24SEP2023

What a week! We had two kids' baseball games (including our first game that we didn't lose-- a tie!), the return of the heat in Texas, a Tropical Storm on the East Coast, and some wild world events-- accusations of political assassination in Canada, missile strikes in Sevastopol, Azerbaijan pushes in to Nagorno-Karabakh, and more. Yikes!

On my little corner of the internet, the main event was the release of new iPhones and Apple Watches, plus the release of iOS 17 and WatchOS 10. As indulgent as it is to focus on, these releases provided some much needed levity after all the heavy news of the week. Personally, I got a very handsome iPhone 15 Pro in Blue and am loving the hand feel of the new smooth edges and the light weight of the titanium. The new action button in lieu of a silent toggle is also excellent-- I've got mine configured to launch the camera, but I also alternate it out occasionally to work as a trigger to make funny sounds using the Thwip! soundboard app... It's a hit with the kiddos, including my inner kiddo.

Here are a few fun things that I'm enjoying this week--

• 📲 iOS 17 Tips - Per Rob Knight, Mark Novak and others over on Mastodon, here are a few good advanced settings and other tips for the newly released iOS 17:

- Settings > Safari > Advanced > Advanced Tracking and Fingerprinting Protection > Turn on for all browsing
By default, Incognito mode on Safari will take extra measures to make sure that Google and other surveillance tech companies can't track you through sneaky things like your IP Address, Battery Percentage, Bluetooth and TimeZone settings, etc. By toggling this setting on for All Browsing, you get that extra protection even during your regular web surfing. You can always toggle it off if it breaks anything for you, but so far I've not had any issues.

- Settings > Passwords > Password Options > (Verification codes) Clean Up Automatically
This handy little setting makes sure that when you get a phone or email 2FA verification code when logging in somewhere that the message gets deleted out of your messages/inbox after you use it to log in, removing some otherwise unseemly digital clutter.

- Setting > Accessibility > Touch > Haptic Touch > Fast
This shortens the duration that you need to long press on something to activate the long press function, very helpful for replicating the old Haptic Touch interaction for things like peeking at photos, pulling up additional options for apps, etc.

- Long Press on the + button next to the text entry field in Messages and it will jump straight to the photo picker if you're wanting to quickly send photos to someone.
I like the new "drawer" for Messages apps, but it takes a little longer to share photos with the new set-up. This handy little shortcut was a sweet relief to find.

• 🍎 iMazing - iMazing is a great iPhone back-up utility for the Mac that I've used off and on over the years. Unbeknownst to me, they recently integrated Citizen Lab's software for detecting NSO's Pegasus and other iPhone spyware into its tool set. In case you're ever curious, the process takes about an hour and is done on your Mac with your iPhone plugged in to it– no data is sent to iMazing's creators. The free trial of the software includes the Spyware detection function.
• 📱 Daring Fireball - iPhones 15 Pro Review - Of all the iPhone reviews that get released every fall, John Gruber's of Daring Fireball is the one I most look forward to. He is far from the most detailed, but always seems to hit on the stuff I care about most-- How does it feel? How is the camera? and so on. His write up this year is another winner, and his description of how the new focal length options work on the iPhone 15 Pro is the best explanation I've seen-- In short, they are not doing a digital crop of a bigger photo, they really are using that amazing 48mp sensor and machine learning to do some modern camera magic.
• ♟️ Bambu Lab A1 mini 3D Printer | Bambu Lab US - This 3D printer from Bambu sounds amazing. I know they, er, had some issues last month, and I'm not sure I'd totally trust their cloud services but this price point is unreal for multi-material printing like this. I love my Prusa Mini printer, but if I was in the market, I'd be looking hard at this new Bambu and/or waiting to see how the rest of the market reacts in an effort to compete.
• 🐉 Perception Check - If you have any familiarity whatsoever with Dungeons & Dragons, or really any sort of RPG, or you just like funny things, please take 1 minute and 48 seconds to watch this absolute masterpiece. It's also a legit banger of a song. I've been laughing about it all week and watch it at least once a day. (Warning: Strong language, not kid friendly.) Tom is also responsible for the equally ridiculous banger, HYCYBH?
• 🤯 6 Fundamental Biases - A fascinating research paper attempts to break down all human bias in to six fundamental categories, and I've been thinking about this all week. Here are the core human biases according to the authors--

1. My experience is a reasonable reference.
2. I make correct assessments of the world.
3. I am good.
4. My group is a reasonable reference.
5. My group is good.
6. People's attributes (not context) shape outcomes.