Thoughts on Technology

This is pretty cool.

Framework appears to be really stepping up its game, and I’m happy to see it.

I’ll take the analyst assessment with a grain of salt, but RAM prices are certain to have interesting (bad) second-order effects aside from just more expensive computers. Hopefully my new one will last a while.

Apple’s 50th has stoked nostalgia about the early days of personal computing, which made me want to take a moment to thank my mom and dad for recognizing and investing in my love of computing.

I totally agree that custom players should be made to implement platform standards. The elephant in the room, of course, is: What does Apple do if Netflix calls their bluff and takes their app off of Apple TV? Does Apple need Netflix more than Netflix needs Apple?

I was super disappointed to read about ads coming to Apple Maps. Ads are cancer for products that, once introduced, only get worse over time. I wish being an Apple One member would include an ad-free experience as a benefit.

Xcode 26.4 is out. There’s a long list of fixed issues and improvements, but my favorite fixes the issue with Codex I posted the workaround for earlier.

Oof, this is bad news. I remember when Apple sold hardware and made excellent software that people wanted to use because it was in service of selling their hardware. Ads are a path to enshittification—there just aren’t many companies who can pull off ads without being user hostile.

A couple years after cutting the cord, I finally fixed our flaky over-the-air TV and now have a reliable, free(ish) source for our nightly Jeopardy! habit. Hopefully this post can help anyone wanting to run their tuner on power-over-ethernet like I did.

According to Tim Cook, “Mac just had its best launch week ever for first-time Mac customers. We love seeing the enthusiasm!” It’s hard to not read that as, “The MacBook Neo launch has been a huge success”. As a fan of the Mac, I’m happy to hear that the Neo is finding such a positive welcome!

★★★★★ This machine is a beast. The Verge is being stingy giving it an 8/10. It’s objectively the best Mac I’ve ever used (and I’ve used a lot of Macs), and there’s a strong argument that it’s the best laptop ever made, period.

I agree with Manton here: I don’t want the rest of that stuff in the Codex app, which has been getting solid improvements over time. Crowding it with the other stuff sounds bad.

Time to upgrade if you haven’t already.