Category: technology

Who Do You Trust?

Meta, Google, Russia, China, the US, and other entities want to track everything we do. Some all the time. Some only when it suits their agenda. Apple doesn’t. Apple does go too far sometimes in the interest of privacy. But who do we trust? I trust a company that values our privacy and sometimes oversteps. I’ll die on that hill.

AI is a…

I find it incredible that the world is just now figuring out that AI is nothing more than a huge fast database. It doesn’t “think”. I knew this from the get go. We just aren’t far enough along to be able to create complex multipath logic and intuition from code. It’s gonna be fun watching the world collectively say, “um, sorry… we didn’t invent god”.

Computer Automation & Efficiency

Automation happens a little bit at a time. Too often folks (like me) who share things they’ve automated want to show _all_ the things they do to make computer usage more efficient. They create a monster that overwhelms the audience.

Automation and efficiency tweaks are the last things one does with a process. You have to know _what_ you want to do, know _how_ to do it, and be _able_ to do it manually before you can automate something effectively.

Technology evolves all the time

Web browsers are the most used software on any personal computer. The market segment has seen only minor innovation for some time, resulting in the most popular browsers being based on three engines (Gecko, Chromium, and Webkit). They all have the same fundamental look and feel. Any computer user could use any of them for the first time and feel at home.

The Browser Company of New York has a browser named Arc.

Arc is the first browser I’ve used in 20 years that made me uncertain and uncomfortable the first time I used it. It was what I expected, but did things in different ways. Hidden options in some browsers were front and center with Arc. Tab organization was markedly different. Opening a link from another application was handled elegantly as opposed to literally.

Arc is getting flak from some technical writers because Arc is changing the way we get information from the web. Arc, when this initiative reaches its conclusion, will enable users to eliminate the web site (or source) from the user’s perspective. We search like we always do, but instead of being presented with a bunch of web sites that may or may not be what we want, Arc is using AI to present the information as a summary of all the sources. The links are still there if you want to go to the source, but if the summary has the info you want, you don’t have to. I suspect a large percentage of web users will not need to go to the sources. These writers see that as a threat to their livelihood, which depends on internet traffic to the sites that host their content. The cause for their bias against Arc’s direction is obvious. If you look at it from an end user’s perspective, it’s the next step in the evolution of Internet search. If you look at it from a content creator’s perspective, well… business models get disrupted all the time. They aren’t so negative when it’s someone else’s business model. They call it the evolution of technology.

Apple Vision Pro hubbub

All the reviews I’ve seen are mixed. From my perspective that’s expected for any tech product, especially a version 1.0 (brand new OS, brand new hardware). This isn’t a company iterating a smart phone into a new generation. This is technology exploring the unexplored. The big problem with the Vision Pro is the same for everyone. The price won’t let us temper our expectations and accept its version one flaws as we would with other devices that were moving the bar like this one. I’m still seeing a level of excitement in reviews and on podcasts that is surprising. Some of my tech pundits are extremely critical by nature and they are blowing bubbles out their noses in amazement when they describe their experiences.

40 years of Macintosh

Thursday (January 25, 2024) was the 40th birthday of the Apple Macintosh computer. So much of what makes our PC experience what it is today belongs to that moment.

[Insanely Great: The Apple Mac at 40](https://www.youtube.com/live/Vl__10euTRo?si=g4gB9K372VFsAcNq)

The first Mac I ever used was an Apple Macintosh 512ke with an Apple Hard Disk 20 in the Mathematics lab at the University of Tennessee at Martin. I used MacWrite, MacPaint, Microsoft MultiPlan, and Klondike.