Sooo… I did a thing. I couldn’t help but be slightly dissatisfied by the clarity of my Studio Display XDR’s nano-texture display. It just made everything look a little less than Retina-quality. And for this price, I don’t want to have lingering regrets each time I use it.

So, I ordered a second non-nano-texture version, banking on Apple’s generous return policy.

It came in today. I set it up about 30 minutes ago. I put the two displays side by side and… it’s no question. The nano-texture is going back.

Showing the same content on each display, at the same brightness level, I can absolutely see the fuzziness introduced by the “matte” display.

It’s not that nano-texture is all bad. I love how it looks when the display is dark — there are zero reflections.¹ But the point is to enjoy it while the display is on. Without nano-texture, everything is as crisp as I had hoped. I tend to lean toward the display when I’m concentrating, and even close up, the display is razor sharp.

I technically have until April 9th to send back the nano-texture XDR, but, honestly, I think I’m going to package it up tonight.

Well… maybe tomorrow. I might as well enjoy having 10k pixels of display at my disposal while I can.

A note on Apple’s return period

If I hold onto the original display until the last day that I can send it back, I will have had it for 24 days. That’s a full 10 extra days beyond the stated 14-day return period. It’s possible that I could have squeezed in even a few more days by initiating the return today, the 14th day after it was delivered, instead of the 11th.

With that in mind, one could get nearly a month of use for testing and comparison of Apple’s products, with the ability to return it (free shipping both ways) for a full refund. That’s serious commitment to customer satisfaction, and one area where Apple’s standards haven’t slipped.

To boot, by paying with Apple Card’s Monthly Installments (which allow you to pay for an item over 12 months with 0% interest), I’ve only been charged $287.92 for the nano-texture display, and $263.92 for the regular one. I think that was just the taxes for each one.

To be sure, it’s a privileged position I’m in to be able to do these shenanigans, but there’s a lot to be said for how easy Apple has made it to purchase even it’s most expensive products with very little risk.

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1. If I were in an environment with light sources behind me, my decision might be very different. I think there’s definitely a place for this non-reflective display — it’s just not in my home office.↩︎

Reviews

A weekly list of interesting things I found on the internet, posted on Sundays. Sometimes themed, often not.

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1️⃣ iWeb lives! Sort of. If you have an old Mac. But Corbin Davenport made an iWeb website just a few months ago and, honestly, it looks pretty awesome. [🔗 iweb.corbin.io]

2️⃣ Manton Reece shared a letter that his mother wrote to her mother many years ago while she (and Manton) lived in Greece. A lovely snapshot in time. [🔗 manton.org]

3️⃣ Alpinesavvy shared a story about drinking water that has me thinking about the counterproductive choices I make. [🔗 alpinesavvy.com]

4️⃣ The first use of “Wendy” as a first name was in Peter Pan. We still don’t know what it was short for! [🔗 wikipedia.org]

5️⃣ Rands did the work and made incredible data tables with all the good charging/charger brick information for modern Apple devices. [🔗 randsinrepose.com]

6️⃣ Todd Vaziri shows why having only two dots instead of three to represent outs in a baseball score graphic is just wrong. Looking at you, Netflix. [🦣 mastodon.social]

7️⃣ The Midleton Mule was a featured drink at our St. Patrick’s Day meal and I can’t stop thinking about it. It was so fresh and delightful. Gonna have to make it at home! [🔗 gelsons.com]

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🔗 Take a Chance

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Thanks for reading 7 Things. If you enjoyed these links or have something neat to share, please let me know. And remember that you can get more links to internet nuggets that I’m finding every day by following me @jarrod on the social web.

7 Things

Apple published this video to their Support channel on YouTube yesterday, and it motivated me to get this off my chest:

Uninstalling apps on macOS is not as easy as it should be.

Yes, I know, I know that you can just drag an app to the trash and technically it’s gone. That’s what Apple recommends doing in its video. But then why do are apps like Raycast, CleanMyMac, and AppCleaner able to find leftover files scattered around your system by the deleted app? Maybe it’s just the completionist in me, but I don’t want those files left behind!

One thing — the only thing? — I liked about Launchpad was that it made it super obvious how to uninstall (Mac App Store) apps.¹ Just like on your iPad/iPhone, you could click and hold on the app’s icon to send it into “jiggle mode” and then click the ‘X’ would remove it. I could be confident that all the app’s associated bits and bobs would be removed from my system.

But that changed with Tahoe. While Spotlight got a huge boost in capability as a whole with clipboard history and actions, it also subsumed Launchpad’s role as the main, well, launcher for apps. But there are no affordances in Spotlight for removing apps like Launchpad had.

AppCleaner was my go-to tool back in the day, but now I use Raycast to get the job done with confidence. Raycast’s implementation could offer some inspiration for Apple. After searching for an app within Raycast, a simple ⌘K shortcut reveals a host of actions that can be taken on the app. You can open an app, reveal it in the Finder, quit it, and, yes, uninstall it — among other things.

Apple could follow this model and provide an ‘Uninstall App’ action to take within Spotlight.

Spotlight’s interface, seeing as it replaced Launchpad, should offer the same capability for removing apps. And it should be as thorough as on an iPhone or iPad.

P.S. I also occasionally use Raycast to quit apps that stubbornly have no icon in the Dock or menu bar and therefore make it tricky quit completely.

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1. Apps installed outside of the Mac App Store would not display the ‘X’ to remove it. You had to do it the “old fashioned” way of dragging the app to the trash and then hunt down its system files.↩︎

Tips Apps

The Mac Pro is no longer a product in Apple’s lineup.

For a computer that has caused so much consternation over the years, its story can be told very succinctly. Stephen Hackett captured it all in six sentences:

The Mac Pro was introduced way back in 2006 as a replacement for the outgoing Power Mac G5. It had a good few years, then languished until the 2013 model was announced.

That machine was a dud, and it languished until the 2019 model was announced.

It came out in December 2019, which was less than a year before Apple silicon was announced and the M1 shipped.

The Mac Pro got one last update in June 2023, when Apple dropped the Intel version for one with an M2 Ultra inside. It’s been languishing again ever since.

(Or, for the long version, read this retrospective by Joe Rossignol on MacRumors.)

Definitely sad to see the Mac Pro, and its amazingly-still-modern-looking-even-seven-years-later chassis head to the farm upstate. I’d held out hope for a new screamer of a machine with an ‘Extreme’ M-series chip, but alas.

It seems that Apple was waiting for permission from John Siracusa, the world’s preeminent Mac Pro believer, to kill the product. Here he is in the latest episode of the Accidental Tech Podcast, recorded just last night:

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Some Very Good Tweets™

@marcoarment @siracusa if you sell it, I will buy it and wear it to WWDC

@marcoarment @siracusa The Mac Pro dies twice: first, when Apple discontinues it, second, when its name is spoken by John for the last time.

Exciting that both “Believe” shirts were resolved this month.

✅ Upgrade AirPods Max Believe
☠️ ATP Mac Pro Believe

There’s something poetic about the Mac Pro being discontinued as the MacBook Neo takes off like a rocket.

Just finished up a project that I’ve been meaning to get to for a year: bringing ADK Climb Club to the open web.

We’ve had a landing page on Micro.blog for a while, but all the info about our meetups was going out via Instagram and WhatsApp. But not everyone wants to use those apps, and I heard from them! So, I buckled down and imported all the old posts, and hooked up my auto-crossposter.

Now, everything that we post to Instagram shows up on our website as a native, web-friendly blog posts. And I enabled email subscriptions (free, thanks to Micro.blog!), so folks can get an email each time that we share information about a meetup.

Although Instagram is still our “primary” platform — that’s where our biggest audience is and where we pick up new members — I feel much better about the club being more accessible on the open web, and that people can stay in the loop with posts pushed out to them without having to sign up for a Meta app.

If you’re a climber (or are climbing curious) and near Lake Placid, NY on a Wednesday night, you should come check us out!

Blogging Climbing

A weekly list of interesting things I found on the internet, posted on Sundays. Sometimes themed, often not.

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1️⃣ That screamy sound you hear when peeling tape? It’s a ‘sonic whisper’ from tearing at twice the speed of sound! [🔗 sciencealert.com]

2️⃣ Craig Mod built the accounting software of his dreams, fitting his exact international needs, and which can be adapted with Claude Code as needed. Sounds amazing. [🔗 craigmod.com]

3️⃣ Chris Coyer argues that web forms should always automatically email you a copy of your submission. I agree, though I wouldn’t be opposed to it being optional, as long as the default is for the copy to be sent. [🔗 email-is-good.com]

4️⃣ Terry Godier’s essay about how all the objects in our our lives have steadily stolen more of our attention, and made us feel guilty about it is excellent As is it’s web design. You gotta read this one in its original form. [🔗 terrygodier.com]

5️⃣ Stephen Hackett (via James Thomson) shared some incredible 5K wallpapers featuring Lil Finder Guy. I love how the Lil Guy’s taken the Mac community by storm. [🔗 512pixels.net]

6️⃣ I thought tweet from Caleb Sexton was a joke about Kagi having ‘LinkedIn Speak’ as a language that you could translate into. It’s not a joke. It’s real. [🦣 mastodon.social]

7️⃣ D. Griffin Jones did the thing and put an episode of the Connected podcast onto a floppy disk. Incredible commitment to the bit! [🦣 tech.lgbt]

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🔗 Take a Chance

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Thanks for reading 7 Things. If you enjoyed these links or have something neat to share, please let me know. And remember that you can get more links to internet nuggets that I’m finding every day by following me @jarrod on the social web.

7 Things

The Verge’s headline sums up Mark Gurman’s latest report on Apple’s folding phone quite succinctly: ‘iPhone Fold rumor: iPad-like multitasking, but no iPad apps and no Face ID’

Though the updated layout could make multitasking easier, Gurman reports that the folding iPhone won’t run existing iPad apps. Still, Apple is reportedly trying to take advantage of the phone’s larger screen real estate by updating its “core” apps with a sidebar on the left side of the screen. It will also give developers the ability to make the iPhone versions of their apps more iPad-like, according to Gurman.

Hmph. There’s more.

Instead of using Face ID, Apple’s foldable could integrate Touch ID into the device’s side button, as the “front panel is too thin to accommodate the Face ID sensor array,” Gurman reports. That means in place of the pill-shaped housing for the front-facing camera and Face ID, Apple will reportedly add a small-hole punch camera instead. Gurman has previously reported that the foldable could look like two iPhone Airs stuck together.

A few things are running through my mind reading this report.

First, I’m putting my money behind it being called ‘iPhone Duo’. It would really tickle me for Apple to put out a ‘Duo’ and a ‘Neo’ — two Surface product names that Microsoft used and which flopped and was never released, respectively.

Second, this lack of Face ID business really puts a wrench in my plans. I’ve been pretty psyched about replacing my iPhone and my iPad mini with an iPhone Duo. As much as I love my 17 Pro, it’s too big and I think the double-duty device would really work for me. But I don’t think I want to go without Face ID. My iPad mini only has Touch ID in the power button and I’ve never enjoyed that unlocking method. Honestly, it was better in the Home Button.

Third, I haven’t really kept up with the folding iPhone’s rumored specs. I presume each half is going to be thinner than the both iPhone Air and the iPad Pro (Apple’s record-holding thinnest device) since both of those feature Face ID.

Fourth, leave it to Apple to not do the obvious thing and just let the thing run iPad apps. Why make developers go through designing another layout for their iOS apps if the iPadOS versions are right there? We’ll see how the software situation shakes out.

I’ll be pretty disappointed if this thing doesn’t come with Face ID. It’s probably a deal-breaker, even though I’d want to purchase it to show Apple the foldable is a form factor worth pursuing. There’s always the chance they’ll cancel the whole thing if the first one doesn’t sell well. On the other hand, they did just fix the iPhone 16e’s most glaring omission — MagSafe — year-over-year with the 17e. There’s hope.

A weekly list of interesting things I found on the internet, posted on Sundays. Sometimes themed, often not.

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1️⃣ Jose Munoz has a good tip for not getting sucked into doom-scrolling apps by Siri Suggestions in Search and the App Library: simply hide them from those areas. [🔗 josemunozmatos.com]

2️⃣ I love a good stats-based pitch. Herman provides one for the benefits of morning exercise. [🔗 herman.bearblog.dev]

3️⃣ Jason Fried explains a clever design detail about the power reserve indicator on a mechanical watch. [🔗 world.hey.com]

4️⃣ I found myself nodding along to Chris Coyier’s list of words you should probably avoid using in your writing. [🔗 css-tricks.com]

5️⃣ I spent a surprising amount of time recently perusing the depths of Louie Mantia’s portfolio and blog after reading his People & Blogs interview. He’s worked on so many cool things, lots of which have touched my life. [🔗 lmnt.me]

6️⃣ Robert Birming made me feel a little better about my less-than-tidy house. [🔗 robertbirming.com]

7️⃣ I’m not going to buy it, but I’m certainly intrigued by this tiny eReader that attaches via MagSafe onto the back of your phone. I love my Kobo, but it so often gets left behind. This would be a remedy. [🔗 theverge.com]

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🔗 Take a Chance

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Thanks for reading 7 Things. If you enjoyed these links or have something neat to share, please let me know. And remember that you can get more links to internet nuggets that I’m finding every day by following me @jarrod on the social web.

7 Things

Ricky Mondello, from the Apple Passwords team, shared a crucial hidden feature for saving arbitrary data in their app:

[I]f anyone ever wants to save some non-password data in Passwords, but is annoyed by having to put a password in and see a useless “Password” row, use a password of “-”. Passwords will omit the password from AutoFill and hide the “Password” row from the detail view.

This might be the final piece of the puzzle to help me move away from 1Password… Except it doesn’t seem to work for me on iOS 26.2. I’ll keep checking as new versions are released.

Apps

Note: I drafted this back on December 4th, but never got around to posting it.

Just this morning, I was thinking to myself, “I wonder what Lisa Jackson thinks about how cozy Tim Cook has gotten with the Trump administration?” Just a few hours later, we have a clue: she’s retiring.

I don’t know that they’re related, but I think it’s telling that Jackson isn’t sticking it out to see the Apple 2030 initiative through, which she has championed since its 2020 introduction. With no direct replacement for her role in orchestrating the company’s environment and social strategies, I’m curious how they will progress.

Related, I listened back to John Gruber’s 2017 interview of Jackson on The Talk Show. It was still a delight these many years later. I loved her straight-shooting style. I’ll miss her from Apple’s leadership team.