Thoughts
Is there anything more disconcerting than a computer keyboard and mouse amok? For some reason just now my Bluetooth mouse and keyboard connected to the MacBook wouldn’t do what I want. Click an icon on the dock and instead of launching the app a Finder window opens with the Application I clicked highlighted. Click icons on the menu bar and nothing happens. Restarted several times, including without the externals and shutoff some items that start at login. It’s gone for now, but I don’t know which item I shut off was the culprit and I don’t know that I care.
I am reading through articles about announcements from Google I/O 2026, and I think this change Google is planning to make to Tiles in Wear OS 7 has to be one of the most idiotic design decisions I have seen. When you have a UI on a small screen like a watch, why would you not use the entire screen? What are they thinking?
Tiles are also getting a redesign. Google will roll out widgets with Wear OS 7 to replace full-screen tiles. A 2×1 or 2×2 block will display app information in a style that more closely resembles Android 16’s widgets. It doesn’t appear that the new design will allow users to stack widgets on top of each other in the same screen, like Samsung’s version of Wear OS allows Galaxy Watch users to do.
I put my Pixel 10 on a Belkin MagSafe wireless charger. Today it dawned on me that it would be cool if when the phone is on the charger that if a phone call comes in the phone would automatically operate in speaker phone mode so I could just tap a button to receive the call and talk.
Gadgeteer has an embed of a leaked walk thru of the forthcoming Android Desktop that Google officially announced as Googlebook this week. The demo is running in a VM on a Mac not on any native hardware. I don’t see anything in the demo that is really new or exciting. We have been using the “desktop” personal computer metaphor for so long and I wish that a company would have the guts to try something really new.
I think the only reason to consider Googlebook if it were built from the ground up as a AI-based user interface, but instead I think it will simply have AI stuff bolted on and that is not appealing. It’s early days, but hard to say what will be the reason to buy a Googlebook rather than a MacBook.
A significant amount of my childhood fears was driven by K.I. Sawyer Air Force Base located about 50 miles north of my childhood home. The base was part of the United States Strategic Air Command, housing B-52 bombers and nuclear weapons. When there was ever talk in the 1970s and 80s about nuclear war, that meant bombs dropping on K.I. Sawyer and close enough for either instant or near term death. The based paired with the Soo Locks that are vital to the transportation of iron ore to manufacture weapons, meant the U.P. in general was a strategic target for our enemies, meaning then the U.S.S.R.
Of course things changed in the early 90s with the fall of the Soviet Union and with it a decrease for the need of Air Force Bases, leading to the closure of K.I. Sawyer. The economic impact on the area was huge, and while today the site is partially in use including for the Marquette County airport, some of the buildings standing unused not too unlike the abandoned mining locations that dot the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.
Home improvement is exhausting. We have spent the last two weeks seeking quotes to replace the windows in our condo. The condo was built in the 1970s and the windows are original and should have been replaced long ago. Ever since we bought this unit, windows has been the responsibility of the association, but the cost of replacing all the windows of all the units of the condominium would result in a huge assessment, so the topic has been avoided. Now the association is planning to update the bylaws to make window replacement the responsibility of co-owners.
The cost of replacing windows is made worse by the fact that our unit, like many in our condominium, has several large, non-standard windows. For example, multiple patio doors with four foot wide panels rather than a more standard three foot wide panels. By the end of the week we will have four quotes with a wide range in price between low and high. Part of me wants to pay the lowest amount, but the other part of me does not want to risk having to replace the windows again, given that we may be living here for ten more years. We are on the fence about which direction to take.
In my opinion, SCOTUS' decision in Louisiana v Callais is based on two flawed beliefs. First is that it is ok to make voting districts for partisan reasons, in other words, allow a majority party to create districts that favor their party winning seats. Second is the belief that racial discrimination is a thing of the past. I also have qualms with the idea that a majority can be discriminated against.
The refusal of seeing partisan gerrymandering and lobbying and very large campaign donations as wrong is evidence of a system functioning as desired by those in power.
A few days back I asked the question, does Apple really need to have an AI product? In this video Nate Jones reads the tea leaves of Apple’s impending re-org suggesting that Apple’s strategy towards AI may be the same as it’s strategy about personal computing 50 years ago. I think it’s the right move by Apple. However, I do wonder about what might be the relationship between local models and personal computer operating systems.
I can’t help but notice that in his blog post about the value of RAM for AI and how Apple’s unified architecture has proven to be an advantage, Om does not mention the Neo. Om’s point in this post, Memory Is The Machine, is the reason why think users are going wish their first generation Neos have more RAM. Heck, my M4 MacBook Pro’s 16 GB of RAM might not be enough in three years.
Our fears about artificial intelligence are a projection of the fears about ourselves. The human ego desires to control the world, and AI is probably the biggest threat to human control we have created to date. We know that we are incomplete yet our ego insists on turning to ourselves to resolve what ails us rather than changing our mind to follow the path of Jesus.
Everyone seems to think Apple must have an AI product. Why should that be true? A problem many companies have is constantly chasing the next big thing at the expense of doing their own thing very well. The problem I see for Apple is that it is a hardware company and AI is software. Apple probably should focus on making sure it’s hardware runs AI the best and it could focus on sandboxing AI in a way to protects privacy, but these are not AI products.
Read Joan Westenberg’s essay, Optimism Is Not A Personality Flaw. Christians actively working to initiate armageddon are the most dangerous of the pessimists that Westenberg describes.
Dave says, We Are All Good Germans Now, and I get his point but while he is using metaphor, there is an actual act made by the United States for which we all Americans should feel is our birthright shame. The United States is the only nation on earth to drop a nuclear weapon on another nation, and this reality, which is our shame, is how most of the world sees us. Consider the reason why you never hear U.S. politicians suggest attacking North Korea.
Ever since World War II U.S. citizens have been told to fear the possibility of other countries dropping nuclear weapons on us, while the rest of the world knows the U.S. has and thus is willing to drop nuclear weapons on them.
I agree with this representative in pushing back against those who want to make light of the recent threats the President made. The consequences of not taking a mad man seriously is that the mad man being emboldened to keeping and someday following through. Fear does not lead to greatness.
Very cool dashboard for the Artemis II mission around the moon. There is so much more technology now than when we last traveled to the moon 50 years ago, including our ability to check in on the voyage via the Internet. I wasn’t home to watch the launch on TV but I got a notification on my phone about it and was able to watch the launch on my phone sitting in a strip mall parking lot.
When you know what one has done in the past you cannot be surprised when he does it again. Politics as usual will prevent us from conducting the self assessment of how Trump was reelected in the first place because that says more about ourselves than were might be willing to face. Meanwhile we have to survive the next three years and that is not assured.
Contrasting Between What Is And What Intended
Tomorrow is the start of the Christian Holy Week. For those wondering whether Christianity is relevant to our current time, the stories about this week ought to provide the answer, but one may only see that with the help of leaders who connect the dots.
For me one of the best descriptions that sets the scene was written by Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan in their 2006 book The Last Week. It begins:
“Two processions entered Jerusalem on a spring day in the year 30. . . One a peasant procession, the other an imperial procession. From the east, Jesus rode a donkey down the Mount of Olives, cheered by his followers. On the opposite side of the city, from the west, Pontius Pilate, entered Jerusalem at the head of a column of imperial cavalry and soldiers. Jesus’ procession proclaimed the kingdom of God; Pilate’s proclaimed the power of empire.”
While this is not a report on what literally happened, it’s plausible contrasts the differences between what we all consider the norm of civilization, peace through violence, and the alternative rule of God of peace through love.
Palm Sunday is about hope, yes, but that is only appreciated in contrast to what is going all around us. If you get caught up in the hoopla then you are missing the point.
I think the MacBook Neo presents a dilemma, what is the worth of really good physical construction of a laptop if the computing capabilities inside may not be as valuable over the long haul? I think people considering buying the Neo need to consider how they will feel if after just a few years they will want to replace it with a more performant computer. At the root of this is the question of whether or not one thinks $599 is a lot of money.
Most likely what the Neo is really about for Apple is increasing cash flow from Macs. Previous Macs tend to be useful well beyond five years after release, which makes it hard for Apple to convince people to buy their new models. I think Apple hopes that today’s Neo owner will replace their Neo next year or the year later at the latest.
Boox has released second generation of their 10.3-inch Go series e-Ink tablets that appear intended to compete with the Remarkable 2. There are two versions of this generation, a $400 without a front light and a $450 model with a front light. A major negative, in my opinion, is that Boox has replaced the Wacom EMR stylus support with their InkSense capacitive stylus is that is less accurate and requires charging. I would not buy this tablet due to this choice by Boox.
I would wish that Boox would release an 8-inch e-Ink tablet with Wacom EMR support but that appears to be less likely to happen as time passes.
My thought this morning is that we have entered the equivalent of COVID in Trump 2.0. It should not be a surprise that a global crisis would be poorly managed if not triggered by administration that demonstrated this ability when it was last in office. Voters in the U.S., despite claims to the contrary, have to accept some responsibility because it was us who put this man in office after what he did before and said plainly what he would do once in office.