and Center to satisfy my own needs. I run both apps all day, every day on my Mac. I’ve been a professional programmer for almost 25 years, but until this year, I’d never written anything for my favorite platform. It’s immensely satisfying to be able to scratch my own itch. And it’s even more satisfying to learn that there are other people out there who also appreciate my strange little apps. Thanks to everyone who has purchased one of my apps. And special thanks to Brad Ellis for creating the beautiful SwitchGlass icon. ------------------------- P.S. - I may not be the only one who misses DragThing’s application switcher. The phenomenally powerful Mac automation app Keyboard Maestro recently added a similar feature. In fact, SwitchGlass’s default appearance is inspired by Keyboard Maestro’s app switcher. If you want a hugely capable Mac automation tool that just happens to have an (optional) app switcher palette built in, check out Keyboard Maestro . I highly recommend it. -------------------------SORTING MY TV
January 29, 2020 at 12:03 PM by John Siracusa For a few years now, I’ve tracked the TV shows I’m watching usingthe iOS app Couchy
,
which integrates with the Trakt.tv service. Sadly, Couchy ceased developmentlast year.
I’ve kept using it since then, but in the past few weeks it’s finally started to fail. I looked at (and purchased) many, many alternative apps back when Couchy’s demise was announced, but I could never find one that I liked as much. In particular, I haven’t found a match for the information density of Couchy’s main screen combined with its “smart” sort order. Couchy’s main screen shows a scrollable grid of portrait-orientation poster images for each TV show, three to a row on my iPhone, each with text below it showing the show name, how many episodes behind I am, the season, the episode number, and title of the next episode. (I’d include a screenshot here, but poster images are no longer loading for me in Couchy, so it wouldn’t be much to look at.) The sort order determines how the shows are placed in the grid. Within the app, Couchy describes its smart sort as follows: > Shows will be sorted in the following order:>
> * Episodes airing today > * Missing episodes > * Awaiting episode > * Ended shows As I’ve tweeted about my search for a Couchy-replacement app, I’ve found it difficult to explain what I’m looking for in terms of sorting. And even Couchy’s sorting is sometimes not quite what I want. So I’d like to explain here instead, free from Twitter’scharacter limits.
WHAT I WANT
I use an app like Couchy because I’m usually in the middle of watching many different TV shows. When I have some time to watch TV, I launch Couchy to remind myself what I’m currently watching, how far behind I am, and which shows have new episodes waiting for me. This is my most important use case: _choosing a show to watch_. I have so many TV shows in my trakt.tv collection that sorting is essential to helping me select a show. I don’t want to scroll through dozens of shows to make a selection. I want to look at the top one or two screenfuls of shows on my phone and be sure that I’m seeing all the shows I’m most interested in watching now. Most simple sort orders don’t work for my purposes. For example, consider sorting by the date of the latest episode. There are many shows in my collection that I’m not actively watching. Maybe I’ll get to them in the future, but for now, the unwatched episodes are just piling up. If those shows jump to the top of the sort order every time a new episode is released, it’s just noise to me. They’re obscuring the shows I actually want to watch. Sorting by the number of unwatched episodes has similar problems. Sorting by the date I last watched an episode of a show might seem like it’d work, but I might really want to know about a newly released episode of a show that I’m caught up on but that hasn’t released an episode in a while. If I had an actual, concrete algorithm in mind, I wouldn’t be writing all this. I could have explained it in a tweet. But I haven’t thought it through enough to nail it down at that level. What I can do instead is describe the desirable features of such analgorithm.
*
If I’m not actively watching a show, it should be pushed down in the list. Deciding what “actively watching” means will surely involve some thresholds (e.g., “has watched an episode in the last N days”), and it would be nice if those were configurable.*
Shows that I’m actively watching should jump to the front of the list when a new episode is released.*
Shows that I really like but that are on a break (e.g., between seasons) should jump to the front of the list when a new episode or season is released. Again, determining which shows I “really like” is tricky. An easy out here is to just have me choose by marking them as favorites. A ranked list of favorites would be even better and would help with sorting decisions near the top of the list.*
When sorting shows that I’m actively watching (or really like) that just had a new episode or season released, favor shows with the smallest backlog—except in cases where a whole new season just dropped for a favorite show. For example, let’s say I’m one episode behind on Homeland, two episodes behind on Fargo, and caught up on The Expanse, which is a favorite show. If Homeland and Fargo both release new episodes and The Expanse releases a whole new season, all on the same day, the sort order should be: The Expanse first (even though it has the largest backlog), Homeland second (because it has a shorter backlog than Fargo), and Fargo next. I could go on, but I think I’m getting into the weeds. The four points above capture most of it. I’m sure other people have their own preferred sorting orders, but this one is mine. I’ve seriously considered writing a trakt.tv client app for iOS just to scratch my own itch, but I don’t think I’m ready to tackle a task that largequite yet.
In the meantime, if you’re an author of one of the many trakt.tv client apps in the App Store, please consider implementing something like what I’ve described here. I’ve probably already purchased your app, but I’ll be extremely grateful on top of that. -------------------------FRONT AND CENTER
January 8, 2020 at 7:31 PM by John Siracusa By the time Mac OS X was first released in 2001, I had been using what would eventually be known as “classic” Mac OS for seventeen years. These were seventeen _formative_ years for me, from the ages of 9 to 26. The user interface of classic Mac OS was as ingrained in me as Star Wars or any other cultural institution. My love for classic Mac OS is why I started researching and reviewingMac OS X. Big
changes were coming to the Mac, and I was going to feel them more than most. I needed to know what I was in for. To deal with some of the changes in Mac OS X, I ran apps and system extensions that restored some behaviors from classic Mac OS. Over the years, I weaned myself off most of these, but a few stuck. In particular, I found I did not want to live without the window layering policy from classic Mac OS. In classic, when you click on a window that belongs to an application that’s not currently active, _all_ the windows that belong to that application come to the front. In Mac OS X (and macOS), only the window that you click comes to the front. My particular style of window management leans heavily on the classic behavior. I also appreciate the Mac OS X behavior in certain circumstances, so I was delighted to find apps that enable both behaviors, using Shift-click to override the default. Sadly, macOS Catalina’s lack of support for 32-bit apps finally killed the last of the apps that implemented this feature. I was alone in a cold, barren world where I had to click on a Dock icon to switch to an app and bring all its windows to thefront.
I tried to get used to it, but I could not. Next, I tried to persuade a few of my developer friends to create a tiny Mac app that implements just this one feature. My friend Lee, a
longtime Mac developer and user, eventually took up the challenge and created a simple app to do it. It was missing a few features I wanted (the Shift-click override, the ability to hide the Dock icon, a menu bar icon, etc.), but Lee shared the source code with me and I dove in and tried to help. I added the Shift-click feature and a mode-switch preference. I drew an app icon and a menu bar icon. The app was just about done. It even had a name:Front and Center .
The app was written in Objective-C. I’d always wantedto do a
real project in Swift, so I started a new project in Xcode and rewrote the entire (tiny) app in Swift. I’ve also always wanted to get some experience with the App Store, so Lee and I agreed that I would release it under my developer account (though we are sharing theprofits).
Front and Center is a trivial app—so trivial that I was afraid it would be rejected for its limited functionality. But when running, it is used literally hundreds of times a day. And I obviously found it so essential that I was willing to help bring it into existence myself. I also wanted to get some experience with the financial side of the AppStore.
All of this contributed to the decision to make Front and Center a (cheap) paid app. It’s $4.99 on the Mac App Store.
I don’t expect to make any significant money from sales, but I’ve already gained a huge amount of experience just going through the process of development and distribution. I also view the price as a kind of deterrent. The increase in downloads it would receive as a free app would just be an unwanted support burden. The (few) people who actually want this app know who they are, and I’m betting they are not just willing but _happy_ topay for it.
Are you a classic Mac diehard who still misses some of the old ways? Or maybe you just want to try it to see what it’s like? Even if you don’t want the classic behavior to be the default, you can switch to “modern” mode and use Shift-click to trigger the “classic” behavior. It beats mousing down to a Dock icon, right? I’m just glad this app exists. I had a ton of fun working on it. Thanks to Lee for being a kindred spirit when it comes to classic Mac OS, and to all my other Mac-nerd friends who offered advice and code during development—especially Gus Mueller , maker of many fine Mac apps , who provided a surprising performance enhancement for our tiny app. I’m excited to finally be able to use this badge on my website. -------------------------TOP GUN
August 8, 2019 at 2:11 PM by John Siracusa The upcoming sequel to the 1986 classic Top Gun has reminded me of a favorite memory from my youth. When I was a kid, I spent a lot of time looking over the TV listings. Each daily newspaper had the TV listings for that day, but there was also a weekly TV guide that came with the Sunday paper. This was the one I’d pore over while eating breakfast each morning. The weekly guide had a section where it listed all the movies that were airing on TV that week. Each movie was accompanied by a short, plain-spoken description of the plot. In addition to the star ratings (where the maximum was four stars, I believe), the descriptions also sometimes included a few words about the quality of the movie or performances. Something like this:★★★★ JAWS
(Adventure, 1975) A killer shark terrorizes a beachside town. Suspenseful and thrilling. Roy Scheider, Richard Dreyfuss. (2 hrs. 4min.)
★★★ FERRIS BUELLER’S DAY OFF (Comedy, 1986) A high school student evades parents and the school principal to take a day off from school. Matthew Broderick, Alan Ruck.(1 hr. 43 min.)
One day in the late ’80s or early ’90s, I recall seeing the following entry for the movie Top Gun in the weekly TV guide:★★ TOP GUN
(Drama, 1986) Trivializes war by turning it into a music video. Tom Cruise, Kelly McGillis, Val Kilmer. (1 hr. 50 min.) There was no description at all, just this frank assessment. After spending years of my life reading these movie summaries, it was as if the author had finally broken through and had spoken with a clear voice for one brief, shining moment. _TRIVIALIZES WAR BY TURNING IT INTO A MUSIC VIDEO_. It’s now several decades later and I still remember this movie review word-for-word. I have no idea who the author was, or how many similar gems were hidden in the pages of that weekly TV guide over the years. But I credit this tiny act of defiance with inspiring me inmultiple ways.
It taught me the power of well-chosen words to shake people out of their daily routines and patterns of thought. It showed me that all jobs, no matter how seemingly dull, can be an outlet for self-expression and excellence. And it reminds me, to this day, that each work of art can be—_deserves_ to be—considered from multiple points of view, not all of which will be comfortable. ------------------------- Note: This post is not a polemic against Top Gun or war movies in general. I have always loved jet fighter planes, and I enjoyed Top Gun when I saw it. This review did not make me hate it. (That said, like most older media, I suspect a modern rewatching will reveal a whole host of problems.) My memory of this capsule review is one of surprise, subversiveness, and delight. The review is a slam on Top Gun, yes, but it’s also a celebration of the indomitable humanspirit. Four stars.
-------------------------JONY IVE
July 4, 2019 at 9:53 PM by John Siracusa According to any reasonable set of quantifiable measures, Jony Ivedeparts Apple
as the greatest product designer who has ever lived. His hit products sold in vast numbers and were fundamentally transformative to both the company he worked for and the world at large. We all know their names: iMac, iPod, iPhone, iPad. Together, these products helped set the direction for the most consequential industry of the last century. As the leader of design at Apple, Ive inevitably receives acclaim for work done by other people on his team. This is what it means to be the public face of a collaborative endeavor involving hundreds of people. Ive himself is the first to credit his team, always using the word "we" in his appearances in Apple's design videos. One gets the impression that Ive has historically used "we" to refer to the design team at Apple, rather than Apple as a whole, but he certainly never meant it to refer to himself . While the iPhone is obviously the most important product in Ive's portfolio, his most significant and lasting contribution to Apple and the tech industry in general is embodied by a product that he worked on much more directly, and with far less help: the original iMac.
Aside from dramatically reversing Apple's slide into obscurity, the iMac finally pushed the industry over the hill it had been climbing for decades. Nearly overnight, it went from an industry primarily concerned with technical specifications to one that more closely matches every other mainstream consumer business—one where fashion and aesthetics are not just a part of the appeal of a product, they are often the dominant factor. As much as any individual product design, this is Ive's legacy.ZIMA BLUE
There is a certain predictable progression in the career of creative professionals. In the beginning is the acquisition of basic skills and experience—the tools needed on the road to mastery. Work done in this phase is more likely to be constrained by the orthodoxy of a given industry. The first step to making a great product is to make a competent product. One must know the rules before breaking them. The lives of creative people are often animated by a few deeply held notions. These may be philosophical, aesthetic, fanciful—anything that stirs the soul. Early creative work often fails to embody these ideals to the satisfaction of the creator. Perhaps one's skills are not yet adequate. Perhaps one lacks the confidence to defy convention to the degree required. An early-career creative professional is surrounded by constraints. With the acquisition of greater skill and authority comes more freedom. If you're Jony Ive, working in a company where that skill has led to world-changing hit products and their associated fortune and well-deserved corporate promotion, you may find yourself with very few limitations indeed. Everything has come together to _finally_ give you a chance to do it _right_ for once—to get closer than ever to that deeply held notion, that ideal. It's not hard to guess what animates Ive's design philosophy. He's repeated some variation of it in nearly every Apple product design video. Ive wants to get to the essential nature of a thing. By stripping away the extraneous, we are left with the intrinsic truth of a thing. A successful design should seem obvious in retrospect. It should seem _inevitable_. This philosophy has been embodied in the products themselves, and its potency has tracked Ive's career. Early on, technical, financial, and authoritative limits led to designs that today's Ive would likely view as over-complicated: a jigsaw of decorative exterior panels fastened to an inner framework housing a hodgepodge of components. Contrast this with latter-day products like the unibody Apple laptops, where a single slab of machined aluminum replaced dozens of individual parts and their associated fasteners, seams, squeaks, and rattles. Or look at products like AirPods and the Apple Pencil that seem not to be assembled at all, but rather to have sprung into existence as complete entities. When introducing each similar product or manufacturing advance—each further _simplification_—Ive's joy has been apparent, even through his usual understated demeanor. And so we come to the most common criticism of Ive's work. With so few limitations on his power and skills, the spark that animates his creative philosophy has been allowed to burn so brightly that it has overwhelmed everything else. Symmetry overrides utility11. Simplicity overrides flexibility22. Purity of form overrides quality offunction33.
This creative arc is dramatized in spectacular fashion in Zima Blue, an animated short
that's part of the Netflix anthology series Love, Death & Robots . I don't want to spoil the ending; suffice it to say that I doubt Jony Ive's career beyond Apple will lead to quite such a dramatic conclusion. But the dogged pursuit of a core animating belief rings true to me.MILLENNIUM DESIGNER
If Ive has overstayed his usefulness at Apple, it is only by a little. Few careers in any field will ever match his run at Apple. His designs changed the tech industry forever, and he hit home run after home run on the playing field that he built. It's often said that the best creative work requires limitations. In this case, another piece of industry wisdom also applies: successhides problems .
But in the years to come, when I look back on Jony Ive's work at Apple, I doubt I'll dwell much on the tail end, when he very nearly caught that thing he'd been pursuing for his entire career. Will he ever catch it? Does anyone? I'm not sure it matters to me. After all, it's the chase that I love. -------------------------*
MacBook keyboard layout; iMac puck mouse. ↩*
2013 Mac Pro; MacBook port variety and count. ↩*
Apple TV remote; butterfly keyboard. ↩ -------------------------← Previous
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