The One Remaining Use of the Word “Macintosh”: “Some weeks ago, I was struck by the thought that Apple had almost entirely managed to scrub its corporate communications of the word ‘Macintosh.’ It’s not surprising, of course, but I was curious if the company had slipped up anywhere.”
Tag: apple
Defining the decade: ten years of Apple on one page: “Apple had to graduate through the passing of its founder, juggle relationships with an ever-expanding list of consumer and professional market segments, and adapt to the public attention and scrunity that only comes along as a consequence of being the biggest company in the world.”
My New Year’s Resolutions
My resolutions for this year:
- 5120 x 2880
- 1920 x 1080
- 1668 x 2224
- 1125 x 2436
- 368 x 448
(That’s my retina iMac, its secondary display, and my iPad, iPhone, and Apple Watch, respectively. Yes, I make this same stupid joke every year, ‘cause it makes me laugh.)
2019 Mac Pro isn’t the most expensive Mac ever. Not even close.: “There has been much handwaving over the $5,999 price tag on the 2019 Mac Pro. It’s often been criticized for being Apple’s expensive computer ever. But it’s not. And it’s not even close, if you factor in inflation. Many of the early Macs cost much more than $6,000 in today’s dollars.”
Seattle QFC debuts first apple ever bred in Washington, despite the state being the highest grower: “The apple variety was developed by Washington State University. Washington growers, who paid for the research, will have the exclusive right to sell it for the first 10 years.”
Linkdump for January 27th through October 30th
Sometime between January 27th and October 30th, I thought this stuff was interesting. You might think so too!
- Retroactive: Run Aperture, iPhoto, or iTunes on macOS Catalina.: Saving this for myself, in case I want or need iTunes when I get around to upgrading to Catalina.
- Inside the sexy Halloween costume industrial complex: Their costumes are often horrible, and oft-derided each year (including by me). But I thought this peek into the “sexy everything company” was an interesting one.
- The 26,000-Year Astronomical Monument Hidden in Plain Sight: "On the western flank of the Hoover Dam stands a little-understood monument, commissioned by the US Bureau of Reclamation when construction of the dam began in 01931. The most noticeable parts of this corner of the dam, now known as Monument Plaza, are the massive winged bronze sculptures and central flagpole which are often photographed by visitors. The most amazing feature of this plaza, however, is under their feet as they take those pictures."
- Queen Elizabeth II makes New Zealand woman who fought to decriminalize prostitution a ‘dame’: “Catherine Healy, 62, a founder of the New Zealand Prostitutes Collective, was instrumental in helping her country become the first to decriminalize prostitution in 2003. After 30 years of activism, the queen recognized her Monday as a Dame Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit ‘for services to the rights of sex workers.’”
- Keira Knightley is obviously right: there’s a sexist double standard in how we treat period dramas: “The great irony is that in being dismissed as feminine fluff, the period drama has somewhat avoided the controlling male gaze. Women are allowed complexity and agency. They can be the heroes – not the wives and girlfriends of the heroes. Ignore the negativity, and the corset can actually be quite freeing.”
Me: 1, Apple Support: 0 (So far…)
Today’s morning entertainment: Stumping Apple support.
Long story short (if I can manage that…(spoiler: I can’t)):
Sometime in the early 2000s, I signed up for Apple’s then-new iTools service (later rebranded as .Mac, and then MobileMe), and was issued an @mac.com account and email address.
Over time, that service became what is now AppleID, and while I at some unremembered point stopped using my original @mac.com email address, it carried on as my AppleID account name.
I’ve noticed on and off for quite some time now (as in, years) that I haven’t been getting receipts from iTunes (or the iOS or Mac App Stores), and had a vague idea in my head that it might be because they were getting sent to the old @mac.com address instead of an actual active email address, but it was never important enough for me to be concerned about. Every so often I’d get curious and poke around in the settings on my hardware or the online tools, fail to find a way to fix it, and then get bored or distracted and decide to figure it out “later”.
Well, “later” apparently ended up being this morning (as I’m suspecting that there may be more communications from Apple that I’m not receiving), so I ended up on the phone with an Apple support tech for close to an hour as I explained what I was sure of and what I suspected, and as they dug around in their tools to see what they could figure out. End result: I’m probably right in my guess, but they’re stumped as to why they couldn’t find any way to fix it, or even be entirely sure that that was what was actually going on, in large part because all the @mac.com servers and systems have been offline for years.
So they’re going to write my case notes up, bump them up to the next level and the backend engineering team, and hope to be able to get back to me next week. Best case scenario, they’ll be able to make sure that all communications get sent to an active email address as they should. The more probable (and hopefully worst-case) scenario is that I’ll have to change my AppleID — which they think will fix the issue, because that old @mac.com address won’t be in the system even as an account name anymore, but would be a bit of a shame, since I’ve had that account name for close to two decades now, and it would be kind of a shame to lose it. But still, if it’s breaking things, I’d rather lose that than continue not receiving information I should be getting out of silly nostalgia.
All in all, it’s an entertaining situation, the tech was friendly and competent (and entertainingly confused), and this obviously isn’t a high-priority issue for me, so I’m content to wait to see what information they come up with.
Plus, the way I look at it, I bought my first personal Mac in 1991, and after almost three decades of Mac geeking, if I’m going to get to the point of calling Apple support, it’s going to be for a damn good reason. :)
Linkdump for January 11th through January 23rd
Sometime between January 11th and January 23rd, I thought this stuff was interesting. You might think so too!
- A meteor hit the moon during the lunar eclipse. Here’s what we know.: “In what may be a first-of-its-kind event, a flash of light seen during totality has astronomers on the hunt for a new crater on the moon.”
- DuckDuckGo Taps Apple Maps to Power Private Search Results: "We're excited to announce that map and address-related searches on DuckDuckGo for mobile and desktop are now powered by Apple's MapKit JS framework, giving you a valuable combination of mapping and privacy."
- To save the sound of a Stradivarius, a whole city must keep quiet: “Cremona is home to the workshops of some of the world’s finest instrument makers, including Antonio Stradivari, who in the 17th and 18th centuries produced some of the finest violins and cellos ever made. The city is getting behind an ambitious project to digitally record the sounds of the Stradivarius instruments for posterity, as well as others by Amati and Guarneri del Gesù, two other famous Cremona craftsmen. And that means being quiet.”
- An Idea for Electoral College Reform That Both Parties Might Actually Like: “As long as we continue to have the Electoral College, we should make it work as intended. This means bringing it back into compliance with the majority-rule principle.”
- The oral history of the Hampsterdance: The twisted true story of one of the world’s first memes: “What started 20 years ago in Nanaimo, B.C. spawned hit songs, worldwide LOLs and a giant hairball of drama.”
Linkdump for September 3rd through September 23rd
Sometime between September 3rd and September 23rd, I thought this stuff was interesting. You might think so too!
- The truth about false rape accusations: “Critics argue that reports of rape should be treated with more caution, since men’s lives are so often ruined by women’s malicious lies. But…every part of this narrative is wrong. What’s more, it’s wrong in ways that help real rapists escape justice, while perversely making it more likely that we will miss the signs of false reports.”
- Does the OK Sign Actually Signify “White Power,” or What?: "The answer is neither simple nor straightforward, which is why it’s such an effective trolling tactic."
- “Oh my god. If i see one more of these ‘India legalizing gay sex = India decolonizing’ posts in my dash I will murder someone.”: Interesting look at homosexuality and gender nonconformance in India in the light of the recent ruling decriminalizing homosexuality and some unfortunate and ill-informed reactions from Western liberals.
- Forget the new iPhones, Apple’s best product is now privacy: “I now believe the best product Apple offers is intangible, yet far more valuable than a flagship smartphone. The best product Apple has–and the single biggest reason that consumers should choose an Apple device over competing devices–is privacy.”
- The Matrix as a Transgender Coming Out Story: This theory/reading/interpretation is apparently a few years old, but it’s the first time I’ve come across it. Fascinating, and worth thinking about.
Linkdump for May 3rd through May 7th
Sometime between May 3rd and May 7th, I thought this stuff was interesting. You might think so too!
- Connecticut OKs Bill Pledging Electoral Votes To National Popular-Vote Winner: “The bill adopts an interstate compact that's officially called ‘The Agreement Among the States to Elect the President by National Popular Vote.’ The agreement won't kick in unless it's backed by enough states and other voting areas to claim a majority of Electoral College votes. In addition to Connecticut, the other jurisdictions in the pact are California, Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island, Vermont and Washington state, along with Washington, D.C.”
- The original iMac: 20 years since Apple changed its fate: “Sitting in the Flint Center in 1998, it would have been impossible to imagine the Apple of 2018. But without that day, and the product that Steve Jobs unveiled on that stage, it’s hard to imagine that Apple would have ever had the chance to become what it is today.”
- One space between each sentence, they said. Science just proved them wrong.: Bah! Science did no such thing! It’s one study with a small sample size, screwball parameters (Courier? Seriously?), and a barely measurable result that only really affected those participants already predisposed to two-spacing. Sentences get one space, and one space only. (My favorite part: “Note: An earlier version of this story published incorrectly because, seriously, putting two spaces in the headline broke the web code.”)
- ‘Who Gets to Be Sexy?’: Interesting look at how the porn industry is changing. “Amateurs are flooding the internet; piracy has addled the once-dominant studios; production has atomized and scattered. But along the way, something interesting has started to happen: Women are rising up.”
- Swedish Meatballs Are Turkish? ‘My Whole Life Has Been a Lie’: “The country’s national Twitter account made the announcement in a tweet this week. ‘Swedish meatballs are actually based on a recipe King Charles XII brought home from Turkey in the early 18th century,’ the tweet said. ‘Let’s stick to the facts!’”