In short, you can install Apple’s HomeKit Accessory Simulator app and add a Mac’s webcam as a HomeKit accessory.
➝ Source: reddit.com
In short, you can install Apple’s HomeKit Accessory Simulator app and add a Mac’s webcam as a HomeKit accessory.
➝ Source: reddit.com
LJPUK:
Apple today increased their service pricing across the board and it was enough for me to realise Apple Music no longer makes sense when I’m already paying for YouTube Premium. Apple Music goes up to £11.99, YouTube Premium is £12.99 and on top of a good music service you get no ads on YouTube.
This is actually why I’ve always argued against streaming music services in general. You are not in control.
Distilling my longtime argument down to its simplest bit, I’d ask “do you want to pay $10 a month for music for the rest of your life?”
But truly, it was never going to just be $10 per month. The price was going to go up over time. It was going to get more expensive to have access to the same music.
If you purchase your music, though, I think most people would reach a point in their life where they stop buying new music entirely or they’re only buying a few albums per year. The cost of music would go down for you over time.
Yes, if you already pay for YouTube Premium, a dedicated music streaming service like Apple Music doesn’t make much sense. But I’m not positive a streaming music service makes much sense long term, at all.
➝ Source: ljpuk.net
Hartley Charlton, writing for MacRumors:
Apple said it has heard user feedback, which it “deeply appreciates,” and is now making adjustments to the underlying foundations of how Liquid Glass is constructed. Chief among those changes is a new slider that lets users control transparency, ranging from fully opaque to completely clear.
I still haven’t updated to macOS 26 or iOS 26 because Liquid Glass is so bad.
I’ll be upgrading straight to 27 this fall and immediately slide this thing to opaque so fast it’ll make your head spin.
➝ Source: macrumors.com
Manuel Grabowski:
It’s almost impressive what a miserable, useless piece of crap the Shortcuts app remains. First off: No actual concept of versioning or upgrades for shared shortcuts. Sharing shortcuts happens via weird iCloud URLs rather than being an actual aspect of the system. So to update a shortcut, do you just add it again? No indication of what that will do before you press the button. Will it error out? Will it create a duplicate? Will it update/replace the existing one?
Apple Shortcuts is such a mess that I’ve actually implemented my own backup system for my shortcuts. That way, if anything goes wrong — and it has several times in the past — I have a weekly backup that I can restore from.
Here’s my backup solution:
Apple Shortcuts should more gracefully handle updates, including versioning, support undo/redo, and a million other things. But until then, at least I have something.
(Via Michael Tsai.)
➝ Source: annoying.technology
I have to respectfully disagree with Lee on this. I wrote about how tech is still cool a couple of years ago and think that stands today.
A handful of years ago I found excitement in Apple, iOS apps, and the surrounding ecosystem. But now I’m paying attention to Linux, self-hosting, and companies like Framework.
The areas I used to look toward for excitement in tech are boring now, but I don’t think that should be conflated as to encompass all of tech. You just have to find a new subculture to focus your attention on.
➝ Source: ljpuk.net
Imagine an alternate reality where the Mac Pro became a system optimized for large amounts of internal storage. You could pop it open and there were six 3.5-inch SATA drive slots and a few M.2 NVMe slots as well.
Or if it was designed as an upgradable Mac and Apple released mainboards with each new M-series chip that you could swap out to upgrade your system with ease.
There’s a lot of ways that Apple could have made the Mac Pro a unique and interesting computer in their lineup that truly had a reason to exist. But instead, they chose to make it a Mac Studio in an overpriced chassis that no longer served a purpose.
It’s a shame. In the late 2000s, the Mac Pro was cool — cooler than any other machine they made. I wish they could have done that again, but I don’t think they ever felt motivated to do so — they were too busy chasing soldered components and computers with ever shrinking footprints.
➝ Source: 9to5mac.com
If I was looking for a laptop in the MacBook Neo’s price range, the Framework 12 would be what I was comparing it against. From a pricing standpoint, the Neo comes out on top, but the Framework has the potential for a much longer lifespan.
The MacBook Neo may be Apple’s most repairable laptop in 14 years, but eventually Apple will drop support for it in macOS and you’ll no longer have the option to run a modern operating system. By contrast, the Framework is designed with repair and upgradability in mind. They even have QR codes on the parts themselves that link to repair guides on their website.
And because of the Framework’s x86 CPU and the company’s work to ensure solid driver support, you have the option to install Linux on the machine, which will keep it relevant for far longer.
➝ Source: youtube.com
From the project’s readme:
Ice is a powerful menu bar management tool. While its primary function is hiding and showing menu bar items, it aims to cover a wide variety of additional features to make it one of the most versatile menu bar tools available.
I had been using Dozer for a while, but just recently switched to Ice. The main reason I changed was that Dozer makes it a little too difficult to access the icons that are moved to the “always hidden” area. With Ice, I can hold option and click on Ice’s icon to reveal the whole lot.
➝ Source: github.com
