Apple

Odd reflection before bed

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For the most part, the high point that Windows NT has achieved for me is “Not pissing me off by default” and becoming a fairly decent shell upon which to use the Linux things that I care about without needing a second machine or dual boot, thanks to WSL. The era of Windows 10 also brought iterative improvements to system components I care about like the command line environment. But versus native Linux, the main win for me is better access to DirectX games and Microsoft’s office apps.

But truth is, there are certain parts of Windows that are likely to always piss me off. Namely Bluetooth support, and to a somewhat lesser extent anything related to USB or networking will inevitably drive me nuts given enough time around NT.

Thinking about this as I finish up a few things before bed, I realize I typically like using MacOS. The aspects that piss me off tend to revolve around muscle memory, like how some common PC shortcuts are cmd+key and others are ctrl+key. Which are shell level uniquenesses not systemic design. On that note, I’ll add that I tend to find iOS/iPadOS rather more meh, or average than pleasant.

By contrast things that irk me so about using modern Linux as a desktop are the quality of mail clients, lol.

Strange definitions of fun

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Decided to take a break from my expedition into Subnatica’s Lost River and break out my old PowerBook Duos. I must have a strange concept of fun.

I’m a little saddened that the Duo 2300c has gone to smear and physical rubber band land while it’s been in storage. But I now know a few things about how it boots. Thanks to Shion unexpectedly being able to mount its drive, I know the system doesn’t boot because the 8.6 install files from Apple’s anthology repo are looking for 8.5 files. Nuts. On the flip side I also learned that plugging in my Duo 230’s drive, that it will boot on the 2300c. Actually runs pretty nice despite it all being emulated, since all the applications on that drive are either for a Motorola 68030 or older, or a fat binary for both.

Given the state of the screen, even if it has a snazzy PowerPC, I opted to swap my memory cards back so that the 230 has 24M of RAM and the 2300c probably has 8M or whatever. At first, after seeing the state of the screen, I decided to try seeing if the touchpad could be swapped. The 2300c and 230 top covers only differ in the labelling and having a trackpad mounted where the cutout for the trackball would go. Sadly, I wasn’t about to use the trackpad, so I swapped these back. I don’t mind the 230’s trackball, so much as it tends to stick or stop sensing the ball rolling no matter what I do to the darn thing. Probably should just buy a Wombat to connect a USB mouse to it.

Interestingly, I also learned that the 2300c mainboard has both its new IDE header and an old SCSI header in exactly the same place as the earlier 230 and its relations. The machines are really, really similar. I’m pretty sure that the only major differences are adapting the chipset to accommodate a PowerPC instead of a Motorola processor. Since the screen is going bad and its keyboard sticks less than the 1992 one, I decided to at least switch out the keyboards so that the 230 has a better typing experience.

An Experiment In Notes

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When I originally tried Evernote a long assed time ago, I didn’t really care for it because I was seeking a solution for my non-homogeneous network and disliked the lack of structure. But when the 90% of use cases were an Android tablet, they eventually one the war and displaced my previous solutions. In the end things worked out quite swell and its data model has fit my style of digital brain quite nicely. Twelve years later, I’ve stuck through Evernote’s more lack luster periods and high points, but I’m a little less enthusiastic about the recent transition.

As such, I decided to conduct an experiment that I’ve been thinking of for a while: which is investigate runners up. In this case, Apple Notes. But I’m afraid to say that it appears to be a washout for my use cases.

Much like a younger version of Evernote, I view Apple Notes as a kind of “Meh, good enough” experience. Both offer a more word processor than semantic experience. Level of detail are formatting like headers rather than sections, and the common formatting yada, yada. Outside of differences like Notes offering short cuts like shift+cmd+h and Evernote ‘# and your text’ as alternatives to the GUI, that’s mostly distinctions in taste and finer details. The typical stuff is all there.

I personally dislike that Notes uses inline hash tagging rather than separate metadata given its use of a database oriented storage model, and prefer Evernote’s handling of attachments. But neither is a hill to die on. For a great majority of tasks, I don’t think the differences are enough to moan about beyond preference, so I’d mostly say: use whichever you like, or whichever works best for you.

The parts where the experiment fails for me is performance: Notes is slow.

As an initial test case, I imported most of my Evernote data and used this opportunity to update my local backups with fresh ENEX exports. Notes supports importing Evernote’s native export format of ENEX which made it the first candidate for experiment. And it even performs fairly well importing large numbers of notes. I decided to collect data under an “Evernote Imports” folder to serve as the root of recategorizing my notes, and that’s where the first failure point comes into play. Dragging and dropping lots of notes or a folder with lots of notes to a new destination is SLOW. Performance of folders on the order of 40 to 300 notes is slow. The kind of slow where you see Apple’s spinning rainbow (Mac’s take on Microsoft’s hour glass of yester-year) for 30 seconds and then walk off for a fresh glass of water. Based on the experiment, I believe this has more to do with folders that contain many attachments more so than many notes in general, as it goes executing a rather bulky database transaction. To be fair this isn’t a common occurrence, as I’m more prone to moving handfuls of notes than entire “Notebooks” worth unless I’m reorganizing and cleaning out my notes, which I typically do every few years. Less excusable however is the sync. For comparison, I’m used to initial syncs of Evernote taking some hours. Notes on the other hand was a screw it / going to bed / still not done in the morning, level of sync performance syncing to my tablet. Likewise, opening Notes after a long while equals a “Huh” level of slow and the sync and I’m finding that often folders aren’t in the correct location after it finishes. For me, that’s a deal breaker.

In my case, Evernote represents just over 3700 notes and exports to somewhere between 2.5 and 3 GB of ENEX files. My test subset is more like 2200 notes, so the strain on iCloud should be considerably less give or take the database overhead. Perhaps this is a lot more notes than the typical user, but for me I’m finding the performance enough to preclude Apple Notes as an Evernote replacement — Evernote handles sync just fine while Notes chokes.

Safari scrolling to the bottom

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One of the things that has pissed me off lately, is Safari deciding any press of the down arrow key should keep scrolling ad-infinitium to the bottom.

Solution: https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/459274/the-up-and-down-arrows-not-working-correctly-in-safari

I’m just going to assume there was a reason for this feature in the first place that doesn’t involve stupidity.

Yes, the 2018 iPad Pro has aged well

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https://9to5mac.com/2023/03/02/2018-ipad-pro-2/

I’m inclined to agree with much of this. The 2018 model came into my group of hardware and started running circles around my other devices, particularly my third generation Core i5s.

Right now the only good reason I see to upgrade are support for secondary displays and perhaps thunderbolt. Features I desire in my tablet but that aren’t worth the price of a new iPad when everything else is dandy.

Well, if you discount that the base 64GB of storage is getting less roomer, the battery is aging, and I’m sometimes tempted by the idea of an cellular capable iPad. Those are all interesting points, but still sufficient for the time being 😛

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Even with the M2 Pro, Mac gaming is as bad as it’s ever been – MacWorld

An interesting subject, and one that I find amusing in some ways.

You see, there is exactly one reason I maintain a Windows machine at home. DirectX based video games that are only released for Windows. Otherwise, I would have switched to BSD and Linux based machines eons ago. By now, I’d also have dropped the desktop form factor if it wasn’t for the ten pounds of GTX problem.

With Rimuru’s recent motherboard replacement, I was left without my gaming desktop. Fortunately the games I was most playing at the time (Subnautica: Below Zero and Subnautica) have 64-bit Intel versions that my Air can play under Rosetta 2. In Below Zero’s case, it’s even a really good experience.

But there’s a reason why I consider the Macintosh a joke of a gaming platform, and this article nailed the crux of it: there’s just a few games! This problem until recent years, was also shared by GNU/Linux and even that is still an on going concern IMHO.

The comparison between a beefy Mac mini and a comparably priced gaming PC, is about what you would expect. Dollar to the pound, as nice as Apple Silicon is, it can’t out perform a dedicated Windows gaming machine — which will have both the games, and be at the forefront of developer’s optimization and quality assurance (lol) processes. I think it’s kind of awesome how capable Apple’s GPUs are, and let’s be fair, if you really do prefer a Mac, the price difference may be worth it to you versus a PC. Good financial sense, not likely, but to each their own tastes in technology.

What really doesn’t have a solution is the games. Using my own Steam library as an example, about 1/5th support macOS — and most are simply not possible to run because they require support for 32-bit Intel apps. Ones I’ve tried on my M2 MacBook Air, have left me impressed with the performance of Rosetta 2 for running 64-bit Intel apps. 

This is about the same amount of my Steam library that is Verified compatible with Valve’s Steam Deck. If we expand the criteria to “Verified and Playable”, Steam Deck is compatible with half my library. Include those that are simply untested, and the search selector suggests that 80% of my collection can at least “Attempt” being run on a Steam Deck. Those numbers are likely skewed a bit thanks to Renpy and various indy things that are more inclined to offer Linux binaries for 64-bit Intel.

That doesn’t even consider that Steam’s own app has superb quality on Windows, is meant to be the focal point of SteamDeck’s UI, and that on macOS it really has an “Valve also ran” grade of hit and miss quality issues. You won’t love Steam on macOS unless Valve makes it a significantly higher priority, and there is little reason they should when it’s most useful on Mac for streaming games from a PC!

MacWorld on the other hand makes an interesting case for investment. Apple has a lot of money at present; for years, they’ve fit the demographic I dub “More money than GOD”. I’m not sure if Apple simply bribing publishers and developers to support macOS is legally wise, but boy, that would be an interesting idea.

Sadly, I don’t think Macintosh has offered a lot for games since floppy diskette was the prime distribution media. And even then, I would probably have been inclined to explore CP/M and MS-DOS coprocessor options if such things weren’t comically out of our price range back then. Actually, I still have no idea how my mother afforded a Tandy 1000 series PC in the first place :^o.

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One of the things I’ve been wondering for a while now is how the performance of macOS’s EXFAT driver is representative of its peers. It’s notably slower than what you would see in NT, but not so bad until you go from the sequential 1M to random 4K part of my choice benchmarks. Once you hit the randoms, it goes form “I wonder if that’s lack of optimization in the driver, or the I/O system design” to abysmal. But to be fair that is the worst performing metric anywhere, and I’m more interested in the sequential performance. 

Well, having a nice shiny (or should I say, mat?) Samsung T7 Shield that was on sale, I decided to do a little test cycle. EXFAT, FAT32, HFS+, and APFS. This drive is designated for Time Machine duty, so I have no need for it to remain on a interoperable file system.

Using AmorphousDiskMark 4.0.

EXFAT as formatted out of the box:
  Test            - Read MB/s     Write MB/s
  SEQ1MQD8        - 586.42        691.32
  SEQ1MQD1        - 594.45        690.05
  RND4KQD64       - 21.75         13.68
  RND4KQD1        - 21.70         13.48
FAT32 as formatted MS-DOS (FAT32) from Disk Utility:
  Test            - Read MB/s     Write MB/s
  SEQ1MQD8        - 516.03        690.32
  SEQ1MQD1        - 596.97        691.80
  RND4KQD64       - 21.56         13.64
  RND4KQD1        - 21.50         13.51
HFS+ as formatted Mac OS Extended (Case-sensitive, Journaled) from Disk Utility
  Test            - Read MB/s     Write MB/s
  SEQ1MQD8        - 612.39        820.77
  SEQ1MQD1        - 578.25        691.00
  RND4KQD64       - 120.48        55.44
  RND4KQD1        - 18.33         14.70
APFS as formatted APFS (Case-sensitive), after converting from MBR to GPT from Disk Utility.
  Test            - Read MB/s     Write MB/s
  SEQ1MQD8        - 733.22        818.84
  SEQ1MQD1        - 617.40        684.06
  RND4KQD64       - 121.67        55.13
  RND4KQD1        - 21.27         13.83

This makes me suspect the performance lossage is more to do with how optimized the FAT drivers are. I should really repeat this with one of my USB flash drives where the performance sucks to begin with, but I don’t want to spend all day on this :^o).

Debugged; Noun

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When you wonder why the automation isn’t turning off Work focus after you’ve been home a while, and realize it’s using the wrong device’s location to geo-fence.

Then add another automation for the same location on another device.

Then can’t delete either of these, because your phone and tablet both still show two entries with details from the original automation entry because deleting the automation doesn’t do nadda, and your watch doesn’t show any automations.

Then you finally say screw it and delete the entire focus.

That’s debugged. o(*_*)o

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So, I’ve finally decided to give it a shot. For a while I’ve had some interest in the various sensors Apple Watches have, and due to recent affairs, I pretty much find myself with greater need to be aware of what time it happens to be and whether or not there is a meeting on the agenda. Frankly, I’m tired of walking to the head or the snack bar and checking my phone for the time.

Combining these factors, along with the Xbox Series X continuing to be more Unicorn than not as far as budgeted upgrade paths go, I did something I rarely do: I bought myself an expensive birthday present! With my birthday coming up soon, I decided to pull the trigger and just do it. Something that’s not a unicorn always taps that earmarked piece of my savings anyway. Actually, thinking about it, if you discount that time I ended up needing a car near Christmas time, buying a Apple Watch Series 7 is probably the second or the most expensive ‘gift’ I’ve ever picked for myself 😃😄😂. In retrospect, it’s also the first time I’ve ever been to an Apple Store, and probably the first time I’ve gone to a certain nearby mall in a about a decade.

My choice between the SE and S7 is mainly about the sensors; for all other factors I’d rather save on price. Of course, in September there will probably be nice sales if Series 8 lands at the usual time frame but I’m not a Virgo or a Libra. In terms of style being the bland sort, a nice black case and a dark green leather band in 45 mm. Something that fits both my taste and will blend in whether at work or out and about. Might investigate some of the NATO nylon straps and stainless-steel bands on Amazon for variety, but so far, so happy. The leather link uses a magnet clasp that’s as easy as Velcro, and more comfortable than the regular sports and leather bands with the usual through hole buckle that I’ve worn over the years.

This makes the third watch I’ve owned since about 1999, and the second that I’ve bought for myself. Remarkably, it’s also the most expensive. Back around ’99 is when I bought the watch that I used most in my life, for a whole remarkable ten bucks at Walmart. The only other watch I’ve used since then was a really, really slick hand me down. Until about 2010, I had intermixed between watch and watch less and set it aside sometime after adapting to phones in 2010. I can say that my desire for phones likely peaked somewhere in the middle and has long since waned in favor of tablets.

On the flipside, maybe the three rings will convince me to move my lazy fat ass more often ^_^.

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For work related reasons, I’ve found myself using a Mac for the past two weeks rather than my aging Latitude. Along with whatever the sale related winds happen to be when Stark finally retired, I suppose this will influence whether my next laptop ends up an XPS or a MacBook, lol.

Having adapted an iPad and fiddled around with old-ass PowerBooks, I’m already well aware that Apple has its own standards when it comes to keyboard shortcuts, and that it’s probably as old as anyone else’s :P.

One of the most annoying points of transition for me isn’t the control, option, and command thing — rather it’s the differences in use. For the most part these modifiers are what you’d expect compared to control, alt, and super (windows). The part that will corrupt my muscle memory is some everyday control+shortcuts are control+shortcuts and some are command+shortcuts. Unlike a simple difference in modifier layout: this calls for learning which ones are and aren’t different modifiers; not just different key positions.

While the pattern is pretty straight forward for application specific shortcuts, e.g., cntrl+t to open a tab will almost always be cmd+t instead and changing tabs remains the control+tab of a PC; it’s the cursor movements for hopping by words and lines with the arrow keys that are harder to muscle memory. Those feel to have much less rime to reason to me. To balance that out, macOS comes with a version of vim pre-installed!

My relationship to Mac OSX was mostly focused on the unix layer. BSD with bits of GNU, and a little fruit on the side. Apple’s GUI itself never interested me much when I was getting deeper into computers.

As a consequence: I find the macOS window manager very “Different”, but surprisingly interesting. An early source of confusion for me was control+up versus control+down. One of these effectively shows the windows on the desktop and one of these effectively shows the windows for the current application. That’s the key.

macOS’s window manager is decidedly modern but it has rather classic notions!

Another source of such confusion is differences between cmd+tab and cmd+`, a distinction between applications and windows quickly becomes a “Huh” when you start having handfuls of terminal windows intermixed with handfuls and handfuls of other application windows. If I hadn’t played with the classic MacOS, I’m not sure I would have figured that distinction out as quick since no modern platform really does the difference between application window group and windows of the current application that way.

Actually, it’s surprising how much macOS has retained from the ‘90s and ‘80s era system software. Both in spirit and in direct function. While at the same time embracing UNIX, which typically takes a more “PC” approach to things once you leap from minicomputers to microcomputers.