The current location of Penguin Random House:
Where Random House’s offices were located before a simple publishing house became a vast conglomerate:
It’s one thing for Apple to force all of its own app icons into the same identical shape. That would be bad enough, because Apple’s own Mac apps are numerous and popular, and as the platform owner Apple necessarily sets the direction that many third-party apps follow. But it’s just downright spiteful to enforce it platform-wide. Apple decided they’re no longer going to create nice icons with unique, interesting, and most importantly, distinctive shapes — but they’re no longer allow third-party apps to either. It’s like Apple decided every single one of its own apps must wear a stupid-looking hat, and they put those stupid-looking hats on third-party apps too, whether the developers of those apps want them or not. Scratch that. Not hats but helmets. The mandatory squircle makes identifying apps at a glance harder in the same way that it’s difficult to identify individual people if they’re all wearing same-shaped helmets. Real helmets at least serve an important safety purpose. The squircles are like stupid unnecessary helmets.
This is a great rant because it’s true. It used to be much easier for me to find apps in my Dock when they were allowed to have distinctive shapes — indeed when Apple’s own apps had distinctive shapes. All of Apple’s UI design changes in the past few years have imposed a greater cognitive burden on users: the entire experience has become less legible. Using a Mac used to be fun; now it’s unpaid labor.
WSJ:
American allies have begun pushing the gas pedal on an unprecedented experiment in de-Americanization. Authorities from France to the Netherlands are quietly removing American tech from their systems, adopting European open-source software and urging civil servants to no longer use Microsoft Teams or Office. Belatedly, they are spending hundreds of billions of dollars to try to boost Europe’s own private space firms, AI companies, and data centers, to avoid leaning on U.S. juggernauts.
I’m not sure Europe/Canada/etc. have the determination required to become a third nexus of technological power, but I am hoping that they get there. It will be better for all concerned.
Currently reading: Nothing Random: Bennett Cerf and the Publishing House He Built by Gayle Feldman. Gonna be working on this one for a while. 📚
I asked for a latte from Starbucks but when I got home discovered that they had given me a mocha. So with every sip I taste not the sweetness of chocolate syrup but the bitterness of thwarted desire.
(it is funny, and telling, that in the current media environment a book published in 2011 may as well have been published in 1611.)
Here’s an interview about renewing the pleasure of reading in an age of distraction. Someone ought to write a book about that. Oh wait.
Currently listening: the Vince Guaraldi Trio, Jazz Impressions of Black Orpheus. Righteous. 🎵
“I am 100% sure I am not a genius, but at the same time, I am 100% sure I am not a fool.” — Carlo Ancelotti. I’m thinking of adopting this as my motto.
Still slightly vibrating from that 🇦🇷 - 🇨🇻 match last night — one of the best I’ve ever seen. Cape Verde were magnificent: organized, disciplined, and utterly fearless. They came not to cower in a low block but to defend aggressively and take their chances. Wonderful stuff. ⚽️