Bluesky

Below is the transcript of a conversation that took place at home yesterday. My wife noticed that I was on my laptop early in the morning, which is unusual for me. So she made a decision she’d soon regret: asking me what I was up to.

Katherine: What are you doing?
Me: Signing up for a website.
Her: Which one?
Me: It’s called Bluesky. It’s like Twitter.
Her: But… you just…
Me: *sighs* I know.

I’m not sure how many text-based social media networks I have space for in my life, but I’m giving Bluesky a try because it’s where a lot of people I want to interact with are going. That’s the same reason I joined Mastodon nearly two years ago and Threads after that. I want to hang out with cool people online, and since Twitter lost its place as the go-to for that sort of thing, I’ve committed to at least trying to be where everyone else is.

The Bluesky interface is the most familiar I’ve seen from a post-Twitter social network. The onboarding was painless and almost instant, and I was even able to connect my domain name without any trouble. It’s been a fun place to hang out the past 24 hours, as the trendy social networks always are. Only time will tell how big a part of my online life the service will remain, though.

Personally, I’m rooting for ActivityPub to win out as the social media standard going forward. I love the idea of only needing one account to interact with people across services. Bluesky’s popularity and its alternative protocol adds a wrinkle to that fantasy, but maybe one day, the two will at least be able to communicate with one another.

In the meantime, I’ll be splitting my time between all of these services and looking out for cool people to hang out with on each. If you’re on Bluesky, I’d love to connect. You know what they say: the sky is always bluer on the other side.

Ticci Tabs

A couple of months ago, Jonathan Ruiz released a new app called Ticci Tabs that I’ve really been enjoying. Why did it take me so long to write about it? Great question. Let’s just say I was waiting to publish this in honor of the first birthday of Jonathan’s other app Bridges, shall we?

My tardiness aside, Ticci Tabs is a great tool for saving websites that you visit frequently. Instead of bookmarking a link in a browser where it might get lost or you might get distracted, you can save it in Ticci Tabs to quickly access it anytime. I’m using it as a quick way to get to a bunch of pages I open often, like Wordle, my Walmart orders page, and Netflix’s network speed test.

I’ve been following the app’s development from its origin as a rapid response to Federico’s request on the Connected podcast to its maturation into a full-fledged product and beyond. It includes some really nice touches like support for sign-in links sent via email, an optional retro UI, Shortcuts actions, and alternative app icons. And it’s gotten some major new additions in its short life, including the ability to organize links with tags and support for iOS 18’s system-wide controls.

From its laser-focused purpose to its development story to its continued growth, I love everything about Ticci Tabs, and I use it every day. It’s a free app with very straightforward functionality that can fit a lot of different use cases, so I recommend trying it out if you haven’t yet.

Watch History Journal 2.1

Today, I’m releasing version 2.1 of Watch History Journal, my shortcut for adding the shows and films you watch to your favorite journaling app in the style of Apple’s journaling suggestions. Here’s the full list of new features:

• Improved Journal app integration on iPhone. Watch History Journal creates new entries directly in the Journal app on iPhone using the app’s new Shortcuts actions introduced in iOS 18. (On other devices, the Journal integration remains unchanged, generating images and copied text that you can import into the app manually.)
• A new advanced option: This Week's History. This option allows you to create a journal entry reflecting your watch history over the past week. (Thanks to Miles Jefford for coming up with this idea.)
• A bug fix for Text Lists. A blank line will no longer appear at the beginning of Text List entries without a title.

When Watch History Journal 2 came out in early June, I thought it might be the final update. To be honest, I was hoping Apple would sherlock me with native TV app journaling suggestions in iOS 18. But despite some nice additions to the Journal app this year – including the Shortcuts actions used in this version of Watch History Journal – shows and films still aren’t included as journaling suggestions. And so the shortcut lives on.

You can download Watch History Journal 2.1 here. I appreciate everyone who’s taken the time to try the shortcut, and I’m always open to hearing feedback and new ideas for it. If you’re using it and have thoughts, I’d love to know.

iMessage Notification Overwhelm

Jason Snell, writing at MacWorld regarding iMessage Tapbacks:

They’re fun! But they also generate, by default, an additional notification and a haptic tap every time a new one is made. And that means that the average post in a group text thread will now generate three, four, five, or more notifications–because it includes not just the post, but notifications for every single reaction.

Jason makes some great points about iMessage notifications and ways Apple could empower users to fine tune them, but this part about Tapbacks really resonated with me. In a world where the 👍 emoji is shorthand for, “I saw this message,” there’s no need to clog up my notification center with a bunch of them. We need the option to turn Tapback notifications off.

iPad mini: No Longer a Tiny iPad Air

The iPad mini is Apple’s most infrequently updated tablet. Still, there used to be a pattern to the upgrades it received when its time finally came: take the features of the most recent iPad Air and put them in a smaller package. That’s been Apple’s approach to the mini for years. But that time seems to have passed.

Today’s iPad mini update features an A17 Pro chip, not the M2 featured in the latest iPad Air. This has been rumored for quite some time, but I was hoping against hope that Apple would surprise us here. An M-series iPad mini capable of running Stage Manager when connected to an external display would be the most versatile tablet Apple has ever produced. Alas, it wasn’t meant to be.

The choice of the A17 Pro chip over the A18 chip is an interesting one. It’s obvious that Apple wanted to make the iPad mini capable of running Apple Intelligence, but it’s also considered common wisdom that the company wants to get away from the fabrication technology used to make the M3 and A17 Pro chips. The iPad Pro skipped M3 and went straight to M4, and rumors suggest that M3 Macs will be upgraded to M4 sometime next year. Unless there’s another iPad mini update in the near future, it will be the only device in production that uses this older fabrication process for a while to come.

A few more stray thoughts on the new iPad mini:

• The blue and purple finishes are great, and I’m glad space grey remains an option rather than midnight.
• Apple Pencil Pro support means that the Apple Pencil 2 can finally be retired, bringing some much-needed clarity to the Pencil line.
• Doubling the base storage tier to 128 GB is a great move. Previously, I couldn’t recommend the base version of the iPad mini with only 64 GB of storage, but 128 is just right.

I love my iPad mini, and I’ll be sticking with it for the time being. Apple Intelligence and Apple Pencil Pro aren’t things I currently feel the need for on my little tablet. If, like me, you don’t consider those features necessary, you can pick up the outgoing version of the iPad mini at a $100 discount right now.

Maybe someday the iPad mini will realign itself with the iPad Air and we’ll get the tiny powerhouse many of us have been waiting for. Today isn’t that day, but I’m glad to see the mini getting some attention and updates to keep it in step with the current lineup – even if this particular update isn’t for me.