The Jolly Teapot 5 days ago

Neo beginnings

I did it. I finally bought a new Mac. I managed to snatch a MacBook Neo on Amazon a few minutes after Apple announced the price increase across their line-up. It all happened very quickly, but I think it’s worth taking the time to explain my messy, complex, overcomplicated train of thought. If you’re a regular reader of this blog, you know that I complained (or bragged) a lot about the fact that I still used an early 2020 MacBook Air as recently as two weeks ago, and that its battery was getting a bit old, and it was maybe a little bit slow at times. I explained in a post that I felt confident in being able to keep using it for one more year, as its limitations felt more like a way to focus and maintain a well-controlled set-up rather than constraints. I was ready to wait for something like the M6 generation of the MacBook Air (so I could continue my story with that family of laptops, which started with the early-2015 11-inch model). But this post was written in January, before Apple unveiled the new M5 MacBook Air, and, as a little surprise, the MacBook Neo. I first considered the Neo, because its clear limitations were not a deal-breaker for me; on the contrary, they were a great follow-up to my then-current set-up, which was very much not demanding by design. In fact, the Neo looked pretty much, feature by feature, like the laptop of my dreams: simple, focused, reliable, cheap, well-built, straight to the point. With the classic Apple pricing ladder, of course the MacBook Air looked very tempting, offering so much more for just a little extra: better speakers, better trackpad, a backlit keyboard, double the memory, a better screen, a better audio jack, better connectors, a better battery, a far better chip, a better webcam, Touch ID, etc. Therefore, for 400 euros more, it looked like a better deal, and better value than the Neo. I could even use that extra bit of power to finally edit photos on my laptop instead of on my phone, where the screen and performance have long been better suited than those of my old Mac for running apps like RAW Power. This is where it got a bit complicated in my head and froze all my purchase intentions. Value-wise, the MacBook Air M5 was, like I said, a much, much better choice than the Neo: for 50% more money, you get more than double the computer basically. Money-wise, if the Neo is indeed sold at a great price, it’s not as good a deal as the MacBook Air, not as good value. But if I were to stick to value and price, well, keeping my old MacBook Air Core i5, costing me zero, would always be a better deal. For a while, whenever I thought of “what I already have” (the old MacBook Air) versus “what I really want” (the new MacBook Air), I had always chosen the easiest and cheapest option of the two. What I should have done instead was focus on the fundamentals: what I actually needed (the MacBook Neo). What I need is a laptop I can count on, but not only performance-wise, where my old Air was surprisingly resilient. The battery life, enabling the laptop lifestyle, is essential. Spending time on my computer is my hobby, my pleasure at the end of the day. On the days I had forgotten to plug the computer in, when I wanted to check something sitting on the couch or on my balcony, far from the reach of the charging cable, well, I could not: the little bugger had no juice left, my end-of-the-day moment was ruined, and this situation was overall a pain. So when I first learned that Apple planned to raise prices , I reconsidered once again the timeframe in which I had to change my Mac. Waiting another year and spending 20% more for the same-ish computer as the one I could buy today didn’t look like a good idea. So when I saw that Amazon had a special deal on the MacBook Air, priced at 1080 instead of 1200 euros, I was ready to buy one. A few days later, while I still hadn’t made the jump on the purchase, I saw the headlines pop up that the Air was getting 200 euros more expensive on the Apple store. From that moment, I knew I had to act fast, before Amazon raised the price too. This is when I saw that the Neo was sold at 630 euros instead of 700, and this is when a little light bulb appeared above my head. This Mac was the one I needed. In fact, as I needed to buy the laptop right away, before the price change, I was keen on saving 450 euros, especially a few days before my salary arrived. The 630 euro price tag was more affordable than 1080 and more compatible with an impulse buy. So I ordered the cheapest Neo model, without Touch ID, and ended up saving 170 euros on the Neo. That’s more than a 20% discount if applied to the current price on the Apple website. Needless to say, I’m very pleased with this deal: now if I were to sell my computer I could possibly still get more money than I paid for it, in case I end up unsatisfied with it, which is not the case so far. After two weeks of regular use, I have no complaints really. Thank you Apple for raising prices and forcing me to buy the computer I actually needed, I guess? Performance is fine, even great when compared to my old Mac. I want to say it’s more or less as snappy as the M1 MacBook Air I use for work. Clearly, this is no match for the M5 chip, and 8GB of memory may feel a bit limiting, but I don’t need that much memory to run BBEdit, NetNewsWire, GoodLinks, and Safari anyway. I actually like that this limitation is forcing me to keep my feet on the ground when it comes to trying out new apps and revisiting my current set up . We’ll see how it goes in the coming months and years. I don’t think I’ll be able to push this device as hard as I pushed my old Air, but hey, it’s almost half the price. The keyboard is more or less the same, if a bit firmer, probably due to the fact that it’s a new computer and I come from a six-year-old, worn-out keyboard. Most of the computer feels identical to the Air, if ever-so-slightly worse, like the speakers or the screen. As I don’t plan to edit photos on this machine, really, there is only one part where I really “suffer” from a downgrade compared to the Air: the trackpad. The Air’s trackpad has been so good for so long that we tend to forget about it: the haptic feedback makes it very satisfying and informative to click. On the Neo, pressing on the trackpad is nowhere near as satisfying. The travel distance of the trackpad is, I want to say, 60 to 70% longer than it feels like on the haptic trackpad, and this is 60 to 70% too long, too deep, too loud. So far, this is the only part that feels really worse in terms of my daily experience. In the end, this is what the Neo really is: a familiar 630-euro laptop — a 630-euro new Mac — perfect for my activities of web browsing, video streaming, writing, and geeking around with apps. Dare I say that the Neo, as a single-purpose device, is a perfect blogging machine?

Hardware Electronics

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The Jolly Teapot 1 weeks ago

A peculiar bug in Safari

On weekend mornings, I have the inescapable habit of looking at my website and seeing what I can change, what I can remove, what I can improve in terms of HTML, CSS, layout, links, etc. This Saturday, as I wanted to look closer at the way the period at the end of a sentence rendered when appearing just after a word in italic (I know), I noticed something curious. When I zoomed in the page, using “Command – Plus Sign” (⌘+), I could see that the line length was changing with the size of the text. The bigger the text, the longer the line. You see, I’m very protective of the I use on this site —  — especially for Mac users, who see it in the Charter font. *1 This value sets an ideal number of characters for each line making it, when paired with the right line height, easier to read (supposedly). Zooming in on text shouldn’t change the line length, so I looked around and realised that I was a bit clueless when it comes to identifying bugs, and even checking if they were already reported. I found a few bug reports related to zooming in, but none of them described my issue. Not only that, but I didn’t really know if this was a Webkit problem, or a Safari problem. So instead of working my way to either confirming an existing bug or filing a new one , I did what I usually do when facing a problem: I avoided it altogether rather than trying to solve it. Therefore I changed to in my CSS, resulting in a similar line length for Charter. *2 With as the unit, zooming doesn’t modify the line length, so I’m pretty happy with this easy fix. Bonus point: takes up the same number of bytes as in my default CSS, still capped at 132 bytes. Imagine the extra-byte horror if I had to use something like or ? It would have ruined my sunny Saturday morning. This little website update made me realise something: my site design is pretty much done, and I hadn’t changed anything for a few weeks or even months. I actually miss the satisfaction of changing something at the end of my little routine. Checking every detail on every page, revisiting every line of code just to see what can be improved, even if it’s just removing extra quotation marks in an attribute or an optional closing tag, is not as fun when there is nothing to do at the end. I really like my site’s current design, and even if there might be a few tiny tweaks like this one in the future, I feel that the overall look and feel is pretty much final. It’s a weird feeling, but now I have no excuse for not writing more, and publishing more posts, even if they are unfinished , or shorter than usual . For others, falling back to the default serif, usually Times New Roman, is indeed a bit narrow; or would be better, but it’s too wide for Charter.  ^ For the serif/Times New Roman fallback, creates a slightly longer line, which is atually better than what it was with .  ^ For others, falling back to the default serif, usually Times New Roman, is indeed a bit narrow; or would be better, but it’s too wide for Charter.  ^ For the serif/Times New Roman fallback, creates a slightly longer line, which is atually better than what it was with .  ^

HTML CSS Web Development Frontend

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The Jolly Teapot 2 weeks ago

Unfinished, part deux

Two years ago, I published a post entitled Unfinished . It was a way for me to share some thoughts without having to work on them as much as I do on regular posts. As I wasn’t sure if these “lesser thoughts” were worth my efforts and my time, I compiled them in a different post format, inspired by a song: This post is inspired by the excellent track entitled Lamb’s Garbage (Unfinished) , from the classic album and one of my favourites, Mr Oizo’s Lambs Anger . The concept of the song, as its title suggests, is to regroup bits of songs that were never completed to be full tracks. Well, here we are again. The text file where I jot down all my ideas, quick thoughts, and potential topics for blog articles is starting to get a bit too long for my liking, so I think it’s time for a little clean-up. What you will see below is what was saved from the big flush, and what I don’t share on social media since I am no longer participating . Think of this as a list of intros, tweets, and blurbs of what was going on in my head recently. I believe some of these themes can be used later for a full post; in the meantime, feel free to use them for your own blog. And if you don’t have a blog, please, start a blog . I love spreadsheets. This is something I find a bit difficult to admit, but I do like working in spreadsheets. I even firmly believe that Google Sheets is their best product. I already like lists, but a spreadsheet is on another level. I like to make my spreadsheets look pretty, I like to plan how they will look, I like to build, I like to make them functional, legible, easy to read. For me, it’s a very pleasing and interesting thing to do at work: there are so many possibilities. When I create a spreadsheet, I feel like an app developer. I feel like I’m a graphic designer. I had a co-worker once whose job included the creation and design of very complex spreadsheets for other teams, using Microsoft Excel, Microsoft Power BI, and such. The resulting spreadsheets were glorious: fully featured and interactive dashboards, gathering data from different sources in real-time. Works of art. Are answers from A.I. chatbots recycled for other users asking the exact same thing, or are answers always generated from scratch? Wouldn’t it be cheaper and more energy-efficient ? If I ask “ explain the difference between irony and happenstance ”, will the A.I. chatbot just paste an existing, perfectly fine answer (one that received positive feedback in previous chats), or will it work to generate a brand new answer? Why do so many people keep saying “Samsung charger” or “iPhone charger” instead of USB-C, USB Type C, or just USB? I mean, despite these cables and connectors being ubiquitous in our lives, I see a lot of people completely ignoring what they are called. I wonder why. Don't brag so much about using A.I. It’s great that you used A.I. to do this thing you’re presenting. I can see how it has been useful and how much faster it helped you reach your goals. I understand that without A.I. you could never have pulled this off. I know it’s a way to show how you are part of the A.I. revolution, that you’re not left behind. No shame in that. I work with A.I. a lot too, I’m not judging you for that. But please, don’t present your use of A.I. as a skill. It’s just a tool. Your skills are elsewhere. Having access to tokens is a weird flex. The tools you use and how you use them may interest a few of your peers, but what you create with these tools is what truly matters. Do you know what type of video cameras were used in your favourite film? Do you care? By the way, the same piece of advice applies to air fryers. If we work so hard on automating our current tasks and projects with A.I. agents, how will we tell which ones are worth doing at all? Does everything need to be A.I.-enabled and optimised? Are we reproducing the same mistake that we made with social media, shoving it everywhere we could? On that topic, I highly recommend this excellent article on The Verge . Efficiency is not the ultimate goal for most people: efficiency for what? For whom? Besides, friction is not always a problem : sometimes friction is how new ideas spark to life. If you are like me, an avid consumer of Techmeme , you will have noticed that A.I. companies get a huge part of the coverage these days. I don’t know if it’s an editorial choice of Techmeme or if it’s just a reflection of the public reception of said news, but my gosh it seems that Gemini or ChatGPT or Claude gets an incremental update every day, and they float on top of the site’s homepage seemingly forever. I wouldn’t mind a new site just for A.I. news, just like Mediagazer does what Techmeme does but for everything media-related. I’d call it Datacenter and it would make Techmeme a bit more interesting. I recently discovered that something I immensely dislike has a name: the Rae Dunn style for household items. Billionaires cannot stand the idea of a democracy where their individual vote is, technically, worth exactly as much as the vote from the person who takes care of their laundry. They hate that. So what do they do? They buy media or social media companies to try to influence thousands to vote like them. Side note on the ridiculous LinkedIn habit that consists of putting a link in the comments of a post, and writing in the post “Link in the comments”. Just put the link in the post, as you’re supposed to, so we can have a nice preview of the post, and we don’t have to look at the even more ridiculous comments of every LinkedIn post. How messed up is that? I know it’s for better “reach” and to trick the algorithm, but you just look thirsty for likes. Isn’t that link the thing you wanted to share? Do you prefer a click or a like? What’s a like good for if nobody visits your link? Thankfully, I don’t have a LinkedIn account, and I can ignore this nonsense most of the time, but I do check on a few LinkedIn posts for work and this is making me both sad and angry. On Instagram, the whole “Link in bio” was necessary because that was the only way to share links back then. But LinkedIn? No excuse. Yes, it sucks that their algorithm prefers posts that won’t send users out of their precious, shitty platform. I’m with you. But you don’t have to play their silly little game. You’re better than this.

Data Programming Writing

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The Jolly Teapot 3 weeks ago

June 2026 blend of links

Some links don’t call for a full blog post, but sometimes I still want to share the good stuff I encounter on the web. Fancy Man Enjoys Tea (The Onion) – “ Instead of simply heating a mug of water in the microwave, Baumer used a hoity-toity copper-bottomed tea kettle, which His Lordship reportedly purchased at Pier One Imports in 2003 for the express purpose of tea-making. ” Here is why Vim uses HJKL keys as arrow keys (Peteris Krumins) – Now, this is a great conversation starter if you happen to be around Vim users. (via 82MHz ) Still City (Takaaki Yagi 八木崇晶) – “ Imaginary architecture from old copy paper noise ”: I really love these. (via Dense Discovery ) PeerTube – I discovered this by chance, and I wonder why this isn’t a more popular alternative to YouTube, or at least a backup option for channel owners (I refuse to use the term ‘creators’). Flip-Phone (Commodore) – I think this not-so-dumb flip phone is far too expensive to become a commercial success, and I personally find the retro look a bit ugly, but I wish it would inspire more companies to produce phones like this: basically dumb phones, but capable of running apps like WhatsApp and a few others, say, the main banking apps. For me, the appeal of these devices isn’t really about avoiding distractions and the doomscrolling temptation from smartphones; it’s about the smaller, different, and interesting form factor. Enough of the 6-inch glass slabs. We Are Living in Pinocchio’s World (Om Malik) – “ Everyone from Jensen Huang to Sam Altman to Elon Musk spent a decade accumulating what I have called symbolic capital, the reputation, the prestige, the weight of being seen as someone who understands the future better than the rest of us. Now each of them seems to be running some version of the Field of Miracles, with promises that keep not arriving, timelines that dissolve, products that exist primarily as announcements, and platforms run as machines for generating more reputation regardless of what they actually do. They don’t need to be right. They need to be believed. ” Trying to use ChatGPT (Ryan O'Flanagan) – “ This is my art, this is what I do, and I’m proud of it, and it uses a lot of water. ” Walking the Brooklyn Bridge (Craig Mod) – “ Holy foot traffic. Just: Obscene crowds, all jostling for selfies. The world, one giant selfie jostle. Eventually, right before the machines turn off our light of meat-based consciousness, we’ll do some Borgesian space selfie and be done with it all. But for now, we selfie on the ground, with great desperation, preening for the screen, to be uploaded to god only knows where for god only knows what audience. The volume of media captured defies comprehension. It is empyrean in volume, flip-flopping beyond theory into the theology of bytes, for how could so many selfies be contained within the physics of our world? ” Now that your newsletter is AI-generated, I've Unsubscribed (Ibrahim Diallo) – “ If you're just going to present me with prompt-generated content, I hate to break it to you but I have access to ChatGPT, and I can do that myself. ” Typewriter habits (Matthew Butterick) – Precious, accurate list here from Matthew Butterick. Most of these drive me a bit mad when encountered in the wild, and it really is surprising how common many of these bad habits still are in 2026. In France for instance, many people assume — incorrectly — that uppercase letters don’t have to carry accents. This is why Kylian Mbappé’s jersey with the France team wrongly lacks the accent on the E, when his Real Madrid jersey does not.

Programming

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The Jolly Teapot 1 months ago

Software will never feel the same

When I visit a restaurant, I care a lot about the food I’m being served, and I want everything I order to be delicious. But arguably, my favourite part is understanding and appreciating the decisions behind each item on the menu, as well as the menu design, the choice of cutlery, the lighting, everything. For me, going to a restaurant isn’t only about eating, it isn’t only about having a good time in a nice place: it’s also about appreciating how harmonised everything is, and how the professionals working there have organised their respective skills to make the restaurant as good as it can be. If I learn that a restaurant uses ready meals, and that the people working there simply reheat something they didn’t make and label it as their own because they’ve added some of their own seasoning, it would change my opinion of that place, even if the food served tastes as good as before. But what if I never know? What if I can’t tell if a restaurant I like cheats its way to success? If I’m just tasting what’s on the plate, how can I know? It’s hard to tell. Sure, there are signs. For instance, if the food is served only two or three minutes after I order, or if the dish served is exactly the same as a dish served in another place, these sorts of things. Regardless of the taste, regardless of the food quality itself, I would grow suspicious, disappointed. It would eventually diminish my appreciation of that place, having the feeling that they aren’t really cooking anything themselves. I would simply not go to that restaurant again. If this general feeling of doubt occurs in most places I visit, whether justified or not, it will certainly taint my overall enthusiasm for restaurants. Yes, you’ve guessed it, this is a post about A.I. and software development. As much as I love good software — especially on the Mac — and trying out applications that may end up part of my digital routine, I think what I love the most is appreciating what is seemingly called “the craft”. When I use an app for the first time, the exploration part is my favourite: to see if this app has a chance to stay on my Mac. I try to understand the design and the decisions made building the app the way it is. I actually love spending time digging through the different options and settings. “What are your hobbies, Nicolas? – Well, spending time in preference panels on MacOS surely is in the top 3. – OK, weirdo.” When I manage to grasp the extent of the app’s features, how they can be operated, and how they are laid out in different menus and toolbars, I like to imagine the debates that went on within the teams. I like to see how shortcuts are implemented, I like to find out what changes when I press the Option key. I like to think “ Oh, this is clever ” when something unexpected is available and yet makes perfect sense. If the app is useful to me and fits into my “workflow” , fantastic: I get to appreciate both the craft and the app itself. If the app isn’t really for me, I can still recommend it and appreciate the efforts, the design, the features and the intentions of the team. It’s a sort of catch-and-release approach to software fishing. At least this is what I enjoyed doing until recently; alas, the fishing part now has a strong, inescapable stink; too often with brand new apps something smells… …suspicious. *1 To be clear, there’s nothing wrong with using A.I. in app development, but just like there are good apps and bad apps, there is good and bad use of A.I. I know how A.I. can help some teams to reach their roadmap goals much faster, to fix bugs that were never a priority before, or to build features that couldn’t be afforded in the first place. This is great, and I’m sure this will now be the norm. Objectively, this is a good thing for the Mac. As John Gruber writes on Daring Fireball , it can serve the platform by increasing the number of truly native apps: The Mac has never faced a decline in popularity, but truly native Mac application development (and the skills) did. Now it’s turning around. Mac users are thirsty for Mac apps, and with A.I., they can quench their own thirst and tell the dullards promulgating Electron bundles to pound sand. But not all uses of A.I. are ideally implemented or even well-intentioned. Some apps can appear to be “authentic”, but they are not . Some apps can appear to be native, but they are not. They can appear to be indie apps, with a small dedicated and passionate team, but they are not. Instead, most of them are imagined, created, updated and distributed in a matter of weeks by a single person and their favourite A.I. tool, without any consideration for best practices, security, good UX , or transparency. It’s a free market, and users can decide what’s best for them, sure. Although it’s increasingly hard to tell the difference without any honesty from the developers, and this is where the deception begins. Nowadays, I get a feeling of unease more and more often. I look at a new app’s website, and I feel like I’m being lied to. I feel like I’m in an artisan shop and I see hundreds of miniature Eiffel Towers carved in oak that are way too perfect to be handcrafted by a single person. I’m sad that from now on I may never be as trusting and curious regarding apps as I was before. The good smell of craft is now covered by the stink of doubt and suspicion. When it comes to software, the Olympic Games have been replaced by the Enhanced Games . The sports are the same, and not all athletes take drugs, but it just doesn’t feel the same, does it? Today, not only can we not watch a cute kittie video without wondering if it’s real or not, we now can’t even use an app without wondering if it’s vibe-coded or not. I’ve had this feeling again this week with an app called Aphera . This RAW editing app looks great, native, fast, efficient: exactly my cup of tea. But I have an itch. Something feels too good to be true. Maybe I’m wrong, maybe I’m just paranoid, but when an app seems to come out of nowhere, made by a very small team in a short amount of time, I’m now sceptical. I’ll stick with RAW Power , thank you. Nothing to do with the app Aphera itself. The app could be “legit” all the way, and I may be a fool for not giving it a go. Two years ago, I would have downloaded it already. Today, I have too many doubts; I’ve even grown suspicious of an app I genuinely like: Helium Browser . Some of these A.I.-enhanced apps are fine, I guess, and well-intentioned. Apps like Tolaria are prime examples. Not for me, but I can see the value for some people (and it’s free, so it’s hard to complain here). But most of the time, something feels off. The other day, I received an email from a reader pointing out that the link I used in a post for the great Mac app called MarkEdit was not the one to be expected. The link pointed to the domain where the MarkEdit app I love lived at the time of the post’s publication : . The app developer eventually let that domain expire, and the app has been living only on GitHub since . But when I went to check that link again, the website was indeed for an app called MarkEdit. But it was another app, not the MarkEdit I praise regularly on this blog. This new MarkEdit has since changed its name to AnnexEdit . Not sure if the original naming was a pure coincidence or a sneaky way to capitalise on an existing brand (MarkEdit is a catchy name after all). Maybe anxiety about copyright infringement finally pushed the developer to do the right thing after a few weeks, or maybe it was a simple mistake. This new app, AnnexEdit, is, I believe, another example of AI-generated software. Something feels off: only a few months had passed between the first alpha version and the final product, the app is built using the Rust language (nowadays it’s pretty much a tell), and overall, it lacks personality, it lacks intent, it lacks a human touch. It doesn’t lack a pricing page though, nor a “pro” version. *2 Of course, no mention of A.I.-driven development anywhere on the website. If you’re a serious developer using A.I. to speed things up, I guess you’d be transparent and honest about it , just like a good restaurant would tell its tenants that all the desserts listed on the menu come from a specific patisserie shop. When it’s not even mentioned, yet the app offers some MCP features from the get-go, colour me suspicious. When I look at the feature set of AnnexEdit, it should excite me: it’s a text editor after all. I should be curious to download the app, and give it a go. Who knows, it could probably end up listed in one of my future blog posts about cool apps or whatever. But my suspicions and unease — whether they are deserved or not — are preventing me from doing this. The features are there, but I can’t detect the craft. It seems like software will never feel the same. Now, I wonder: will I ever be able to give a chance to a new app again? I fear that the magic and my software innocence are gone. Stole a joke from Stephen Colbert here.  ^ Question: if AI-generated content cannot be copyrighted , does it mean that an AI-generated app cannot be sold?  ^ Stole a joke from Stephen Colbert here.  ^ Question: if AI-generated content cannot be copyrighted , does it mean that an AI-generated app cannot be sold?  ^

Rust AI

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The Jolly Teapot 1 months ago

May 2026 blend of links

Forgive the higher-than-usual rate of direct quotes from these links, which replace a few regular comments, but as you can see, there is a general theme in my recent readings. Even though I’m trying to avoid focusing on it in these monthly collections of links, the theme is so rich, so complex and consequential (and fascinating in many ways), that I’m still not really sure what to think about all this and what I can add to these excellent takes. Your CEO is suffering from A.I. psychosis, by Jake Handy – “ An agent without a spec is a random text generator with a budget. ” A lot of quotable and relatable parts in this excellent, insightful column. The Majority A.I. View, by Anil Dash – “ One of the reasons we don't hear about this most popular, moderate view on A.I. within the tech industry is because people are afraid to say it. Mid-level managers and individual workers who know this is the common-sense view on A.I. are concerned that simply saying that they think A.I. is a normal technology like any other, and should be subject to the same critiques and controls, and be viewed with the same skepticism and care, fear for their careers. ” The Rise of the Bullshittery, by マリウス (Marius) – “ A few thoughts on how the modern economy has stopped rewarding people who know what they are doing, and started rewarding people who know how to look like they do. ” Do I belong in tech anymore? by Ky Decker – “ What I’ve gained from A.I. is a deeper appreciation for human communication, in all its messy imperfection. ” (via Kottke ) Your A.I. Use Is Breaking My Brain, by Jason Koebler – “ Our brains are now performing untold numbers of calculations per day: Is this A.I.? Do I care if it’s A.I.? Why does this sound or look or read so weird? Does this person just write like this? Is this a person at all? ” Craft is Untouchable, by Christopher Butler – “ And that’s the risk with collapsing skills into tools. I won’t always be there to do the thing I do. Inferior designs will ship. That’s bad. But what’s worse—the thing that really stings most designers’ egos—is that most people won’t even notice. ” Software as the Product of Obsession Times Voice, by John Gruber – “ It’s one thing to make something poorly designed and shrug on the grounds that it doesn’t matter. It’s another thing to make something poorly designed and hold it up as good design. ” “The Biggest Android Update Ever”, by MKBHD – Reading the comments section of this video — which I usually avoid doing at all costs on YouTube — was very revealing of the world we live in: companies pushing A.I. everywhere to please investors, but a sizeable number of users from the general public seem to be genuinely annoyed by it. I also really like this new-ish column-like video format from MKBHD (Marques, if you’re reading this, please consider adding a good old blog next to your YouTube channels and podcast?) Hyperduck, by Sindre Sorhus – Another excellent little utility from Sindre Sorhus: this one forces me to use open tabs on my Mac as my read-later list, rather than saving the link somewhere, only to forget about it. (via Loren Stephens ) Patricia, I Went on Holiday – Every now and then, I listen to Patricia and their specific bass-deep techno music that sounds like nothing else I know (my fave being Sick Day ). This song, not featured on an album, is great, but the fan-made video is very well made and it’s a nice window into the early 90s. I do need to go on holiday.

Career AI

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The Jolly Teapot 2 months ago

Another rant about web browsing

Yes, I’m writing again about my ongoing experiment with blocking JavaScript on a per-site basis. This time, I’m not here to explain how I operate in detail , but to complain about the work needed to maintain this web browsing hygiene. In short, the web is a mess, and while messy things can be fun , I’ve recently grown very frustrated with the need to dance around my extensions every time I visit a new site where displaying simple text apparently requires JavaScript, or where scrolling requires dismissing a cookie modal that is only visible if content blockers are turned off first. I’ve come to the conclusion that blocking JavaScript by default on all websites, as I’ve been doing lately, is a source of frustration. Yes, the web is light as a feather and my browser feels very fast when it doesn’t have to deal with all the JavaScript, I do love that. But this “strategy” breaks too many websites, pushing me to take detours so often that they can barely be called detours any more. You see, I can’t be bothered to manage an efficient “allow” list in the long run, so web browsing often feels like a series of new obstacles, as if every day is the first day of this setup. *1 This strategy is therefore a bad one. Just as bad as the other strategy I tried before, the one where I only block JavaScript after visiting the site, if it feels necessary. My discipline with that second strategy tends to fade away as days go by, and I end up barely ever blocking anything, even forgetting that this is something I can do. This strategy often encourages me to download a proper content blocker or use a filtering DNS. Not only are these strategies inefficient in their initial goal of making my web browsing experience better , but they are also only work on the Mac. On iOS, due to the way Safari extensions work — which is a bit shitty — neither of the two strategies for blocking JavaScript on a per-site basis is practical to use, pushing me to adopt another strategy just for my phone (which, in turn, makes everything feel so much more complex than it needs to be). On the iPhone, accessing the settings for each Safari extension is already complicated, but there seems to be no way to manage a per-site setting if the extension is not recognised as a content blocker and if it is set to “allow on all websites”. With StopTheScript for instance, I can only manage the per-site setting if I set the extension to “ask”. Also, per-site settings only seem to sync between the phone and the Mac if the extension is a content blocker. *2 So, if I were to rate my JavaScript-off web browsing strategies, taking into account the browsing experience itself (the way the websites look and behave), the impact on my computer’s CPU (if the fan turns on or not, if it lags), and the amount of maintenance required (having to manage exception lists): JavaScript-off by default, allowing a few selected sites permanently, visiting others temporarily in a private tab (where the extension is inactive): 8/20 JavaScript-on by default, managing the JS-off list extensively but facing the terribleness of raw webpages: 6/20 Both are bad strategies, but the truth is that none of the alternatives I’m thinking of are better. For example, using a full content blocker like Wipr is a frustrating experience in itself. Having to manage another list of sites and constantly refreshing pages with or without content blockers is a pain. That, and the fact that it seems to be a heavier workload for my old Mac, as are third-party browsers. Content-blocker-enabled Safari, managing the exception list and dealing with a laggy computer: 7/20 Third-party browser , like Helium, Quiche Browser, or Orion, combining content blocking and a neat JavaScript toggle (uBlock Origin is pretty great at both): 7/20 Naked browser, meaning no content blockers, no JavaScript limitation, no list to manage, nothing to do, just the natural web: 1/20 I think the best setup is the following, even if I’ll stick with strategy 1 for a while: The main issue with strategy 6 is that I’ve had issues with these DNS resolvers, like not being able to access common websites for hours, even my own website, resulting in a quick investigation only to realise that everything was working fine and that the issue was with the DNS resolver. This is the state of web browsing in 2026, terrible at best. Allowing JavaScript, blocking JavaScript, whatever; either way the experience is bad. Most websites are stuffed with invasive ads, surveillance tracking, dickpanels , noise, and junk. Nothing we can do really works, unless one spends hours fine-tuning everything and therefore adds extra layers of complexity. The more effort I put into filtering the filth, the more ready I am to give up at the first little hiccup. It doesn’t feel right to reload a webpage three times to view it properly and to take the time to ensure it’s properly set up for future visits. While content blockers and JS toggle tricks are improving things drastically, the added amount of work required is a pain in itself. The browser on one side, the extensions on the other. The more we consume websites as the filling in a sort of software sandwich, the more they resist. The thicker our bread, the more sauce they add. The more bread we bring to absorb it, the more junk they add to the filling. At what point does it become too disgusting to eat? Meanwhile, reading articles outside the web browser , via email newsletters or within my RSS reader, is pure bliss; a delightful, gourmet, delicious cuisine that stimulates my appetite instead of making me want to throw up. It’s so good that I don’t even need extra bread. *3 It just works. Just like it’s increasingly better to search for an answer using an A.I chatbot rather than a traditional search engine, it’s now better to read articles from websites by using apps that are not traditional web browsers. It feels wrong, like driving on the smooth cycle lane rather than a pothole-filled road. How long can this situation last? Between difficult business models  — the source of most problems, driving us to use content blockers in the first place — and new A.I. chatbot intermediaries , I don’t know what will happen to the web in the next three or four years. Some web browsers are already in a weird spot . In the meantime, I will keep overthinking this, as I want my next laptop to inherit a “final” and well-thought-out setup, developed on this early 2020 MacBook Air. Its lack of a powerful chip and its limited memory forces me to face the inefficiency of overloaded webpages and third-party browsers. Maybe I’m obsessing a little too much about this. Or maybe I need to sleep more . “Allow” or “deny” list, depending on whether we talk about JavaScript being on or off, or the extension blocking it. The vocabulary around content blockers and extensions like StopTheScript confuses me in terms of negation.  ^ Some extensions like StopTheMadness can be configured without relying on Safari per-site settings, but decentralising and maintaining two competing lists is pretty much the opposite of what I want.  ^ I do disable JavaScript in NetNewsWire though, just to be safe.  ^ JavaScript-off by default, allowing a few selected sites permanently, visiting others temporarily in a private tab (where the extension is inactive): 8/20 JavaScript-on by default, managing the JS-off list extensively but facing the terribleness of raw webpages: 6/20 Content-blocker-enabled Safari, managing the exception list and dealing with a laggy computer: 7/20 Third-party browser , like Helium, Quiche Browser, or Orion, combining content blocking and a neat JavaScript toggle (uBlock Origin is pretty great at both): 7/20 Naked browser, meaning no content blockers, no JavaScript limitation, no list to manage, nothing to do, just the natural web: 1/20 Strategy 2, with a DNS resolver like Mullvad or NextDNS, effectively blocking most crap without making my laptop choke. 9/20 “Allow” or “deny” list, depending on whether we talk about JavaScript being on or off, or the extension blocking it. The vocabulary around content blockers and extensions like StopTheScript confuses me in terms of negation.  ^ Some extensions like StopTheMadness can be configured without relying on Safari per-site settings, but decentralising and maintaining two competing lists is pretty much the opposite of what I want.  ^ I do disable JavaScript in NetNewsWire though, just to be safe.  ^

JavaScript Web Development

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The Jolly Teapot 2 months ago

We need something better than touchscreens in cars

I live in the Greater Strasbourg area, and nearby, 30 kilometres away or so, there is a certain small-volume car manufacturer that understood years ago, before it was cool, that touchscreens in cars tend to age poorly. I love what they do instead of putting every command behind a fancy touchscreen: they try to give each of the main commands its own physical button, without relying on a capacitive piece of glass, as if we were still living in the first 120 years of the 140-year-old car industry. *1 There was no such screen in their previous flagship model (2005–2015), resulting in an interior that ages quite well compared to other interiors from the same era (imagine the resolution of these screens). Their recently-retired model , despite being released in 2016, doesn’t offer a single touchscreen either, and in the upcoming model , the screen only appears when needed, for instance, for GPS navigation. I’m not even sure if it’s touch-enabled. Why are such “simple” straight-to-the-point dashboards now synonymous with either brand boldness or retro design rather than best practice in driver interfaces? When did we all just sort of accept this as the de facto standard, even if touchscreens in cars suck? How much money do car manufacturers really save by centralising as much as possible into a single screen that tends to look the same across different brands and different models? How important is it for their sales and marketing departments to be able to highlight the fact that their cars are able to display the same familiar icons as the phones of their customers? This rant is not about being able to play songs from Apple Music or Spotify in your car’s stereo. This is not about the connectivity allowed by modern cars and the features it enables: this is about the look and ergonomics of it all. Why does everything have to be controlled via a big, luminous, colourful screen? Why does everything have to be displayed with a phone-inspired UI? When did Apple CarPlay and Android Auto become the face of most modern car software, and when did most car companies give up on that part? *2 When did we, as customers and drivers, get duped into thinking that good car interfaces had to involve giant touchscreens? Part of the answer is obvious: most car manufacturers are terrible at software, and they suck at user interfaces. Meanwhile, people have built natural habits with touchscreens over the past twenty years. For years people hated entering an address in their car’s GPS, so when something like Apple CarPlay became available, it felt like a breath of fresh air, it felt like the future. Car manufacturers noticed, and now they have the possibility to rely on iOS and Android to do most of the work regarding navigation, media, and phone connectivity. All of that while saving money by effectively externalising these features, at the cost of a dependency on ubiquitous and long-term-supported smartphone operating systems. All they have to do is include a nice screen, be “compatible” with Android Auto and Apple CarPlay, let you charge your phone while driving, and call it a day. And drivers seem to love this. *3 The problem is that if touchscreens are fine for some specific things in a car, this is not usually the case when actually driving. You know, that thing you do with a car and don’t do with an iPad? There are obvious safety concerns around the idea of people digging through menus and screens while operating a two-ton metal machine on public roads, but I want to complain about the quality of the experience most of all, which, as a software aficionado , I find to be infuriating most of the time. Why and when did we all collectively seem to settle for this? Why do we spend so much time complaining about MacOS and accept the mediocrity of car software as if nothing can be done, ever? Every time I want to play a specific song in my car (and when I don’t want to use Siri or when it doesn’t work — I’ll let you know which of the two is more common) I realise how terrible the experience is. Having to deal with five or six touch inputs at various locations on the screen, with questionable contrast and iconography, doesn’t really work when you’re using a moving, hovering hand while paying attention to traffic, does it? But it has nice candy-like colour icons, it looks like our phones, it feels “modern”, and we don’t really have to learn how to use it, we comply, and we forget about it. By contrast, changing temperature in my 2020 Kia Rio is as easy and reliable as it can get. I just turn a big knob. It has a nice feeling. I can tell from its physical orientation at which temperature it is set: between a “not heated at all” (blue area) and “warmest” (red area). It doesn’t lag. It doesn’t freeze. It doesn’t confuse me. If the AC is on, a separate button is lit up. The same goes for the ventilation speed, the window wipers and the tyre-pressure monitor reset. Physical buttons are not just great; they are undeniably better and safer to use for fixed actions, that’s why even iPhones still have volume up and down buttons. At night, these buttons are softly backlit, like my laptop keyboard, so I can see their status and location in the dark, but they don’t blind me and force me to readjust my sight every time I glance at the dashboard. Also, finger smudges. I want more of this, not less. I want the same ergonomics logic for music controls, for navigation, for communications. I want a button that is programmable to make a one-click phone call to my wife’s mobile phone. I want a button that always starts a specific playlist. Just like I don’t want MacOS to look and feel like iOS, I want my car to feel like a car, with its own personality, and not an iPad on wheels. Right now, when I look at car interiors from the 90s , I am jealous. I am almost smelling the leather and plastics, feeling the tactility of the dashboards, hearing the sounds they make. I am not sure how modern car interiors will feel in thirty years, let alone ten years from now. *4 To me, ideally, cars should behave like iPods and iTunes Sync: every time your phone connects to your car — wirelessly or not — playlists, albums, podcasts, contacts, saved maps, messages, and appointment locations should sync with those saved on the phone, and that’s it: let the car handle the software and the physicality of the interface. CarPlay should have the option for car manufacturers to run only as a syncing protocol for data, not a full iOS-like interface. I guess Steve Jobs was misunderstood by car manufacturers when he introduced the iPhone : Now, why do we need a revolutionary user interface? I mean, Here’s four smart phones, right? Motorola Q, the BlackBerry, Palm Treo, Nokia E62 – the usual suspects. And, what’s wrong with their user interfaces? Well, the problem with them is really sort of in the bottom 40 there. It’s, it’s this stuff right here. They all have these keyboards that are there whether you need them or not to be there. And they all have these control buttons that are fixed in plastic and are the same for every application. Well, every application wants a slightly different user interface, a slightly optimized set of buttons, just for it. If having a screen-only interface makes sense for phones, where the application can change drastically depending on the use case, it doesn’t sound like a relevant advantage for cars, where fixed control buttons and a constant user interface sounds like something you want. When Steve Ballmer famously commented on the iPhone , saying that it didn’t have a keyboard and didn’t make it a great “email machine”, he was mistaken because the iPhone can be a great email machine too. But I see what he meant: keyboards are obviously more capable for serious typing . They are in the way if you want to watch a video or browse the web, however, a keyboard fixed in plastic is better if typing is the main purpose of the device, just like laptops have keyboards. Even today, a lot of people miss having a keyboard on their phones . In that sense, car dashboards should be more like BlackBerry devices, and less like iPhones, because a dashboard should have the best design for driving, just like a BlackBerry had a keyboard to be the best at typing. *5 In the same iPhone keynote from 2007, Steve Jobs also quotes Alan Kay’s famous “ People who are really serious about software should make their own hardware. ” Well, I believe the opposite is also true, at least in the car industry: People who are really serious about hardware should make their own software. Special mention to the Saab cockpits, my beloved, along with their “Night Panel” feature . If you know, you know. I mean, look at it . Saab designed their cars with a mindset rooted in the aviation industry: each command legible and easily accessible, with the cockpit built around the driver. Imagine for a second if plane manufacturers took the “touchscreens everywhere” approach…  ^ I am not sure how CarPlay Ultra works: I hope it allows brands to customise the look and feel of the interface. I wouldn’t like to buy an Aston Martin and have my speedometer set in the San Francisco font. If I bought a Porsche, I wouldn’t want the cockpit to feel like a never-produced Apple Car. I would expect some personality and an on-brand, exclusive experience; Ferrari seems to be doing exactly that with the Lucce .  ^ Sure, they all have their own operating system, but it seems to be either used only for things the phone mirroring thing cannot do (like suspension settings and such). The exception being Tesla, but then the problem is the same: the tablet computer interface is front and centre.  ^ Even if things may start to change soon , hopefully.  ^ I just realised that BlackBerry (formerly known as RIM), weirdly, is working with car manufacturers on software (with QNX ), not on hardware (and also not on wheels).  ^ Special mention to the Saab cockpits, my beloved, along with their “Night Panel” feature . If you know, you know. I mean, look at it . Saab designed their cars with a mindset rooted in the aviation industry: each command legible and easily accessible, with the cockpit built around the driver. Imagine for a second if plane manufacturers took the “touchscreens everywhere” approach…  ^ I am not sure how CarPlay Ultra works: I hope it allows brands to customise the look and feel of the interface. I wouldn’t like to buy an Aston Martin and have my speedometer set in the San Francisco font. If I bought a Porsche, I wouldn’t want the cockpit to feel like a never-produced Apple Car. I would expect some personality and an on-brand, exclusive experience; Ferrari seems to be doing exactly that with the Lucce .  ^ Sure, they all have their own operating system, but it seems to be either used only for things the phone mirroring thing cannot do (like suspension settings and such). The exception being Tesla, but then the problem is the same: the tablet computer interface is front and centre.  ^ Even if things may start to change soon , hopefully.  ^ I just realised that BlackBerry (formerly known as RIM), weirdly, is working with car manufacturers on software (with QNX ), not on hardware (and also not on wheels).  ^

Hardware Design

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The Jolly Teapot 2 months ago

The whole joy of it all

Four days ago, on Thursday 30 April 2026, my wife Olga gave birth to a beautiful baby named Marius , and the three of us seem to be glowing with love ever since. Mother and child are both healthy, and I am as happy as I am in admiration of the work from every one involved at the hospital; midwives in particular have been truly incredible. I cannot wait for us to be back home as a family.

Programming Personal Family

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The Jolly Teapot 2 months ago

Sidelining Safari

It was bound to happen . For months, I’ve done my best to prevent this, but eventually, my patience and tolerance weren’t enough. Here I am, writing a post about how I finally decided to ditch Safari as my main browser, and replace it with third-party options. This change was a slow process somehow — spanning a couple of weeks or so — but the gravitational forces of better options were very difficult to escape once I upgraded my work computer to Tahoe, and got to witness Liquid Glass, the mess of it all, and how right most critics were. Safari on Tahoe works fine, I guess, but so many little things feel wrong (it’s a theme with Tahoe and Liquid Glass ). For example, I can’t tell at first glance which tab is active , despite the enormous amount of screen real estate occupied by the address, tab, and bookmark bars. Meanwhile, the Safari extension situation is frustrating as always, and, in 2026, it is still impossible to use the search engine of your choice without requiring an extension that simply redirects search queries . For years, since the first version of Safari for Windows, I have been a loyal, if intermittent, user of Safari. Even today, in a work environment made of Google Workspace, Google Meet, Slack and others, I’ve resisted using the other usual suspects that are Blink-based browsers like Chrome, Brave, Vivaldi, Edge, &c. I’ve dipped my toes in the water a few times, yes, but Safari remained my first choice. Habits, soft spot, call it whatever you want, but to me Safari was always the obvious, the default Mac browser, despite its flaws. Earlier this year, I gave Helium Browser a try: a newish, smartly named, Chromium-based browser, aimed at being light, fast, and stripped of all Google surveillance technologies. The trial was a success, and, after switching back to Safari for a fair fight, I realised that Helium was the most efficient browser to use for work. But the more I used Helium, the more I realised how much better it was than Safari, even the superior Sonoma version that runs on my personal computer. Helium is well-designed, and its set of features is exactly right for me, and, being a Chromium-based browser, it works with my web-related BBEdit scripts. *1 It was just a matter of time before admitting that sticking to Safari was not the best option any more, even for my personal use. My current JavaScript-off by default approach to web browsing surely didn’t help Safari’s case. Indeed, I was starting to get tired of opening private windows to reload tabs with JavaScript “turned back on” for sites requiring it. *2 It was fine until I realised how the same JS-off system was much more convenient to implement on Helium using uBlock Origin (an extension that comes with the browser). On Helium, this is how it works: JavaScript is turned off by default via uBlock Origin. When a site requires JS, I activate it temporarily for that site via uBlock Origin, and JS stays on, only on that tab, until I close it. For sites where I want JS on all the time, I can “lock” that setting and I don’t have to think about it again, or go into the browser’s settings, navigate to the list of sites where the extension is allowed or not, and so on. Quicker and easier than my Safari system. Another perk of not using Safari on my Mac — and therefore not being able to sync my favourites, history, and open tabs with my phone any more — is that I don’t have to stick to Safari on the iPhone either. I can now finally use the great Quiche Browser without feeling like I am missing out on the cross-device comfort I experienced with both instances of Safari. And you know what is great about Quiche Browser? You guessed it, I can add a handy JS on/off toggle onto the toolbar. With Safari and the way it makes extensions like StopTheScript work on iOS, the Private window or quick access to settings workaround I had on the Mac wasn’t manageable, making it pretty much impossible to browse the web with JavaScript turned on by default on the iPhone. *3 So what’s the catch with Helium? I am surprised to say that performance doesn’t seem to be an issue on my early 2020 MacBook Air, at least for now. It may be a little warmer than usual, yes, but I was expecting to hear the fan way more often than I do. Video streaming doesn’t appear to be easy on the CPU and/or memory, but it wasn’t great on Safari either. In fact, Kagi’s Orion — a WebKit-based browser — is seemingly worse than Helium on my computer when it comes to the vacuum cleaner sound effect. The main and only catch I can see so far is everything password-related. I use Apple Passwords, and I could solve 95% of my problems with the iCloud Passwords extension, but I want to use Helium with the services disabled, which prevents it from installing extensions. The Apple Passwords’ little shortcut that lives in the Mac menu bar is helping, but is not ideal. When I look at modern browsers like Helium or Orion on the Mac, and Quiche Browser on the iPhone, I can see a widening gap between those and Safari. These browsers — made by very small teams — are surprisingly good. Not sure I can say that about Safari any more. Using these apps, you can tell the developers behind them care about the product. How many people work on Safari at Apple? Are some members of the Safari team looking at this new generation of browsers? I hope they do, I hope they care. I hope one day they will give me good reasons to switch back to Safari. This is one thing I expect from Apple at WWDC. In the meantime, I’ll let you know how my honeymoon with Helium goes, or if I get sentimental and reunite with Safari sooner than expected. I wish Firefox and other Firefox-based web browsers would work with AppleScript.  ^ The extension StopTheScript is disabled by default on private windows, which is the quickest way to recreate a JS on/off toggle of sorts.  ^ How frustrating is it on the iPhone to access Safari extension settings? Go to the Settings app, scroll all the way down to Apps, scroll all the way down again to Safari, scroll until you find Extensions, click on the extension, and then you have the per-site settings. Madness.  ^ I wish Firefox and other Firefox-based web browsers would work with AppleScript.  ^ The extension StopTheScript is disabled by default on private windows, which is the quickest way to recreate a JS on/off toggle of sorts.  ^ How frustrating is it on the iPhone to access Safari extension settings? Go to the Settings app, scroll all the way down to Apps, scroll all the way down again to Safari, scroll until you find Extensions, click on the extension, and then you have the per-site settings. Madness.  ^

Web Development JavaScript

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The Jolly Teapot 2 months ago

April 2026 blend of links

If you read this via your RSS reader, you won’t notice the tiny design refresh of the site: nothing major, just a new header, a new icon/logo, an improved HTML structure, and an overall simplification and further reduction in weight to be, you guessed it, as light as possible . I’m very pleased with the new look, and I have a feeling that this one will stick for a while. Anyway, moving on to the links I found interesting in the last few weeks. Man Who Threw Molotov Cocktail At Sam Altman’s Home Claims He Was Following ChatGPT Recipe For Risotto – The Onion, still the best website on the internet. Architypes, by Anthony Nelzin-Santos – A lovely collection of photos of old storefronts. (via People and Blogs ) The Song of LinkedIn – “ The song confirms your existing beliefs with words that are brave and controversial because, man, they just don’t get it. They’re so dumb! Their whole business is lagging behind! Whose business? Behind whom? Who knows! The Song of LinkedIn doesn’t care. All it cares about is making you feel like insights are happening to you when really I’m just being a dick by making you feel like a dick for not being as big a dick as me. Synergy! ” I Verified My LinkedIn Identity. Here's What I Actually Handed Over. – Deleting my LinkedIn account a few years ago is still one of the best decisions I’ve made in my life, and today when I’m asked why I am not on LinkedIn, I tend to answer with “Why are you on LinkedIn?”, and the words “pile of garbage website” may come out too, if I’m being polite. (via 82MHz ) delphitools – The kind of website that absolutely deserves a spot on my “JavaScript allowed” list. Excellent. (via Rodrigo Ghedin ) Nobody Gets Promoted for Simplicity – “ The actual path to seniority isn’t learning more tools and patterns, but learning when not to use them. Anyone can add complexity. It takes experience and confidence to leave it out. ” (via Violet Pixel ) All my clients wanted a carousel, now it's an A.I. chatbot! – “ I've learned that when a client says simple, they don't mean easy to use. They mean not impressive enough. They mean what will people think. A lean, fast website doesn't look like it cost anything. It doesn't signal effort. It doesn't say: we take this seriously. ” Dept. of Enthusiasm – Not sure when the next issue of this newsletter will be released, but reading this extremely well-written entry got me sold. I’m also very envious of that prose. (via Meanwhile ) ‘He’d gaze at the stars and go: I’m gonna be up there one day’: Prince by those who knew him best, 10 years after his death – If you’re familiar with my list of favourite songs , you can have an idea of what Prince means to me. His sudden death in April 2016 still hurts, as if I had lost a part of me, or an old friend. Scottish comedian Robert Florence, then, shared a thought that I think about often: “ You'll always be the angel and the devil on my shoulders. ”

Web Development Design HTML JavaScript

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The Jolly Teapot 3 months ago

The dumber, the better

Zhenyi Tan, in a blog post titled Ensheinification , writes: Every time I replace something with a new thing, the new thing is worse. My mother-in-law bought a new rice cooker. It has 20 settings and none of them cook good rice. The old one had one button and made perfect rice for 10+ years. I talked to her about it. She said she tried three different rice cookers. The first one made the rice too sticky. The second one had many buttons and bad design3. And all the buttons turned out to cook the same way. The third was also full of buttons and also made sticky rice. She went back to ask the shop staff how the buttons worked. Nobody knew. They’re just salespeople. Reading this article, I could almost taste the frustration that I often experience myself when I am in the market for something. The rice cooker is actually a great example of an object that is supposed to do one thing, and do it well. It turns out that last Christmas, my wife got me something I had on my wish list for a while: you guessed it, a rice cooker. But not any rice cooker: this “analogue”, beautiful, and simple Hario rice cooker . No button. No plug. No screen. No LED indicator. Just a rice cooker that whistles when the rice is about to be ready. Is it perfect? No. The rice is very good, every time, but I would not call it perfect. But if I prepare the rice the right way, the results are repeatedly and predictably great . The object itself is well-made too. A nice glass lid, a stainless steel and aluminium body, an easy-to-clean and replaceable whistle part: I think this thing could last decades if I take care of it properly. This article by Zhenyi Tan also reminded me of Bradley Taunt’s My Coffee Maker Just Makes Coffee post that I have shared a few times already : Both digital and industrial design suffer from bloat. Far too often I witness fellow designers over-engineer customer requests. Or they add excessive bloat to new product features. It’s almost a rarity these days to find designers who tackle work as single items. Everything expands. Everything needs to do one little extra “cool” thing. Nothing is ever taken away. My new rice cooker and my dear old coffee maker are great examples of this philosophy applied to everyday objects, and the more I think about it, the more satisfying it gets. * 1 As you know, I also love to take away and remove stuff to keep things light and simple . When my soon-to-be brother-in-law first visited our new flat last year, he asked me about the kind of roller shutters we had installed, if they were electrically operated and if I could activate them remotely. I told him that the real estate developer had stuck to manual levers to keep the cost down as much as possible, but we could, if we wanted, easily add a little motor on the side. But I told him that I preferred this manual system anyway. If one day I can’t open or close the shutters, I will know where the problem comes from: a mechanical issue with the roller. If I had a smart system, and if tapping the button on my iPhone screen didn’t do anything, the problem could not only be caused by more things, but also become harder to pinpoint. Is the Wi-Fi working? Do the shutters have internet access? * 2 Should I restart the app or my phone? Does my flat have power? Do I need to reset the connection? Is it a bug? Do I have to update the app? Do I need to give the app access to my location? And finally, is there a mechanical issue with the roller? I get that these modern and more complex solutions exist: some people might prefer them over “dumb” systems, some people may actually need 20+ functions for their rice cooker. But if the price to pay for these is less reliability and simplicity, I wouldn’t count this as progress, but as regression indeed. My coffee maker is this fantastic Braun Aromaster Classic KF 47/1 , in white, and not only do I find that it looks a little Dieter-Rams-esque , but it just works. I bought it in 2020, and I plan to keep it for at least another six years. Sounds like a lot these days. ^ This sentence alone should be a warning sign urging us to keep things as dumb as possible. ^ My coffee maker is this fantastic Braun Aromaster Classic KF 47/1 , in white, and not only do I find that it looks a little Dieter-Rams-esque , but it just works. I bought it in 2020, and I plan to keep it for at least another six years. Sounds like a lot these days. ^ This sentence alone should be a warning sign urging us to keep things as dumb as possible. ^

Design

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The Jolly Teapot 3 months ago

Browsing the web with JavaScript turned off

Some time ago, I tried to use my web browser with JavaScript turned off by default. The experiment didn’t last long , and my attempt at a privacy-protecting, pain-free web experience failed. Too many websites rely on JavaScript, which made this type of web browsing rather uncomfortable. I’ve kept a Safari extension like StopTheScript around, on top of a content blocker like Wipr , just in case I needed to really “trim the fat” of the occasional problematic webpage. * 1 Recently, I’ve given this setup a new chance to shine, and even described it in a post. The results are in: the experiment failed yet again. But I’m not done. Even if this exact setup isn’t the one I currently rely on, JavaScript-blocking is nevertheless still at the heart of my web browsing hygiene on the Mac today. For context, this need for fine-tuning comes from the fact that my dear old MacBook Air from early 2020, rocking an Intel chip, starts to show its age. Sure, it already felt like a 10-year-old computer the moment the M1 MacBook Air chip was released, merely six months after I bought it, but let’s just say that a lot of webpages make this laptop choke. My goal of making this computer last one more year can only be reached if I manage not to throw the laptop through the window every time I want to open more than three tabs. On my Mac, JavaScript is now blocked by default on all pages via StopTheScript. Leaving JavaScript on, meaning giving websites a chance, sort of defeated the purpose of my setup (performance and privacy). Having JS turned off effectively blocks 99% of ads and trackers (I think, don’t quote me on that) and makes browsing the web a very enjoyable experience. The fan barely activates, and everything is as snappy and junk-free as expected. For websites that require JavaScript — meaning frequently visited sites like YouTube or where I need to be logged in like LanguageTool  — I turn off StopTheScript permanently via the Websites > Extensions menu in the Safari Settings. I try to keep this list to a bare minimum, even if this means I have to accept a few annoyances like not having access to embedded video players or comments on some websites. For instance, I visit the Guardian multiple times daily, yet I won’t add it to the exception list, even if I’m a subscriber and therefore not exposed to the numerous “please subscribe” modals. I can no longer hide some categories on the home page, nor watch embedded videos: a small price to pay for a quick and responsive experience, and a minimal list of exceptions. For the few times when I actually need to watch a video on the Guardian, comment on a blog post, or for the occasional site that needs JavaScript simply to appear on my screen (more on that later), what I do is quickly open the URL in a new private window. There, StopTheScript is disabled by default (so that JavaScript is enabled: sorry, I know this is confusing). Having to reopen a page in a different browser window is an annoying process, yes. Even after a few weeks it still feels like a chore, but it seems to be the quickest way on the Mac to get a site to work without having to mess around with permissions and exceptions, which can be even more annoying on Safari. Again, a small price to pay to make this setup work. * 2 Another perk of that private browsing method is that the ephemeral session doesn’t save cookies and the main tracking IDs disappear when I close the window. I think. The problem I had at first was that these sessions tended to display the webpages as intended by the website owners: loaded with JavaScript, ads, modals, banners, trackers, &c. Most of the time, it is a terrible mess. Really, no one should ever experience the general web without any sort of blocker. To solve this weakness of my setup, I switched from Quad9 to Mullvad DNS to block a good chunk of ads and trackers (using the “All” profile ). Now, the private window only allows the functionality part of the JavaScript, a few cookie banners and Google login prompt annoyances, but at least I am not welcomed by privacy-invading and CPU-consuming ads and trackers every time my JS-free attempt fails. I know I could use a regular content blocker instead of a DNS resolver, but keeping it active all the time when JS is turned off feels a bit redundant and too much of an extension overlap. More importantly, I don’t want to be tempted to manage yet another exception list on top of the StopTheScript one (been there, done that, didn’t work). Also, with Safari I don’t think it’s possible to activate an extension in Private Mode only. John Gruber , in a follow-up reaction to The 49MB Web Page article from Shubham Bose, which highlights the disproportionate weight of webpages related to their content, wrote: One of the most controversial opinions I’ve long espoused, and believe today more than ever, is that it was a terrible mistake for web browsers to support JavaScript. Not that they should have picked a different language, but that they supported scripting at all. That decision turned web pages — which were originally intended as documents — into embedded computer programs. There would be no 49 MB web pages without scripting. There would be no surveillance tracking industrial complex. The text on a page is visible. The images and video embedded on a page are visible. You see them. JavaScript is invisible. That makes it seem OK to do things that are not OK at all. Amen to that. But if JavaScript is indeed mostly used for this “invisible” stuff, why are some websites built to use it for the most basic stuff? Video streaming services, online stores, social media platforms, I get it: JavaScript makes sense. But text-based sites? Blogs? Why? The other day I wanted to read this article , and only the website header showed up in my browser. Even Reader Mode didn’t make the article appear. When I opened the link in a private window, where StopTheScript is disabled, lo and behold, the article finally appeared. For some obscure reason, on that website (and others) JavaScript is needed to load text on a freaking web page. Even if you want your website to have a special behaviour regarding loading speeds, design subtleties, or whatever you use JavaScript for, please, use a tag, either to display the article in its most basic form, or at least to show a message saying “JavaScript needed for no apparent reason at all. Sorry.” * 3 This is what I do on my phone, as managing Safari extensions on iOS is a painful process. Quiche Browser is a neat solution and great way for me to have the “turn off JavaScript” menu handy, but without a way to sync bookmarks, history or open tabs with the Mac, I still prefer to stick to Safari, at least for now. ^ I still wish StopTheScript had a one-touch feature to quickly reload a page with JavaScript turned on until the next refresh or for an hour or so, but it doesn’t. ^ This is what I do for this site’s search engine , where PageFind requires JavaScript to operate. Speaking of search engine, DuckDuckGo works fine in HTML-only mode (the only main search engine to offer this I believe). ^ This is what I do on my phone, as managing Safari extensions on iOS is a painful process. Quiche Browser is a neat solution and great way for me to have the “turn off JavaScript” menu handy, but without a way to sync bookmarks, history or open tabs with the Mac, I still prefer to stick to Safari, at least for now. ^ I still wish StopTheScript had a one-touch feature to quickly reload a page with JavaScript turned on until the next refresh or for an hour or so, but it doesn’t. ^ This is what I do for this site’s search engine , where PageFind requires JavaScript to operate. Speaking of search engine, DuckDuckGo works fine in HTML-only mode (the only main search engine to offer this I believe). ^

HTML Security Performance JavaScript

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The Jolly Teapot 3 months ago

March 2026 blend of links

I promise you I try to avoid linking to more than two articles on the same topic in each edition — and I really want to avoid my readers to feel too depressed reading this blog — but everything seems to be about A.I. or some sort of automation these days, either directly or indirectly. I also notice that most of the topics revolve around the how and rarely on the why , as if accelerating tasks to the max, regardless of their purpose, is unquestionably a good thing. Emily Tucker’s Open Letter to Georgetown Students, In Response to Recent Announcements by the University about “Generative A.I.” – “ It’s a big win for them, in their quest to persuade you of your powerlessness, that they have gotten your university to [adopt] their marketing language for its official statements, to shape its academic programming around the presumption of their indefinite economic primacy, and to pay for you to have free access to technologies that will make it harder — the more you use them — to know yourself to be a free intellectual, creative and moral agent. ” (via Dan Gillmor ) Overthinking: A.I. wasn't the first to break my heart – This article from Ana Rodrigues read a little too close to home for my own comfort; the feelings described and words chosen are very accurate and indeed increasingly familiar to a growing number of people. We’re Training Students To Write Worse To Prove They’re Not Robots, And It’s Pushing Them To Use More A.I. – “ […] the AI detection tool flagged the essay as “18% A.I. written.” The culprit? Using the word “devoid.” When the word was swapped out for “without,” the score magically dropped to 0%. ” The Future Smells Like Paper – “ The technology should remove bureaucratic friction while preserving ceremonial weight. Make the process transparent without making it trivial. You can't automate meaning. You can only create conditions where it might emerge. ” (via iA Writer ) What I mean when I say that I hate Gen A.I. – “ I hate that I do it, and I am angry that I am forced - but I am an adult and I do what I must. I couldn't care less if I write the code I "make", but I am disenchanted with humanity. As a young boy I was full of optimism, I thought we can strive to be better. I was wrong. Money is all that matters. ” (via Brain Baking ) Backseat Software – So many quotable parts in this beauty of an article by Mike Swanson. Before writing this very sentence, I successively pasted 3 to 4 quotes, each better than the previous one. What a great read; actually very hard to get through, as you'll want to stop every other paragraph to take notes. (via The Talk Show ) TextEdit and the Relief of Simple Software – An interesting perspective from someone deeply involved in the activity of writing on a computer, but seemingly not as passionate about software as one would assume. I’ll keep an eye on Kyle Chayka’s future columns, as I wouldn’t be surprised if this one is just a first step into the inevitable quest of finding a better writing app on the Mac. I’ve been there, both as a TextEdit-only user and as a text-editing software snob. I even play with Vim in the Terminal from time to time, just so I can feel like Dana Scully typing a report . (via Michael Tsai ) SubEthaEdit – Perfect transition to a really excellent text editor, for people who love “real” Mac apps, with a neat collaboration feature. The Shape of Paris – At first, I just wanted to watch the first couple of seconds of this to see if it was worth saving for later or not, and I ended up watching it in full. Beautiful scenery that somehow made me nostalgic for the eight years of my life I lived in Paris. Also, has any other sport or hobby ever beaten skateboard in terms of style and looks? I don’t think so, it’s the epitome of cool . (via Kottke ) Shady Characters – Not as cool as a skateboard video in Paris, but this whole website looks incredible thanks to an exquisite typography. Subscribed to the RSS feed, and there is also a book, that I’ve just ordered. Previous blend of links editions

Culture AI

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The Jolly Teapot 4 months ago

Questions about the future of MacOS in the age of the MacBook Neo

As far as I can see, the majority of MacBook Neo reviews are overwhelmingly positive . Other reviews are simply acknowledging that this new laptop will be a huge success, while also recommending other laptops, including the refurbished MacBook Air . These reviews share the same overall message: the Neo, especially after the August-September back-to-school season, will be an immense hit, potentially becoming the best-selling Mac computer of all time, maybe outselling the previous bestseller, I want to say three to four times (just speculating here). With this upcoming increased volume of sales in the traditional computer market, i.e. not phones or tablets, and with these millions of users new to the Mac platform, what can this mean for MacOS and the ecosystem? I have a lot of questions, and very few answers, as you can see below. Will the Neo become a second chance for the Mac App Store? Will the popularity of the Neo, on the contrary, make the Mac App Store experience even worse? Will it become flooded with crappy apps, trying to take advantage of trusting users new to the platform? Will this change the average app price or business model on the Mac? Looking at the Top Free Apps list on the Mac App Store as I write this line, the 6th most popular app is called “ AI Chatbot · Ask AI Anything 5.2 ”. * 1 It sits right after Microsoft Excel and CapCut, and before Microsoft PowerPoint. No, this app — unrelated to OpenAI — is not fishy at all (!) and the Mac App Store is very safe. The 12th most popular app on the list is “ HP: Print and Support ”. Great, great stuff. I wonder what will happen with millions of extra Mac users. Will the Neo help the Mac become a proper gaming platform? The Neo may not be equipped for “serious” gaming, due to its basic screen and “modest” GPU, but all the casual games and older games like Minecraft would be perfectly fine on this machine: there is definitely an opportunity for Apple and developers here, especially with the Mac being compatible with PlayStation, Xbox, and Switch controllers out of the box. Will the popularity of the MacBook Neo be an opportunity for Apple to mobilise more third-party developers to build apps for MacOS, now that the potential user base can be significantly larger? How many of these new apps will be truly native, and how many will be built on top of frameworks like Electron, since the majority of these new users probably won’t care? Is the Neo a new opportunity for the Swift language? Will the Neo push Apple to finally update the Stickies app? I guess we will have to wait until WWDC 2026 to have parts of these answers. Will this increased popularity of the Mac, arguably the first modern Mac for the masses, bring more heat to MacOS when it comes to viruses and security flaws? This is one of the first questions I asked myself when I started to read about how the MacBook Neo could sell millions, on top of the current Mac sales. I understand that MacOS itself is pretty secure, but if MacOS becomes more appealing to apps and games developers, it will also be more appealing to virus makers. How much of the iPad market will the Neo capture? How much of an impact will it have on the Safari vs. Chrome market share: will new Mac users just use Chrome on their new Macs or stick to Safari? Will the Neo push Apple to release more frequent updates for Safari? How many Safari extensions will be available by the end of the year? How many of the new Mac users, brought to the platform via the Neo, will eventually become MacOS enthusiasts? What does it mean for the direction of MacOS? If, by the end of 2026, 80 to 90% of active Macs are MacBooks Neo (again, just speculating), what does it mean for the future of Liquid Glass? * 2 Is an increased line of revenue for the Mac a reason for Apple to mobilise more people to work on MacOS ? I am a little worried that a never-seen-before popularity for the Mac would encourage Apple to make MacOS look and behave more like iOS. Will the increased popularity of the Mac make the Mac less cool in the eyes of others, less exclusive? Is the Mac ready to become more than the cooler alternative to Windows? I have a lot of questions, as you can see. I’m sure most of these questions have been asked hundreds of times already. Answers to these questions will appear obvious to some, less so to others. We don’t even know if the Neo will be as successful as most people predict. But I’m sure the Neo’s success is the one thing that raises the fewest questions. Note: App Store rankings vary by region (I think). My observations relate to the French store. ^ Yeah, sorry in advance, I never know how to write the plural of MacBooks, so in this post I will use the “MacBooks Neo” form. ^ Note: App Store rankings vary by region (I think). My observations relate to the French store. ^ Yeah, sorry in advance, I never know how to write the plural of MacBooks, so in this post I will use the “MacBooks Neo” form. ^

Gaming Hardware Swift

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The Jolly Teapot 4 months ago

February 2026 blend of links

Some links don’t call for a full blog post, but sometimes I still want to share the good stuff I encounter on the web. World’s largest spider web – Be warned — especially if spiders make you uncomfortable — because you won’t be able to forget this video if you decide to watch it. You’ll learn something, sure, but you may end up having nightmares. LLMs and Software Development Roundup (Michael Tsai) – Fascinating collection of thoughts and reactions (as always with Michael Tsai’s blog) on how A.I. can be as useful as frustrating. Something tells me that this post, updated regularly, will age like good wine. Pure Blog – Kev has built his own CMS for his blog, and made it a brilliant tool available to everyone. If I were starting a blog today, this is the CMS I would use, as it’s just about pitch perfect as to what is needed for a proper blog. If you are reading this and don’t have a blog of your own yet, you know what to do. News Tower – “ Step into the bustling world of 1930s New York as an ambitious publisher. In News Tower, you’ll manage a growing newsroom during the Great Depression, Prohibition, and beyond. Send your reporters across the globe chasing breaking stories, hard-hitting news or scandalous gossip, it’s up to you. But beware: the mafia, the mayor, and other factions are ready to sway your headlines for their gain. ” (via Nieman Journalism Lab ) Life before social media – Precious perspective from Loren in this post, with which it’s difficult to not agree wholeheartedly. I don’t think I have lost much of my beloved online experience when I deleted my social media accounts: Facebook, then Instagram, then Twitter , and finally LinkedIn. I may miss the occasional “moment” and the ability to answer directly to posts, but I still follow most of my favourite accounts via RSS. I still catch myself doomscrolling from time to time, but nothing I can’t escape. Only using an RSS reader on my Mac also helps. Pandoc in the browser – The power of Pandoc without the hassle of having to operate it via the Terminal. Bookmarked. Shared. Praised. (via Rodrigo Ghedin ) AI Chatbot That Only Responds ‘Huh’ Valued At $200 Billion – “ … if you don’t incorporate HmmAI into your company’s workflow right now, you’re going to be left behind. ” Ferrari Luce – I’m not sure if I’m a big fan of the whole aluminium and glass finish for the inside of a car; I’d think that warmer materials like carbon fibre, leather, or even wood would feel better, but I do love the retro and functional layout of commands. This Jony Ive guy looks like an adequate designer, doesn’t he? The webpage itself is very well-made too, and not something I would have expected from a car company like Ferrari. São Paulo names new law after dog that stayed by owner’s grave for 10 years – “ Bob’s former owner died in 2011. After her burial, the brown long-haired mixed-breed dog reportedly refused to leave her side at a cemetery in Taboão da Serra […] Relatives are said to have tried several times to take the dog away, but he always returned and was eventually adopted by cemetery staff. ” Peter Falk and Lee Grant in The Prisoner of Second Avenue, 1971 – One of my grandmothers was in love with Peter Falk, and I must have inherited these genes from her. This picture must be framed somewhere in my flat. (via Daniel Benneworth-Gray ) More “Blend of links” posts

Journalism AI

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The Jolly Teapot 5 months ago

Is the Mac having a BMW’s Neue Klasse moment?

In the last couple of months, we have seen plenty of rants , reports, analysis , and other exposés about the state of Apple software, whether it is about their bad icon design , bad icon implementation , neglect , more neglect , and plain worrisome trends . The most damning thing of all? All of these complaints are valid at the same time, and, coming from Mac enthusiasts and connoisseurs, they carry a lot of weight. This collective reaction is strong because Apple is not a brand usually associated with poor quality, odd design choices, or a lack of attention to detail. It is particularly notable on the Mac, arguably the most prominent Apple software product when it comes to enthusiasm about the brand and what they stand for. Today, some of the Apple observers and critics are almost in shock of how fast things went bad. There were warning signs before, but the core foundations of what makes the Mac a great computing platform didn’t seem threatened. The problems seemed limited to a few bugs and side apps that were quickly filed under mishaps , and the growing popularity of non-native apps that ignore Mac conventions . Now, even MacOS itself is plagued with symptoms of the “unrefined” disease. Is MacOS becoming another Windows? A couple of years ago, circa 2021, I was using a Windows computer for work. It was fine. Not great, not bad, it was just OK. Most of the tools I have to use at work live in the browser, and I managed to find peace with the few apps I was using, most of them Electron-based, like Obsidian. When I eventually got an M1 MacBook Air as a replacement, it was a breath of fresh air. Not because I’m a Mac user since 2006, but because the Mac is not fine or just OK: it’s great. Mac apps, the “real” Mac apps, are indeed very good. They feel part of the system, whereas on Windows it’s hard to distinguish between a web-wrapped app and a native app. They all feel the same. Ty Bolt said it best writing about Panic’s Nova (emphasis mine): Nova is one of the best pieces of software I’ve ever used. It’s refined and polished and there’s no equivalent on Linux and Windows. It has its own personality, but also feels like an extension of the operating system. Which is a hallmark of a great Mac app. Folks in the community call them Mac-assed Mac apps. These apps are what make MacOS really great. The best apps I have used are all Mac apps. For me, this quote is what the Mac is all about. But with all the current issues documented on MacOS Tahoe, it is not as easy to look down on Windows as it once was. For users like me, who appreciate a certain level of precision and craftsmanship in software and love Apple because of that — especially the Mac — this trend is worrisome. We know that Apple is not going away, but the Apple we love seems distracted. We worry that the Mac won’t ever feel like the Mac we love today again. We worry that our habits, our taste, and our commitments to a platform will become pointless and dépassés . We worry because there is not a proper alternative to the Mac environment. Users with a different set of tastes, values, and habits, users who may use a Mac for their best-in-class chips, but not for its software, won't understand. Some users who already use and love Linux or Windows (and easily switch between the two), for their set of tastes, values, and habits, won't understand. Users who use a Mac just to live inside a Chrome/Electron landscape of apps won't understand. This period of neglect may be over soon. It may go on for another few years. It may also be all downhill from here. We just don't know. We have to wait, we have to hope, and we have to continue pointing out what feels off about the platform we love. The most cynical will point to the obvious, saying that Mac enthusiasts are not where the money is these days for Apple. This would explain a lot, and it's very tempting to think that way. But I thought of something that may sound like wishful thinking: What if Apple is having its own BMW-Neue-Klasse moment? For BMW, Neue Klasse is the name of their brand reset, their upcoming generation of cars, from the design language to the production platform to the actual vehicle models. It was announced a few years ago, in the midst of the transition to the electric-first era. For BMW, this meant reaffirming the brand, getting back to its roots , and embracing what makes BMW a well-loved and praised car manufacturer. This kind of transition takes a lot of time, effort, and money. Between the announcement and today, brand enthusiasts and critics have perceived a regression in quality and finish , and have felt that the brand has lost touch with its premium foundations and with what makes them love it in the first place. Optimists and apologists will explain this by saying that BMW has put all their best talents and resources towards the Neue Klasse. They will tell you that the current line of models and its related perceived-quality issues are temporary while they reallocated some of their best teams , a necessary low to set things anew, with the upcoming generation of vehicles. As far as I can understand, the reasoning is that BMW knew it had enough brand capital to absorb a few awkward design cycles and perceived drops in interior quality. They surfed on their existing reputation while spending a lot of resources on a platform reset, hoping for a smooth transition. It may hurt them a little , but they considered it a small price to pay to be able to embrace this new era confidently, and regain what was lost. I want to imagine that the same thing is happening at Apple. What if the last couple of years were a transition for Apple? Unlike BMW, Apple would not share their own Neue Klasse vision: they would just unveil it when it’s ready and keep it a secret until then. Meanwhile, their best engineers, designers, and product people are reassigned and working hard on a new generation of MacOS, something that is a big step forward. Maybe Apple thinks that, for the current lineup, helped by the greatest hardware the Mac ever had, the limited resources and ongoing problems are an acceptable compromise, for now. * 1 Mark Gurman would probably have shared the scoop if that were what was really happening, but I’ll keep hoping this “Mac reset” is actually happening and good (and not a failed renaissance). After all, the Neue Klasse era could end up being a disaster, and the worrying signs we’re seeing are actually just the beginning of the end. For Apple, if we are indeed witnessing the first signs of a company that has lost its touch, if we are already at a point of no return when it comes to MacOS quality, the potential downfall won’t be nearly as consequential as it could be for BMW. Apple could lose money for decades and still be one of the richest companies in the world. Without the Mac (just 6% of revenue ), Apple would post similar financial reports for years to come. * 2 For the Mac enthusiasts like myself, there are only three upcoming scenarios in my mind right now. One, the Mac we love returns, either in its current form or as a “new class” of Mac (MacOS XX?) and all of this will just be a bad memory. Two, the Mac keeps on getting worse and worse to the point of driving long-time users away, and it ends up getting replaced with yet another version of iOS on MacBooks. Three, all operating systems end up being background tasks in the A.I. era anyway , and Apple knows this and doesn’t bother anymore. This is maybe what happened back in the butterfly keyboard era: Apple were working on the Apple-silicon Macs, and focused most of their resources towards that, hence the Mac computers of that era being underserved. I am clearly speculating, but you get my point. ^ I wonder for what part of these 6% the Mac enthusiasts are responsible for. Maybe 5%? 10%? I’m pretty sure most of the Mac revenue comes from users who won’t pay attention to all of this. ^ This is maybe what happened back in the butterfly keyboard era: Apple were working on the Apple-silicon Macs, and focused most of their resources towards that, hence the Mac computers of that era being underserved. I am clearly speculating, but you get my point. ^ I wonder for what part of these 6% the Mac enthusiasts are responsible for. Maybe 5%? 10%? I’m pretty sure most of the Mac revenue comes from users who won’t pay attention to all of this. ^

Business Design

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The Jolly Teapot 5 months ago

Tempted to stick with my old Mac a bit longer

My latest post mentioned how perfect my current setup seems to be . Today, a week or two later, I must admit, this post holds up pretty well. I was expecting the post (and therefore the setup) to be updated drastically the minute I published it, as it usually goes , and yet, nothing of substance has changed since. In this post, I listed my dear old MacBook Air from early 2020, rocking an Intel chip, as the weakest part of that setup, the one thing that was the most likely to get replaced. It turns out that I’m now not so sure about that: My Mac feels fine. Sure, it’s not fast, the battery lasts around 40 minutes on a charge, and I can feel it’s struggling and getting warm when watching videos or visiting “heavy” websites. I remain cautious and very conservative with what I do with it, but for an almost six-year-old computer, it’s surprisingly usable. Somehow, I like that my Mac is old, slow, and limited. This constraint forces me to stay vigilant, to keep things as simple, native, light, minimal, and optimised as possible. When the fan activates, I know something’s wrong. I’m calling this the “whoosh notification.” When my laptop starts to make a vacuum cleaner noise, this is the signal to close the guilty Safari tab (or to turn off JavaScript ), or to get rid of the app causing the trouble, eliminating it from a potential consideration. Maybe I have to thank this very limitation for finally achieving this “perfect” setup. Without it, I’d keep experimenting, tweaking my setup further and further, and potentially even adopting apps that are not indeed that efficient or completely optimised. With a modern Mac, let’s say an M4 MacBook Air, I’m afraid I wouldn’t be able to tell the difference. I wouldn’t be able to detect the inefficiencies and appreciate the efficiencies as easily. For instance, occasionally, I’m eager to try Orion Browser , as it ticks almost all the boxes for me. But every time I play with it, my computer gives me the signal. When the fan starts to blow seemingly out of nowhere, I don’t investigate further, and I become very much aware that I have to stick to Safari. Another example: every time Eleventy builds the HTML for this site, I love seeing that it sometimes takes less than one second . With an M4 MacBook Air, such a feat would be unremarkable. If I use yet another Lotus Elise analogy , my computer and setup rely on the chip equivalent of the simple four-cylinder Toyota engine , the one that was fitted in the latest generations of the car. These engines were finely tuned, decently powerful, but they couldn’t afford to deal with extra weight if they wanted to provide some sort of race car performance. Race cars from other brands — and most sports cars currently on sales — on the other hand, mounted with engines two, three, or four times more powerful, aren’t optimised or even built the same way: they can handle to be fitted into bigger cars, they can support the extra weight of ventilated seats, more speakers, and more. When these manufacturers feel their cars can be a bit more fun to drive, they simply add more power ; they don’t really bother fine-tuning every part for maximum efficiency because with such power, it’s rather unnecessary. This is why, as I write this in January 2026, I’m more tempted than ever to enjoy my Mac — and lean setup — one more year. Also, besides the much, much faster chip, the new MacBook Air is basically the same as mine. It has the same keyboard , the same screen, the same maximum brightness, the same form factor, and a slightly different design. The chip is the main star in these new models; it’s such a leap forward from mine that I’m not even sure I’d notice the other improvements, like faster memory and faster Wi-Fi. Icing on the cake, sticking to my current Mac also means being unable to upgrade to Tahoe . I use “MacOS 26” on my work computer, and Tahoe’s Safari, a prime example among many others, is surely one of the worst versions ever of the browser. * 1 I mean, look at this screenshot and try to figure out at first glance which tab is currently active. And don’t get me started on the rounded corners. * 2 In March, Apple will probably release a new generation of MacBooks Air, and, depending on what else will be new besides the M5 chip, I may change my mind. But as I said, and as I am typing these lines in a perfectly capable laptop running Sequoia, with a confident and efficient setup, I’m more tempted than ever to keep this little guy around a bit longer. Another outcome that is looking more and more likely due to the current international shit show : I may play it safe and buy a current M4 MacBook Air at a 150 euro discount on the 31st of January, the day before some potential tariffs may be added on, or not. I can also get 150 euros for trading this one in, which would make the purchase a lot more affordable than the newer model, especially if new tariffs on US products sare introduced. Very difficult to predict the future one week from now in that regard, as a lot of things have happened this week. Either way, this Intel Core i5 chip is more resilient than I expected: one just has to handle it with care. The worst ever being — quite obviously — the very first Windows version circa 2005, that would not even launch: I think Apple released the 1.0.1 update the next day or so, fixing the problem. ^ When customising the toolbar, the flexible space placeholders in particular look odd, as if the design is unfinished, unrefined. This is something I would expect on Windows, not MacOS. ^ The worst ever being — quite obviously — the very first Windows version circa 2005, that would not even launch: I think Apple released the 1.0.1 update the next day or so, fixing the problem. ^ When customising the toolbar, the flexible space placeholders in particular look odd, as if the design is unfinished, unrefined. This is something I would expect on Windows, not MacOS. ^

JavaScript HTML Hardware

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The Jolly Teapot 5 months ago

January 2026 blend of links

Some links don’t call for a full blog post, but sometimes I still want to share some of the good stuff I encounter on the web. Our Algorithmic Grey-Beige World – Excellent column from Om Malik, on how algorithms, among other things, accelerated and reinforced our tendencies for conformity and blandness; so good in fact that I must have read it several times already. robinrendle.com – Speaking of conformity and blandness, you definitely will not find those in the remarkable new design of Robin Rendle’s blog: beautifully made, delightful to explore. Rendle wrote a short post about the new version. WikiFlix – A free streaming service for movies in the public domain. The video player doesn’t always seem to work, but for the collection of movies alone it is a worthy bookmark. (via Kottke ) Yoink – I’ve mentioned Yoink a few days ago , and I ended up buying a licence. This little utility makes so much sense on the Mac that I don’t understand why it hasn’t already been copied or sherlocked by Apple. What I like the most about this app is that it’s only there when you need it: this is a rare quality in software. Ricoh GR IV Monochrome – I want this. I truly want this. My Ricoh GRIIIx is great and all, but I want this, so much. […looks at the price…] Well, Actually my GRIIIx is excellent, I don’t need this at all. Still, since it costs less than a third of a monochrome Leica camera , it’s just about a bargain, isn’t it? The Case for Blogging in the Ruins – “ Social media removed the friction of publishing, and in doing so removed the selection pressure that separated signal from noise. We "democratized" the ability to publish (good?) while simultaneously destroying the conditions that made publishing meaningful (bad!) ” Venn Diagram Creator – How on Earth is this bookmark not included by default on every web browser? Thoughts and Observations Regarding Apple Creator Studio – “ Whatever you think of this new 2026 icon for Pages, you can’t seriously argue that it’s much worse — or really all that different — from the previous one. But go back in time and each previous Pages icon had more detail and looked cooler. And then you get back to the original Pages icon and that one clearly belongs in the App Icon Hall of Fame. ” I remember a time when the sole purpose I could find of the Finder “Cover flow” view option was to marvel at the Apple apps icons (I think my favourite was Contacts ). Textures, details; these icons were truly delightful, and I was amazed at how good they looked in such a zoomed-in view. Measured A.I. (Gina Trapani) – “ Every time a chatbot tells me ‘That’s a great question!’ and ‘Now you’re thinking!’ I cringe. Your AI chatbot might as well be a fawning junior intern trying desperately to impress you. ” I feel the same way with the almost systematic answer I get in the lines of: “ Ah! That’s the classic dilemma …” or “ This is a very common question …” Is this a trick to make me feel better? I know I could configure bots to never answer like that, but most of the time I use these tools logged out. How Markdown took over the world – Great look at the origins of Markdown and at the context of its success, by Anil Dash. Also, I learned the word “curmudgeonly” from this. Previous blend of links editions

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The Jolly Teapot 6 months ago

The frustration of a perfect setup

No matter how I look at the list of apps I currently use , whether first-party or third-party, I can’t find anything to change, not a program to replace, not a service to swap for another. I think I am happy with my setup. It feels strange to admit, but somehow, I can’t quite believe it; I must be missing something, something surely can be tweaked. What happens after peak setup? This frustration comes from the fact that looking at new apps, digging into settings, trying new online services, working on how each of these things operates with the others, is one of my favourite hobbies. I mean, a quick glance at the archive of this site will tell you that, not only do I love writing about apps and digital tools, but I love playing with their configurations; I’m like a kid with Lego bricks, building things, taking them apart, and building them again, with a huge smile, in a slightly different and improved way. Now that my application setup appears to be “final”, it feels as though all my toys and Lego bricks are neatly stored away in their respective drawers, sorted by colour, by type, and by size. It’s perfect, and seeing my beautiful collection all nice and tidy like that is a very satisfying sensation, except I’m looking at it seated on the empty floor of my childhood bedroom, alone and bored. What is there to do when nothing needs to be improved? I recently wrote about my HTML and CSS “explorations” with this blog. Satisfied with the results, I think this job is done. The same goes for how Eleventy works on my machine: everything has been optimised , refined, future-proofed (especially Node.js ): nothing to see here! Even the hosting is something I’m very happy with. My only gripe with xmit is that there is no possibility for me to pay for it. The other apps on my Mac — the ones that don’t live in the Terminal like Eleventy, Node.js & npm, and xmit — are also perfect at what they do, and I can’t think of anything better to explore, let alone to use. If this is not your first visit, you already know how I feel about BBEdit . Well, I feel just about the same about NetNewsWire , which is as close to perfection an app can get as far as I’m concerned. It feels part of the OS (even more so than current system apps if I’m being honest), it is stable, it is simple to use, and it runs smoothly on my soon-to-be six-year-old MacBook Air. Being happy with Safari is by far the strongest proof that my setup is final. Using StopTheScript to block JavaScript on most media sites, along with the performance and privacy benefits of using a DNS resolver like Quad9 , has proven to be an efficient way to keep Safari light and responsive, even if my web experience is getting a little more interrupted than I would like, due to all the crap websites throw at first-time visitors these days. Yesterday, I had a look at apps like Yoink , Karabiner Elements , Hazel , and also got a taste of Mullvad Browser , and News Explorer . Some of these apps were tried purely out of curiosity, to see if they would fit right in my “workflow”, others were basically reassurance that my current system and choices were the best I could have made. * 1 Among all the parties involved in this setup, the obvious candidate for a replacement is my Intel-powered MacBook Air. Yet, this old computer is currently in great shape: the recent factory-settings reset I had to do surely helped. But its best feature is not being able to run MacOS Tahoe: stuck to MacOS Sequoia, it’s protecting me from Liquid Glass on the Mac and the “icons in menus everywhere” experience. My personal laptop is a breath of fresh air after spending hours on my work computer running Tahoe. * 2 So, what will be able to make that itch go away? When nothing is broken, don’t fix it, as they say. But surely, there must be something that I’m missing, surely there is a program, somewhere, that would delight me, that would put a smile on my face. I want a new box of Lego bricks, I want to empty my drawers on the floor and see if I can do better. In case you’re wondering, all of these apps are excellent, but not enough to replace what I already use, or to justify adding a new item to my list. For example, Mullvad Browser, like Firefox, isn’t scriptable; News Explorer has more features than NetNewsWire, but is not as polished; Yoink looks incredibly useful, but I prefer my own ways for now, &c. ^ Its replacement will have to wait until the new generation comes out, probably in March; then I can decide on whether I want to stick to the Air family, keep mine a bit longer, or upgrade for a far nicer screen and go with the Pro. ^ In case you’re wondering, all of these apps are excellent, but not enough to replace what I already use, or to justify adding a new item to my list. For example, Mullvad Browser, like Firefox, isn’t scriptable; News Explorer has more features than NetNewsWire, but is not as polished; Yoink looks incredibly useful, but I prefer my own ways for now, &c. ^ Its replacement will have to wait until the new generation comes out, probably in March; then I can decide on whether I want to stick to the Air family, keep mine a bit longer, or upgrade for a far nicer screen and go with the Pro. ^

JavaScript Programming Web Development HTML CSS

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