Havn

Sat, 16 Mar 2024 14:27:39 +0100

Now that I’ve gotten my CSS like I want it, I’ve started the total rewrite. 🙃

Now I know what I want to be variables. And there’s too many ideas in the design, as I through every idea out there while making each element. But now I know which ideas I like the most, and will keep.

The thing I like about being a noob, is that it’s fun to see quick progress. Stuff I wrote two weeks ago seem stupid now. 😁

Fri, 15 Mar 2024 13:54:09 +0100

Vincent 🐶 find snow delightful. Rain? Not so much…

He generally loves running out in the yard, and especially if I join him. But this is him after I asked him to come out. 👇🏻

Thu, 14 Mar 2024 22:01:53 +0100

Hey, @manton! You so often have to help us with technical problems - so I wanted to help you back, with a solution to a problem with the Micro.blog website!

(With a guest apperance of @pratik’s great photo.)

Chromium and Nested Backdrop-Filters

Thu, 14 Mar 2024 21:49:33 +0100

If you’re like me, you sometimes get these small (often technical) problems, that you work on for so long — and you refuse to surrender.

I had this with CSS a couple of months ago:

I had a menu, that had transparency and blur, and then I also had a submenu that I wanted to have the same. But the submenu just. wouldn’t. blur!

It works perfectly in Gecko and WebKit — but after countless hours, I found the problem: If an element has a backdrop-filter, Chromium won’t let its children have it as well. ¹

I had to design around it, and moved on with my life.

A few moments later…

I recently moved to Micro.blog. And one day I was scrolling down my timeline…

Ooh, look at that nice blur!

Then I opened the submenu:

Motherføcker!

There it was — the same bug! I’m not alone!

The fix

Now, Manton, I don’t know if you guys have battered your heads at this as much as me. Perhaps you don’t use Chromium and didn’t notice? Or maybe you’re just better than me at letting go of insignificant (unsolved) problems?

Well, anyway — as I really struggled to find a solution online, I wanted to share a solution for Micro.blog — and perhaps someone else who stumbles upon this.

It’s not perfect, but:

You have to temporarily remove the blur from the parent

I think the best thing would be to have some javascript change the class of the parent when you click to open the submenu.

And then you turn off the backdrop-filter and change the background-color to something suitable.

Here you can see the fix in action:

Voila!

Now, you do lose the nice blur while the submenu is open — but people will be looking at the submenu at that point!

If you don’t want the user to have to what I did there manually:

I think the best way to fix it, is by using the pseudo-element :focus-within. That could look something like:

header { 
background: rgba (237, 242, 247, .7); 
backdrop-filter: blur(20px) 
}

header:focus-within { 
background: rgb (237, 242, 247); 
backdrop-filter: none; 
}

So when the header, or any of its children, get focus, it would apply the second styling.

If anyone tries this, let me know if it works! I hope my pain can lessen someone elses…

Now, I think I read somewhere that the Chromium people are claiming they’re the ones who interptrets the spec correctly — and that Gecko and WebKit are wrong in having it work. ↩︎

✉️ To SigmaOS’ CEO: This Is What I Don’t Like About Arc’s Direction

Wed, 13 Mar 2024 14:55:46 +0100

I really, really like the Arc browser. But as I alluded to in this post, I have some reservations regarding it, and don’t feel like it’s going in a direction that I like. In the post, I said that I might try SigmaOS again — and I am. ¹

I mentioned this in their community Slack, and their CEO, Mahyad, asked me what about Arc’s direction I don’t like. I must say, the dev team seems very active, nice, and open to input! So this post is my reply to his question.

(And here’s a link straight to the TL;DR at the bottom.)

Hi, Mahyad — and thanks for asking! I wrote a blog post called «I Just Want A Nice Browser!», which might give you a hint, heh.

And let me also say that I’m a bit worried about your direction as well — but I’ll come back to that. 😉

Two fundamentals I don’t love, but that I don’t need to go too much into

I don’t love that Arc is built on Chromium — as I think Google has more than enough power over the web as it is.
I’m not against supporting any VC funded company — but in combination with an unclear business model, I become more skeptical and worried if our incentives align. ²

My main issue, though, is regarding AI

3. Focus

From my blog post linked above, in reaction to Arc’s launch of Arc II:

This is the moment I felt the Browser Company and I started to drift apart.

The entire premise of Arc II, is that «browsing the web sucks», so they would like to do it for me. But I don’t agree: I like to browse the web — I just want a nice browser to do it in!

Now, Arc is still a nice browser — and they haven’t stopped shipping new features to make it even nicer. But that direction just isn’t for me. And when dev resources aren’t infinite, focusing on big areas that aren’t for me, is a turn-off. ³

I like small features that enhance the product, like Instant Open. However, and I know I might be in the minority here, I hate Browse for Me. I don’t want the browser to browse for me, pick my sources, and keep me away from what, I think, might be my favourite tech service: Kagi Search. I want a more human web — not less. ⁴

Now, I do think LLMs, and other modes of generative AI, can be immensely useful. But the market is flooded with ways to interact with them. My personal favourite, is Raycast: Hyper + P gives easy access to a chat, regardless of which app I’m in, and I’ve made some small GPTs to help me with repetitive tasks (like checking how a word is spelled).

Sometimes having the AI know more about the context is useful. For instance, the one in Zed knows my code base. But it has to be quite a bit more useful than just using Raycast, for it not to be wasted dev time that could’ve been used to improve the core app instead! ⁵ It looks like you have some neat ideas with Aieris that leverages that it knows the web page — and I’m getting access to Airis today, to check for myself. ⁶ But my fear is that most of the features step so close to Raycast that it, for me, do end up being wasted dev time.

Because while the market for «general access to LLMs» is extremely flooded, the market for «nice web browsers» is far from it. Especially if you, like me, want to stay away from Chromium.

In my mind, there are two different ways companies seem to leverage AI these days:

Trying to be The One Big Portal To Generative AI.
To improve the details of their core product.

As I really like Raycast as number 1, personally, I want most other products I use to focus on number 2. Arc Max features that fit the latter, are things like Instant Open, Tidy Tab Titles and Tidy Downloads. ⁷

Some other (number 2) ideas for SigmaOS, from the top of my head:

Automatically sorting tabs as subpages might be a bit too much. But maybe you could have the AI «sense» that a tab might belong under another tab or in another workspace, and then display a button? And if you click it, it sends the tab there (hover would show where).
- There could also be a button next to the tornado, to do it to every tab. (Need undo for this, though!)
Another use for the same feature, could be in the Mini-window: It could suggest a Workspace to open it in, based on the content. (And if it’s too unsure, it would revert to the default.)
Let’s say you have some text on a website, and you want to search for that somewhere else. Maybe you could select it, hit a hotkey, and it would propose (three?) places to search for it. You should be able to say which services you prefer to search on, and perhaps pin some. (I might pin Kagi, so that that’s always suggested.)
- If I select a video game title, it knows that it’s a video game and that I prefer to buy on Humble Bundle or GOG — so it offers to search on Kagi (pinned) and those two.
- Now, some might prefer just asking «is this available on GOG?», but I like to actually go to the websites instead, and that the browser makes that easier. ⁸
A variant could be that when you select text and hit a hotkey, you write something in a text box, and it acts on those two data points. Examples:
- I select «Balatro» and type «Humble» = It searches for Balatro on Humble Bundle.
- I select «Apple’s DMA compliance» and type «John Gruber», and it searcher Kagi for «Apple DMA Daring Fireball» (or something). The challenge here, of course, is knowing when a name is «a site to search on» and not.
- The other way around, would do the same: Selecting «John Gruber» and typing «Apple DMA».
- I select «SigmaOS» and types «YouTube», and it searches for videos there.

Oh, and I looove the Raycast practice of letting everything have an alias (keyword) and/or a hotkey. I want this for SigmaOS’ «send to» feature (as I mostly share via Telegram), and would also like it for the feature above. Either because I want to just type «yt» to search on youtube, or set Meh + K to search for a string on Kagi.

Lastly, yet another variant, could be to use it to enhance the Lazy Search: On Kagi, I can use bangs to search on specific sites, like «yt SigmaOS» searches for SigmaOS on YouTube. ⁹ However, I have to write exactly «yt + string». It would be cool, if all of these, typed in Lazy Search, searched on YouTube «youtube sigmaos», «sigmaos youtube», «sigmaos on youtube», etc.

4. Ethics

Even though I, personally, find generative AI useful, I’m also very skeptical regarding the ethics behind them and if they’re a net good for the web and society. Too many people think that «If you think it’s useful, you must think it’s ethical» or «If you think it’s unethical, you must think it’s useless».

John Voorhees and Robb Knight make some great points in the latest episode of the Ruminate podcast (Full of Spicy Takes), and Matt Birchler also says stuff I agree with here.

These models are worthless without other people’s content and hard work, but become very valuable with it. Then it simply feels wrong that they can take this content without it benefiting the creators. And «no», I don’t care whether it’s technically legal or not.

Personally, I’d love to use image generators for my blog posts — but I’ve landed on that being too unethical for me. But as mentioned, I do use LLMs — but I’m also unsure about that. I do try to be mindful about how I use it, though. ¹⁰ And I want the implementations of tools to be as positive as possible — both for the web and the greater world and people it in. I don’t want them to make it too easy for practices like gunking up search results and platforms, or ruin the livelihood of creators. And I think that Arc (and things like Perplexity) are doing too much of the latter.

Things like Browse for Me, are trying to replace me going to the places where it got the information. And, I mean, you have to be pretty naive to think that this 5-Second Preview feature benefits Our Escape Clause:

I absolutely don’t buy that this would lead to more clicks, because «the preview would make people more intereste». (It's a video, so right click and hit "Play" if it doesn't start.)

On Hard Fork, the CEO of Perplexity said that they were trying to cite more sources, and that if your name often came up as their sources, that would increase your credibility and recognition. How that, in turn, would pay for your mortgage (when Perplexity just gives users all your content), he didn’t mention.

I wholeheartedly belive that stuff like this, if left unchecked, will drive content creators out of business and drive a large portion of the content that’s left behind paywalls. And both will hurt the web.

So, while I disagree with Arc, in that «browsing the web sucks» — their products are starting to do their part to make it more true.

TL;DR:

So, I already didn’t like that Arc was built on Chromium and was VC funded without a business model.

But, from a user perspective, I don’t like that they’re moving the product to focus on stuff I don’t want — and I think that focus has questionable ethics and is hurting the web.

Please don’t do this, Mahyad. 👆🏻 If you’re going to implement AI into SigmaOS, do it in a way that doesn’t remove focus from it being a nice web browser for actually browsing the web. ¹¹ And don’t do it in a way that hurts the real people making content and making the web a great place.

I like it pretty well so far! ↩︎
I would prefer to use a browser that only had one incentive: Being so good that I want to keep paying for it. I hope this can be SigmaOS. ↩︎
As I have the impression that you guys over at SigmaOS are a smaller team than Arc’s, this is extra important. ↩︎
Kagi’s Small Web initative, is a great example of a company that do make AI features also promotes a human web. ↩︎
I actually don’t really use the one in Zed - as there’s value in having muscle memory, that to me, outweights the benefits of Zed’s implementation. ↩︎
Even though I sometimes feel sumarisers can make the web «less human»… ↩︎
```
Which I wouldn’t mind you copying!
```
↩︎
This is also due to the ethics, which, spoiler, is my next big heading. ↩︎
And it also works on mobile and no matter which browser I’m in! I can also make custom ones. ↩︎
For instance, even though I’m not a native English speaker, I don’t use it to auto-translate stuff. ↩︎
Because SigmaOS is one of the nicest out there! ↩︎

Den flotteste stemmen siden Allison Krauss

Tue, 12 Mar 2024 15:22:15 +0100

Link to English version

Jeg tester Tidal om dagen, og ville sjekke lydkvaliteten kontra Spotify. Tilfeldigvis så ramla jeg over en ny låt av en artist jeg liker, så dét blei den første låta jeg testa. ¹ Og, fy søren - dette er noe av det vakreste jeg har hørt:

Aoife O’Donovan — All My Friends

Hele den nye plata er visst ute 22. mars - men den forrige plata, Age of Apathy, er også strålende. 👌🏻

Tidal låter bedre — men det er ikke poenget her. ↩︎

The Prettiest Voice Since Allison Krauss

Tue, 12 Mar 2024 15:09:47 +0100

Lenke til norsk versjon

I’m testing Tidal these days, and wanted to test the audio quality vs. Spotify. I happened to stumble upon a new track by an artist I like during testing, so that was the first track I tested. ¹ And holy føck if this isn’t one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever heard:

Aoife O’Donovan — All My Friends

The whole album looks to be out on March 22nd. But her last album, Age of Apathy, is also fantastic. 👌🏻

Tidal sounded a bit better - but that’s not the point here. ↩︎

Mon, 11 Mar 2024 20:04:41 +0100

You know that trick companies do now, where they write helpful (or «helpful») articles that people search for, and then you end up on a car company’s website when searching for how to change a tire?

Well, that kinda backfired for SigmaOS today, as I was trying to figure out how to install a custom search engine on it…

I Just Want a Nice Browser!

Mon, 11 Mar 2024 15:55:44 +0100

Two sad browser stories

I’ve followed the Spicy Takes™️ surrounding the Arc Browser recently, that started in the Ruminate podcast and went on to the MacStories Weekly Issue 408.

And I agree with most of what John Voorhees is saying, and also Matt Birchler, who said: «The Browser Company feels gross to me right now».

Much of it is about ethics and AI. In general I agree with them, but this subject won’t be the focus of this post. (I’ve written more about AI here and here.)

Instead I’ll tell my browser story, and explain why both Arc and Firefox makes me sad.

I’ve been browsing for browsers

I avoided Arc for a long time because I really, really didn’t want to use a Chromium browser.

First, I used Safari for a while, which is fine. Then I used Orion, which was better, but a bit too buggy. ¹ I also tried SigmaOS a bit, but at the time they wouldn’t let you change their hotkeys, and those default ones were terrible for my Norwegian layout.

My Firefox wish

Then, because I really want Mozilla and Gecko to exist, I spent a year trying to like Firefox. But it was very hard, and I failed miserably. It just feels like using a product where no one really cares about the user experience. I mean, which features, aimed at bettering this, have they shipped recently? ²

But I’m not saying that the developers doesn’t care! It just feels like they don’t have time to care — that the leadership hasn’t made it a priority. Mozilla recently downsized, and said that they’re refocusing on Firefox. ³ I hope they reach the conclusion, that the first step to compete, is to be the best browser.

I want to write a separate post, someday, on what I miss about Firefox. ⁴ But I’ll mention some things I like about Arc later, and know that Firefox has more or less nothing of this. Now, I get that The Browser Company is VC funded, and can just build on Chromium — but their team still isn’t that large. So my wish for the new Mozilla CEO, is to create a team and say: «OK, so you don’t have any responsibilities to the Gecko engine or our other services. Just make Firefox a joy to use — on every platform.» ⁵

Corruption Arc

In the podcast linked up top, Voorhees said he didn’t understand the hype around Arc, and that it just had a bunch of «animations that gets in the way». I agree that animations can get in the way — but when they’re well done, they make software a pleasure. For a great example, try to type, and move elements around, in Bike Outliner, by Jesse Grosjean, and tell me that’s not a truly special software experience.

I think Arc screams of being made by someone who cares about browsers and software quality. And I think that’s where they started, before being led astray by the lure of AI. It might not be a bad business move — but it’s not what I want, and the ethics, as both Voorhees and Birchler talk about, are very questionable.

It all started with what The Browser Company calls:

Arc II

And that started with this video:

This is the moment I felt the Browser Company and I started to drift apart.

The entire premise of Arc II, is that «browsing the web sucks», so they would like to do it for me. But I don’t agree — I like to browse the web — I just want a nice browser to do it in!

Now, they haven’t stopped shipping enjoyable features since this ⁶ — and I still think they care about being a nice browser. But I was grossed out enough by using a Chromium browser, and now they’re leaning into something that I’m not interested in and that I question the ethics behind…

I really have to think about if I can keep using the browser… While I do that, let me highlight why I like Arc so much. Maybe it can serve as inspiration to other browser makers?

Being a good browser

Looks and feel

I just think everything in arc looks good — like the border around the window and icons. And there are plenty of whimsical animations, that doesn’t get in the way and often helps in understanding what’s happening. There’s also completely useless stuff, like this:

When adjusting the dials on the theme on a trackpad, you get haptic feedback!

Great shadows on the pop-up, and a cute top-left corner.

I’m a sucker for stuff like this.

The downloads icon animates,
the files come up smoothely
and the blur above the files looks great.

My Number of spaces/Tab bar width ratio is too high for it to show all the icons. They’ve solved this elegantly IMO, and I also like this animation.

Useful utilities

Nice playback controls - for a tab in another space. I can also pop it out in their great picture in picture.

If you hit Cmd + T or Cmd + L (the latter won’t create a new tab), you’ll get this command bar. It’s pretty useful, but also just nice. (Notice the transparency.)

They have an AI feature I like, and that I don’t think The New York Times minds either: If I hit Shift + Enter, it will go straight to the site it thinks you want. And since {my search engine} doesn’t earn money on my data or clicks, _it_ doesn’t mind this feature either!

Hitting Cmd + Shift + C copies the current URL without having to mark it in the address bar. The squares around the box, are more whimsical animations, and the share button opens the share sheet. That last detail is a perfect example of what I mean about _care_.

And yes, it even strips the trackers automatically!

Boosts: A neat little feature, from when the focus whan on making browsing a joy - instead of doing it for me..

Spaces

I love how easy it is to make and move between spaces, and that you can choose which of them share logins and not. Moving tabs between them, is also a breeze, and the haptic dials makes some good-looking themes.

Animation from Arc, showing off space themes.

I like the vertical tabs ⁷ — but I would be fine with just horizontal tabs in a browser if the spaces integration was on this level.

Animation from Arc, showing off changing spaces.

They also have notes and something they call easels — but I don’t use them personally.

Little Arc 🫶🏻

This little guy is my favourite Arc feature! If I hit a link while in another app, it opens a small-ish browser window, called Little Arc. In the example below, I was browsing Mona, and found a link I wanted to check out — and then I got this:

This is to avoid gunking up your current browser window.

Top left you can see that I’m currently on my personal profile (so logins etc. works in these little windows) — and only by hitting Cmd + O, will it be added to my current space («Blogg»). I can also send it to a different space.

My favourite detail here, is that if I do two-finger swipe to «go back», it just closes the window, and sends me back to Mona.

I’ll stop now because this is only making me sad.

Sad, because it seems like Arc is moving away from what I like about it,
and sad because it’s still, by far, the best browser — but I’m not sure I «can» keep using it…

Maybe I’ll give SigmaOS another go, while I hope Firefox becomes nicer? ⁸ It looks like I can change the hotkeys now! 👌🏻

Maybe I’ll try Orion again?

Have you tried SigmaOS or Orion lately?

And are there any other nice browsers out there?

help plz

However, that team also makes Kagi Search, which is amazing. ↩︎
That wasn’t focused on pushing their own services, like Pocket, VPN and spoof emails. ↩︎
And AI. 😔 ↩︎
Come on, at least use the native macOS text engine! ↩︎
Oh, and make it much easier for third parties to build on Gecko - which I’ve heard is a nightmare. ↩︎
And I love how they always highlight the specific engineers who’s worked on a shipped feature! ↩︎
Even though I wouldn’t mind them being in trees. ↩︎
And, unlike Arc, they have a business model. ↩︎

AI Is Just Different

Mon, 11 Mar 2024 13:04:23 +0100

The discussion around the ethics and legality surrounding AI has been a constant the last year — and it’s culminating in some important trials that’s coming up.

I won’t go into the entire thing here — I just want to focus on a specific argument that I often hear when it comes to the way these large models are trained. It oftes goes something like: «But how is this different from how humans have always been learning and iterating on previous knowledge?» or «The information was available on the open web, so it can be used for anything!».

I think these are terrible arguments.

Humans are allowed into shopping malls.

However, that’s simply not an argument for that cars should be allowed there as well — whether they’re driven by a human or autonomous.

But while it would be «very bad» if someone drove through a mall with their Hummer, it would only be «annoying» if someone did it with their RC car. I’m not saying the opposite (that if humans can do something, machines can’t) — I’m just saying that it’s not an argument, and that we have to evaluate every «machine» for what it is.

Because scale and context matters.

At some point, we decided that cars were a large enough departure from things like bikes or horse and carriage, and that they required their own rules. And today you need a license to drive a car, but not a bike. And while bikes don’t really need speed limits, cars absolutely do because it’s capable of much more. They’re just… different.

I view AI the same way, and that is why I’m a bit annoyed that much of the discussion’s around «ancient» copyright laws written for a different time. I wish we’d just jump straight to what we think is right, and make laws accordingly. ¹

Now, I absolutely have issues with copyright laws and how they’re enforced and who they benefit. But as someone who plays in a small band, I wouldn’t like it if someone took one of our songs and uploaded it to YouTube as their own. At the same time, I wouldn’t mind if a performer learned the song and played it for money on the street — because scale and context matters.

Could we please evaluate it for what it is?

I just want to get pass «But technically, according to these laws written for something completely different, it might be fair use» and «But humans have done something similar, so these machines should be allowed to do the same at a global scale».

AI ≠ Napster

AI ≠ Humans

Could we please talk more about what we think is fair and what we actually want?

Imagine if someone, at the beginning of the last century, said: «You can’t put the genie back in the bottle — these cars are driving all over the place, we can’t start regulating them now»?

ChatGPT 1.0 (or perhaps I’m losing track of my own metaphors).

PS: Let me add, that I think AI tools can be immensely useful. I think too many think you have to choose between

being skeptical of the ethics, and think that they’re useless, hallucinating bullshit machines, or
think that they’re useful, and thus must be ethical and right.

But you can mix and match here, people! 👆🏻

I’m not calling for the removal of all AI tools. ² But we, as a society, can choose which society we want! And if we think these tools are more unethical than useful, we can make them illegal in their current form. And I wish those who argue for why they should be legal would say why, instead of just «Because humans…».

But sadly, even though the problem is global, most of it is decided in a country with about 4% of the world’s population, that doesn’t really seem capable of passing laws at the moment. ↩︎
At least not in this posts! I’m honestly not sure… ↩︎

A Couple of Chill, Mostly New, Indie Games

Sun, 10 Mar 2024 13:59:30 +0100

I love small, chill indie games.

They’re cheap, and the money goes to small developers who needs the support.
Many have short gameplay loops, that make them easy to fit into my schedule.
And many of the ones I like have non-realtime gameplay,
and that, coupled with low hardware demands, makes them well suited for playing on my laptop.

My MacBook isn’t a slouch - but it’s no gaming rig. So I love that I don’t have to worry about performance with these games - and those who don’t have native Mac ports, run perfectly fine through Parallells.

Realtime, but still chilltime

Thronefall

While I mostly play non-realtime games, some realtime titles are still chill, and the minimalistic (kinda) tower defense game, Thronefall (2023) (from the developers of Islanders) is pretty chill.

Platforms:

macOS, Windows

Vampire Survivors

Vampire Survivors (2022) is a weird game, that has no rights being as fun and satisfying as it is. so buy it where you prefer!

You walk (slowly) around a big field, while your character auto-attacks. You then pick up experience, new items and upgrades. It shouldn’t work, but it does - and this good video essay by Adam Mallard explains why:

Vampire Survivors Only Works Because We’re Stupid

Platforms:

macOS, Windows
Switch
Xbox
Android
iOS

Brotato

Vampire Survivors has spawned tons of knock-offs — not all of them are good. But Brotato (2023) is! I actually prefer it over the OG.

Platforms:

Windows
Playstation, Switch, Xbox
Android, iOS

The slower stuff

Dot age

I love board games, and Dot Age (2023) feels like one. It’s a turn based city builder with roguelike progression, built around worker-placement.

Platforms:

Linux, macOS, Windows 🖇️

Balatro

Balatro (2024) is the thousandth in the line of games that «take something familiar, and turn it into a roguelike where you do runs where you try to break the game with combos». This time: Poker!

While perhaps not «beautiful», it drips with style with its CRT filter and screenshake (both possible to turn off). Very chill - but I hope it comes to iPad at some point!

Platforms:

Linux, macOS, Windows 🖇️

Backpack Battles

With the worst art direction since the amazing Slay The Spire, Backpack Battles (2024) is my last recommendation for the day.

In a combination of Backpack Hero and Super Auto Pets, you arrange items in your backpack to (hopefully) win against other players in some asynchronous chibi on chibi action. It also has a demo playable in a browser!

Platforms:

Linux, Windows

Norwegian games that looks promising (but I haven’t tried)

Seablip (Q2 2024) looks very promising, has a free demo, and is out very soon!

Also, Snufkin: Melody of Moominvalley (2024)is out, for macOS, Windows and Switch - more aimed at a younger audience. I think it could be something nice for an adult to play together with someone younger - or just for an adult wanting to have a beautiful and chill experiene!

Are you like me, and like chill games with little twitch and «physical» skills needed? I’m thinking, leaned back on the couch, with a tablet or laptop, clicking buttons, making numbers go up… Any other tips? Hit me up!

Sat, 09 Mar 2024 23:13:39 +0100

I liked this blog post, by The Jolly Teapot! 👇🏻

On Quality Software

«A happy snob» is very much how I’d categorise my own taste in software. 👌🏻

Sat, 09 Mar 2024 16:32:58 +0100

I’ve been thinking way too much about music streaming the past month - so now I’ve gathered my thoughts in a blog post!

I have an idea and dream, that I’m sadly woefully unequipped to actually build. 🙃

It’s a cross between podcasts, Mastodon, PeerTube and the MusicKit API!

Apple er ikke grunnen til at jeg kjøper Apple-produkter - disse folka er

Sat, 09 Mar 2024 15:46:59 +0100

Link to English version

I rettsaken mot Epic, i denne runda med oppmerksomhet fra EU-politikere, og flere andre ganger, har Apple gjort en ting klinkende klart: De mener all business som skjer på deres platformer er deres fortjeneste - og utviklere er heldige som får lov til å betale neste en tredel av omsetninga deres for privilegiet det er å ha programvare på platformene. Dersom Apple forstår at dette forholdet er gjensidig, så skjuler de det godt!

Altså, jeg liker all Apple-hardware jeg har. Jeg digger til og med noe av det! Jeg liker også operativsystemene, fokuset på personvern, og måten økosystemet funker sammen. Men jeg tror jeg hadde klart meg greit med en Framework-laptop, Asus-telefon og Sony-propper også! Det er ikke tinga Apple selv lager og gjør som er hovedgrunnen til at jeg kjøper Apple-produkter. Det er alle de fantastiske tredjepartsutviklerene, som lager strålende programvare for Apple-platformene.

Jeg vet at Apple lager gode verktøy, API-er og rammeverk som bistår i dette - så jeg sier absolutt ikke at de ikke skal få noe igjen for strevet! Men tanken om at det er énveiskjøring, og kun Apple som bidrar til at andre for business, føles bare helt feil for meg.

Så selv om jeg vet ingen med tilknytning til Apple kommer til å lese dette, så har jeg et behov for å rope: Apple, dere er nødt til å gi en hjertelig takk til (blant annet) den gjengen jeg skal nevne nå - for de gir dere masse business.

Strålende tredjeparts-programvare

De fleste av disse appene er hva jeg vil kalle indie-apper, men ikke alle. ¹ Og jeg tror mesteparten kun er tilgjengelig på Apple.platformer — men det kan være de er tilgjengelige på, eller på vei til, andre også. Jeg har prøvd alle jeg nevner, men bruker ikke alle jevnlig - selv om jeg bruker (for) mange av dem. ² Jeg prøver å lenke til riktige utviklere der jeg finner gode lenker, men bare si ifra hvis noe er feil eller du vet hvem jeg burde ha lenka til. Jeg tar også gjerne imot tips til andre som bør på lista!

Jeg ville aldri aldri kjøpt alle de greiene her, uten all den gode indie-programvaren tilgjengelig på Apples platformer.

En Mac med standardinnstillinger føles ødelagt ut for meg

Å svare på spørsmålet om macOS er bra, er litt komplisert. For jeg liker ikke hvordan det kommer fra fabrikk - men jeg digger hva man kan gjøre det til med tredjeparts-programvare, som ikke er tilgjengelig på andre platformer.

Bartender, av Surtees Studios, holder styr på menylinja mi,
og Default Folder X, av St. Clair Software oppgraderer åpne- og lagre-dialogene..
Trackpaden blir mye mer nyttig, takker være BetterTouchTool av Andreas Hegenberg fra Folivora.ai,
og alle tastaturene det samme, med Karabiner-Elements av pqrs/Takayama Fumihiko,
og Keyboard Maestro av Stairways Software.
Paste, av et lite team basert i Danmark, er min favoritt blant utklippstavle-styrere,
men Tapbots Pastebot, er også strålende. (Du bør følge Paul, Mark og Todd)
Men jeg hadde nok klart meg med utklippstavle-styreren integrert i Raycast, en strålende launcher med masser av utvidelser.
Men Alfred, av Andrew or Vero Pepperrell,
og LaunchBar, av Objective Development er også gode!
En av de integrerte funksjonene jeg bruker i Raycast, er vindus-styring. Men jeg kunne også brukt noe av følgende:
- Magnet (Crowd Café),
- Moom (Peter Maurer og Rob Griffiths fra Many Tricks),
- Rectangle (Ryan Hanson) ,
- Amethyst (Ian Ynda-Hummel),
- eller Yabai (Åsmund Vikane 🇳🇴)!
- (Og John Siracusa lager noen apper for dem med spesielle preferanser.)
Rafael Conde lager noen kjekke små verktøy, og blei nylig med på teamet som lager Sketch.
Noodlesofts Hazel rydder opp i filene mine,
Anybox passer på bokmerkene mine,
brettspillsamlinga mi er i Classifier av App Deco,
og de digitale spilla mine er i GameTrack.
Menuwhere (Many Tricks igjen!) sørger for at menylinja alltid er tilgjengelig, selv om musepekeren er heeelt i andre enden av skjermen,
og skjermbildene mine blir lekre, takket være CleanShot X (og Apple Frames av Federico Viticci)
PopClip av Nick Moore
og SnippetsLab av Renfei Song hjelper meg å manipulere tekst
Photomator manipulerer bilder,
og geniene i Rogue Amoeba gjør underverker med lyd-manipulasjon
- (jeg liker særlig SoundSource og Audio Hijack!)

Audio Hijack

Noen leker møbelsnekker som en hobby — jeg leker utvikler

Selv om jeg er langt unna profesjonelt nivå, digger jeg Zed-kodebehandleren teamet bak Atom lager.
Panic har også nydelige programmer, i
- Transmit,
- Nova-kodebehandleren,
- og Prompt-terminalen
iTerm , av George Nachman er også veldig god,
men favoritt-terminalen min er Warp.
Dersom jeg hadde programert mer på iPaden, hadde jeg brukt Runestone, av Simon Støvring,
og Working Copy mer.
Ja, og favoritt-nettleseren min erArc av The Browser Company,
- om jeg er der eller i Safari eller Firefox, så hjelper Jeff Johnson med med å StopTheMadness.

Zed

Men det finnes enda flere måter å skrive notater og andre tekster!

NotePlan, av Eduard Metzger er både notat-appen min, og der jeg håndterer gjøremål,
men Agenda virker som et godt alternativ her,
og jeg skriver dagbok i Everlog av Wessley Roche.
Men jeg kunne også gått tatt notater iBear (Shiny Frog),
Craft,
Bike Outliner (Jesse Grosjean)
eller Taio
- (av utvikleren som også lager den finfine MarkEdit)!
(Ja, og en liten shout-out til Obsidian
og Logseq også — selv om de finnes på tvers av platformer.)
Tekst som jeg ikke skal lagre, starter i Drafts av Greg Pierce,
og jeg skriver blogg-innlegg, og mer, i Ulysses av et team basert i Tyskland.
(Men MarsEdit, av Daniel Jalkut har også støtte for Micro.blog!)
Hvis jeg trenger en post-it-lapp, hiver jeg opp Tot, av Iconfactory,
or jeg kjør kjappe utregninger i Soulver av Acqualia Software.
(Jeg hadde likt å skrive epost i Mimestream — støtter ikke JMAP enda!)

Bear

Man kan velge og vrake i kalender- og gjøremåls-apper

Siden jeg har de fleste gjøremåla mine i NotePlan, så bruker jeg ikke gjøremålsapper så mye. Men det hender jeg bruker GoodTask, siden den bruker Påminnelser.app sin database, men med et litt kraftigere grensesnitt.
Things 3, av Cultured Code
og Omnifocus av The Omni Group er også strålende.
Dersom du er en storbruker av kalender, er Fantastical, av Flexibits, veien å gå.
Jeg er ikke dét, så jeg liker at BusyCal, av Busy Apps, er en mellomting mellom Fantastical og Kalender.app. Mye billigere enn førstnevnte, men kraftigere enn sistnevnte.
Jeg er også litt svak for n.spektors Calendar 366.

Calendar 366

De fleste av de jeg har nevnt nå, har også gode mobil-apper — men her er noen andre mobilfavoritter

Dark Noise, av Charlie Chapman, er god hvis du liker hvit støy og slikt,
og Callsheet av Casey Liss er hva IMDB-appen hadde vært hvis eieren (Amazon) hadde brydd seg om å lage en god app.
ATP-kompisen hans, Marco Arment, lager appen som brukes i flest timer på telefonen min: Overcast
Og jeg sjekker stillinga i IK Start- og Arsenal-kampene med den norske appen FotMob.
Favorittkalkulatoren min har det rare navnet SC-323PU, og er av Thomas Öllinger,
men PCalc av James Thomson er også strålende.
Dersom jeg hadde sjekka været på andre måter enn å bare gå ut døra og håpe på at det ikke regner, så kunne jeg brukt Carrot Weather av Brian Mueller,
eller Mercury Weather av Triple Glazed Studios.
Men jeg liker Yr-appen også!
Jeg burde virkelig starte å lagre oppskrifter… Og da kan jeg for eksempel bruke Croutonav Devin Davies
eller Mela av Silvio Rizzi.
Silvio lager også Reeder, som er en flott RSS-leser.
NetNewsWire av Brent Simmons er også et godt alternativ her,
men favoritten min er Lire.
iOS har også flere gode apper for sosiale medier, og jeg savner fortsatt Apollo av Christian Selig, og Reddits endringer har gjort at jeg stort sett har slutta å bruke tjenesten. Men Narwhal er ganske bra, hvis du fortsatt bruker Reddit!
Gluon, av Vincent Ritter, er måten jeg foretrekker å bruke Micro.blog.
- (Sjekk også Scribbles-prosjektet hans!)
For Mastodon, er det mange strålende alternativer. Og her er noen:
- Mona,
- Ivory (Tapbots),
- Mammoth og
- Icecubes (Thomas Ricouard), for å nevne noen!

Mela

Apple skrev nylig et bitre tilsvar på boten de fikk for å urettferdig konkurrere mot 20 musikk-apper (inkludert Spotify) med Apple Music. Der trekker de fram at Spotify «får bruke Apples tjenester gratis» ³ — men man kan også snu på det, og si at Spotify opprettholder klientene for Apples plaformer uten at Apple må betale noe for det. Tjenester jeg bruker mye, som Tidal (jeg prøver å gå over fra Spotify), Telegram (chatte-appen med klart best brukeropplevelse) og YouTube (Premium er veldig verdt prisen, synes jeg) er selvsagt tilgjengelige på alle platformer, så holder meg ikke på Apples. Men dersom de ikke var der, så hadde jo platformene vært mye mindre attraktive!

Altså, Apple fortjener tonnevis av kæsj og kreds — men ikke alt! Folk som utviklerne jeg nevner er hodegrunnen til at jeg bruker Apple-platformer, og ikke Apple selv.

Og det varierer vel hva folk regner som «indie». ↩︎
Ja, jeg har et problem. 🙃 ↩︎
Siden de ikke bruker kjøp-i-app. ↩︎

An Idea For Better Music Streaming

Sat, 09 Mar 2024 01:33:13 +0100

I sadly don’t have the abilities to live out this idea — at least not alone. So everyone who finds this, is welcome to steal it or riff with me!

I’m currently trying to transfer from Spotify to Tidal. The main reason is that I want to use a service that pays artists better — and it’s a nice bonus that the sound quality is better. However, I prefer Spotify’s app and features. ¹ And this inspired me to write out an idea I’ve been thinking about for a while.

Inspired by Mastodon, Apple’s MusicKit API, Podcasts and PeerTube

Third-party first

The official Mastodon client is perfectly fine — but nothing more. And I’d say the same thing (or less) about the Facebook app. But there’s a major difference: Third parties can make clients for Mastodon, using an open-source API. And not only can — the explicit plan is for the default client to be basic, and then let other people build around and on top of it. So where Facebook users are stuck in mediocrity, Mastodon users have tons of options, so everyone can find something that suits their preferences and budgets. ²

In addition to this, third-party clients push the whole platform forwards, with many great ideas. I’m not joking, when I’m saying that my top 5 social media apps are all Mastodon clients.

Here are some of my favourites:

Apple platforms:

Ice Cubes
Mammoth
Mona
Ivory

Web clients:

Phanpy.social
Elk.zone

Android clients I haven’t tried, but heard good stuff about:

Fedilab
Tusky
Trunks (also web, I think)
Moshidon

Phanpy is always trying out great stuff!

Like Apple, but not

Apple has a pretty cool API, called MusicKit. This allows developers to make third-party music players, while using the Apple Music library. Marvis is one example, and Soor is another.

But what if there was a similar, «complete» music library, that every developer could access for free, through an open-source API? And what if this library was run by a non-profit, who simply gave all the profits directly to the artists? ³

I love this blog post: «Wherever You Get Your Podcasts» Is a Radical Statement» Now, people (with Spotify in front) are trying to attack the open podcast ecosystem. But I wish music could be closer to RSS feeds. Just serving the files themselves shouldn’t be a big business!

Creek Music

OK, so allow me to explain my idea! The working title is Creek Music, as I Iike the idea of sending small streams of music around the world. ⁴ (And when I noticed that creekmusic.org was available, I had to grab it!)

OK, so let’s say we get access to the same 100 million songs that the big streaming services advertises. ⁵ This is gathered into a library, called The Source, which the Creek API ⁶ gives clients (apps) access to. These would be like the third-party Apple Music or Mastodon clients — but ideally, there wouldn’t have to be a first party/default client, so not sure if «third party» is the right term then.

But this is important: Users would subscribe for access to The Source directly — and not through the clients. This is to increase portability, and so that you can log into your library from anywhere. Perhaps you like one client on your phone, but another on your laptop? And if you’re in someone else’s web browser, you prefer a third? ⁷

That there are great free (and even open-source) Mastodon clients, like Ice Cubes, shows that there could be free client options here as well. But I would prefer it if every part of this stays ad and tracking-free — so I don’t think I would allow ad-supported clients. I would assume some of the best would be paid apps. But today’s streaming companies have both music rights and client development baked into their price — so the total cost shouldn’t need to be higher than what it is today. ⁸

What I think the API would need to serve

Access to songs

OK, so remember that I’m just dreaming here, and absolutely don’t know what I’m talking about… But PeerTube has this really cool tech, «powered by WebTorrent, that uses peer-to-peer technology to reduce load on individual servers when viewing videos.»!

Lower server costs = More profits for artists, and also less environmental impact. So that’s why I’d love it if something like this could be used when serving the songs themselves to clients.

Resonate (which I don’t think is doing too well), had some really cool ideas — including an interesting stream2own model, which is part of the inspiration for my payment idea. I’ll use myself as an example — and for simplicity, let’s assume $10/month of my payment goes to artists:

In March, I only listened to:
- Fountains of Wayne — Stacy’s Mom: 3 times
- Fountains of Wayne — All Kinds Of Time: 2 times.
Fountains of Wayne would then get my entire $10.
Not only that, we would also register that Stacy’s Mom specifically has earned $6 from me, and All Kinds Of Time $4.

The idea behind the last point, is that I want listeners to eventually have heard a song enough times to then own them. If you’ve listened to an album to death (and then provided income for the artist), it doesn’t seem fair that you lose access to it if you stop your subscription.

Here’s a simple mockup I made, using Tidal as a template:

Wohoo! I’ve listened to Stacy’s Mom and All Kinds Of Time enough so that I know own them! And the others are on the way. ⁹

Let’s say a song having earned $2 is enough to then own it. That would mean a user would «get» 5 songs every month on average, no matter how much they listened. This would remove the incentive to just stream 24/7 to get ownership.
- In the backend, we could convert $1 to 1 million tokens. So a bar takes 2 million tokens to fill up, and at the end of the month, 10 million tokens gets distributed depending on what you listened to.
- (It would be neat if it could fill up during the month as well — but I’m not sure how that would work…)
Users should be able to click on the bar to purchase the song. And if the bar is filled up halfway, it only costs $1, etc.
You could do the same to purchase an album — and I think there could be a way for artists to set their own prices.
We’d probably need some crazy algorithm to factor in song length etc. -but you get the idea!
However, if I in April only listen to Stacy’s Mom and The Shin’s A Comet Appears — do The Shins get all my $10, since I now own Stacy’s Mom? 🤔

So, if a user, through a client, requests to be served a song, we would check if they have access to it — either through the song being owned, or by having an active subscription.

We would also need some sort of offline component. (And it would also be neat if users could upload files somehow.)

Playlists

The API should also have a spec for playlists so that they can be easily shared across different clients and so that it’s portable. It would be great if clients had algorithms to create them — but if you save them to your user, it gets written to your Creek account. This would make it so you automatically have all your playlists if you switch to or log into a different client. It would also make it possible to share playlists with users, regardless of which client they use. You should also be able to subscribe to playlists and have cooperative ones.

Collections

Artists can gather songs in collections — that can be albums, EPs or whatever. It’s just a list of songs, a name for that list, and its own artwork. If a song has several artworks connected to it, I’m thinking users can choose which they like if they have them in a playlist.

Interlude: Portal for everyone!

I play in a band called Klondike, and we’re six members. All our six personal users have access to the band’s page,¹⁰ and here we can upload songs, artwork, collections, etc. But we can also upload songs and set them as private (only accessible by the members of the band, users we’ve approved, or just one person). This can be useful to share demos, or otherwise upload sound files. ¹¹

There should also be some sort of artist verification process…

Connections

I also want artists to be able to post updates to a microblog feed on their artists page. And I want this to use ActivityPub, so that people can follow the artist page from services like Mastodon or Micro.blog. I would rather not create another iTunes Ping — so it’s important that the content get sent out of Creek, while still showing within it.

We could make this more convenient, by allowing cross-posting from other services. ¹²

It would be convenient to be able to sell merch/vinyls within the app — but that does complicate things further. So, might be just as good to use the microblogging feature to link out to stores.

Links

It’s critical that links to songs, playlists, collections, posts, users, artists, etc. are universal, across clients — so that I could share a song with the world, and know that everyone could open it in their clients.

Habits

There should also be some sort of API to (privately) track listening habits, so that clients can use this to create algorithms. But this info must be transferrable!

Sessions

You should be able to have live sessions — either just you and your friends, or public on the web. As a host and admin, I’m thinking you can:

Create a link that let’s people join as listeners.
Create a link that let’s people join as co-hosts.
Choose if listeners can come with suggestions.

DJ component

There should be one…. 🤷🏻‍♂️

Here’s what I’m thinking about the costs:

The cost of hosting and serving the songs would get deducted from the artist’s payment.
If the songs earn less than their cost, the artist would need to pay for the songs to stay up.

I’m interested to hear about what people think about this model! This would do a whole lot of «cutting out the middle man», with the process of «getting a song on Spotify» being pretty complicated. However, it would put some risk on artists — but the costs to host some songs shouldn’t be that bad..? And I think removing the risk from the non-profit is pretty essential.

Some notes on what I would leave to the clients

I want others to create the Music Enjoying Apps, and simply compete on functions and user experience here. The app makers wouldn’t be able to lock you in with network effects ¹³ or that your «collection» is stuck within an app. ¹⁴

And since every service would pay artists well (and equally), being the best place to enjoy music, is the only incentive.

Who has the best apps for the devices you use?
- «Best» differs from person to person. Some might want something simple and sleek, while others want maximum customisability and organisation tools.
- The aforementioned app Marvis has some neat stuff, like smart playlists. I think that if the API provides the folders and the playlists themselves, the apps can be free to write to folders and playlists the way they please.
Who supports the wireless protocols you need?
Who has the best algorithms for creating playlists and finding new music?
Who has the best curated playlists?
Who has the best sharing tools and integrations with other services?

It would be a bit like today, where some use Spotify, some Apple Music and some Tidal, except:

they would be able to share links between each other,
playlists, purchases, habits, etc. would follow the user if you switch clients,
and artists would only need to upload their music, artwork and posts in one place ¹⁵,

A carmaker could also make a client for their infotainment system — and everyone would have their playlists automatically! Stereo, TV, and phone makers could also do the same, of course!

So, what do you think??

As you can see, this is just me spitballing, and dumping all my ideas onto «paper». I might be an «idea guy» and have some web and basic design skills — but I have no idea on how to actually make this thing! There’s guaranteed a thousand technical reasons why this won’t work, and a million reasons why it’s a bad idea in general.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on this — and I’m happy if someone steals this idea, and even happier if someone wants to build it with me. Hit me up on Mastodon!

-Erlend

I might write why some other time. ↩︎
I mean, there’s even clients for Apple II, DOS, palmOS, Amigaand Windows 95! ↩︎
When I say «artists», I guess I really mean «rights holders». Because we all know everything doesn’t go to the artists themselves! ↩︎
And the only results I could find with that name, was something that looks like a defunct music label ↩︎
Theoretically we should be able to pay better, as all the profits go to the artists. ↩︎
Which I obviously have no idea on how to build. ↩︎
I wouldn’t mind a client allowing users to sign up through the app - as long as the direct Creek user gets created. Apple would hate this though, so I don’t know. ↩︎
$12/month seems like the base line - so I could imagine a Creek subscription costing $10, and then $2 for a client. ↩︎
But fuck Hayley’s waitress. Not the song, but the person in the song. ↩︎
Reservoir ,is my working title for this. ↩︎
Piracy issues..? ↩︎
But this does create duplicates of posts - so another idea would just be to integrate a Mastodon user directly..? ↩︎
«All my friends use Spotify, and I want to be able to share playlists with them!» ↩︎
«I’ve made so many playlists on Apple Music, and all my purchased songs are there!» ↩︎
You know, since I assume world domination. ✌🏻 ↩︎

Fri, 08 Mar 2024 19:28:20 +0100

I’m trying out Tidal for a bit, so cancelling my Spotify Premium subscription. Got this pretty obnoxious screen. 👇🏻

Apple Is Not the Reason I’m Buying Apple Products - These People Are

Thu, 07 Mar 2024 02:34:12 +0100

Lenke til norsk versjon

In the court cases against Epic, this round of regulatory scrutiny from the EU, and other more, Apple has made their sense of entitlement abundantly clear. Every piece of business that happens on their platforms, is to their credit. And developers are lucky to be able to pay them almost a third of their revenue for the privilege of being on their platforms. If Apple understands that their relationship with developers is reciprocal, they’re hiding it well.

I like all my Apple hardware. Heck, I even love some of it! I also like the operating systems, the general focus on privacy, and the way the different parts of the ecosystem work together. But I think I could enjoy a Framework laptop, Asus phone and some Sony earbuds as well! The things Apple makes and does isn’t the main reason I keep buying Apple products. It’s all the fantastic third-party developers, mostly indie, who make great software for the Apple platforms.

I know that Apple makes some great tools, APIs and frameworks to make this happen — so I’m not saying they shouldn’t get anything for their trouble. But this idea that it’s a one-way street, where only Apple gives other companies business, just feels so wrong to me.

So even though I know neither Tim Apple nor any other Apples, will read this post, I feel the need to shout: Apple, you need to wholeheartedly thank (among others) the following great developers - because they give you a lot of business:

Great third-party software

Most of these apps are what I would call indie apps — but not all of them. ¹ And I think most of them are only available on Apple platforms currently — but they might be available on, or on the way to, other platforms as well. I’ve tried all of them, but don’t necessarily use them regularly — but I do use many of them! ² I’ll also try to give social links to the devs I know — but you are welcome to contact me if some are wrong and you know who I should tag! I’d also love to get more tips to people and apps who should be on this list!

I would never have bought all this stuff without the indie scene on Apple’s platforms

A stock Mac, without utilities like these, feels broken to me:

Answering the question «Is macOS good?» is kind of hard. Because I really don’t like it out-of-the-box — but it’s terrific with third party software…

Bartender, by Surtees Studios, keeps my menu bar tidy and good-looking,
and Default Folder X, by St. Clair Software upgrades my open and save dialogs.
My trackpad becomes much more useful thanks to BetterTouchTool by Andreas Hegenberg of Folivora.ai,
and all my keyboards do the same through Karabiner-Elements by pqrs/Takayama Fumihiko,
and Keyboard Maestro by Stairways Software.
Paste, by a small team based in Denmark, is my favourite clipboard manager,
but Tapbot’s Pastebot, is also great. (Give Paul, Mark and Todd a follow!)
But I would probably be able to live with just using the integrated clipboard manager in Raycast, an outstanding launcher with a rich extension ecosystem.
But Alfred, by Andrew and Vero Pepperrell,
and LaunchBar, by Objective Development is also good!
I do use Raycast for window management, though. However, if I didn’t, I would’ve been well served by things like
- Magnet (Crowd Café),
- Moom (Peter Maurer and Rob Griffiths of Many Tricks),
- Rectangle (Ryan Hanson) ,
- Amethyst (Ian Ynda-Hummel),
- or Yabai (Åsmund Vikane)!
- (And John Siracusa makes some apps for the particular of us.)
Rafael Conde makes some neat little tools (and recently joined the team making Sketch)
Noodlesoft’s Hazel keeps my files tidy,
Anybox holds my bookmarks,
my board game collection is in Classifier by App Deco,
and my digital games are in GameTrack.
Menuwhere (Many Tricks again!) makes sure the top menu is always within reach,
and my screenshots looks great thanks to CleanShot X (and Apple Frames by Federico Viticci)
PopClip by Nick Moore
and SnippetsLab by Renfei Song help me manipulate text,
Photomator manipulates photos,
and what the geniuses over at Rogue Amoeba can do to manipulate sound, is simply remarkable
- (I especially like SoundSource and Audio Hijack!)

Audio Hijack

Some do wood working as a hobby — I do development

And even though I’m very far from being at a professional level, I really like the Zed code editor by the team behind Atom.
Panic also has some great software, in
- Transmit,
- the Nova editor, and the new
- Prompt terminal.
iTerm , by George Nachman is also good,
but my favourite terminal app is Warp.
And if I had coded more on my iPad, I probably would’ve used Runestone, by Simon Støvring,
and Working Copy more!
Oh, and my favourite browser, is Arc by The Browser Company —
- and if I’m there, in Safari or in Firefox, Jeff Johnson helps me StopTheMadness.

Zed

But there’s even more great ways to write notes and other texts

NotePlan, by Eduard Metzger is both my notes app and task manager,
but Agenda seems like a good alternative here,
and I journal in Everlog by Wessley Roche.
But I could very well have taken notes in Bear (Shiny Frog),
Craft,
Bike Outliner (Jesse Grosjean)
or Taio
- (by the developer who also makes MarkEdit)!
(Quick shout-out to Obsidian
and Logseq as well — even though they are cross-platform.)
Text that I won’t save, starts in Drafts by Greg Pierce,
while I write blog posts and more in Ulysses by a team based in Germany.
(But MarsEdit, by Daniel Jalkut also supports Micro.blog!)
And if I feel the need for a post-it note, I might jot something down in Tot, by Iconfactory,
or do some calculations in Soulver by Acqualia Software.
(I’d love to be able to write my emails in Mimestream — but they have got to get on that JMAP support!)

Bear

There are also lots of great calendar apps and task managers

Since I have most my tasks in NotePlan, I don’t use other task managers as much. But I sometimes use GoodTask, as it uses the Reminders.app database, but gives a more powerful interface.
Things 3, by Cultured Code
and Omnifocus by The Omni Group is also great.
If you’re a calendar power user, Fantastical, by Flexibits, is where it’s at.
I’m not, so I really like BusyCal, by Busy Apps, that sits somewhere between Fantastical and Calendar.app.
I also have a soft spot for n.spektor’s Calendar 366.

Calendar 366

Most of these have good mobile clients — but here are some other mobile favourites

Dark Noise, by Charlie Chapman, is a good noisemaker,
and Callsheet by Casey Liss is what IMDB would be if it was made by someone who really cares.
His ATP buddy, Marco Arment, makes the app that’s active the most hours on my phone: Overcast
And I check the IK Start and Arsenal scores with FotMob.
My favourite calculator, is the weirdly named SC-323PU by Thomas Öllinger,
but PCalc by James Thomson is also great.
If I checked the weather in other ways than finding out when I step outside, I could’ve used apps like Carrot Weather by Brian Mueller
or Mercury Weather by Triple Glazed Studios.
(Here’s a pro tip from me: I use the Yr app, which is a weather app paid for by the Norwegian government — and it’s pretty great, and available in English!)
And if I saved recipies, I could use Croutonby Devin Davies
or Mela by Silvio Rizzi.
Silvio has also made a great way to experience RSS, with Reeder.
NetNewsWire by Brent Simmons is another good option,
while my personal favourite is Lire.
iOS also has some fantastic social media apps. I still miss Apollo, by Christian Selig, and Reddit’s policies have made me more or less quit the service. But Narwhal is pretty good if you still use it!
Gluon, by Vincent Ritter is my preferred way to browse Micro.blog.
- (Also check out his Scribbles project!)
For Mastodon, there’s an embarrassment of riches:
- Mona,
- Ivory (Tapbots),
- Mammoth and
- Icecubes (Thomas Ricouard), to name a few!

Mela

When Apple got a fine for unfairly competing with 20 music apps (Spotify being one of them), they wrote a very bitter reply. Here they pointed out that «Spotify pays Apple nothing», ³ even though they have apps on Apple’s platforms. But you can also think of it the other way around: That Spotify is maintaining clients for Apple’s platforms, without Apple having to pay Spotify anything. Because services I use a lot, like Tidal (trying to switch from Spotify), Telegram (the chat app with the best UX by far) and YouTube (Premium is well worth the cost) are obviously available for other platforms as well — so they don’t keep me on Apple’s platforms. But these platforms would be way less attractive for me if these companies didn’t make clients for them! And Apple doesn’t pay them anything for it.

Again, Apple does deserve tons of cash and credit — but not all of it. People like the mentioned developers are the main reason I buy Apple products — and not Apple themselves.

And people’s definition of «indie» varies! ↩︎
Yes, I have a problem. ↩︎
Because they don’t use in-app-purchases. ↩︎

Wed, 06 Mar 2024 20:46:59 +0100

If Apple was a food company:

Government: «You gotta stop using plastic wrapping around one-time utensils.»

Apple: ∗wraps it in barbed wire instead∗

Apple: «See what the government made us do!» 👆🏻

Hvorfor jeg synes Apples bot er grei

Tue, 05 Mar 2024 14:14:08 +0100

Link to English version

I går fikk Apple en bot fra EU på €1.84 milliarder — for å ha gjort det vanskeligere for musikkstreamings-tjenester som Spotify å konkurrere.

Jeg har sett folk si at dette ikke gir mening, siden Spotify har en større markedsandel enn Apple Musc. Men det er ikke dét klagen handler om.

Greia er at Apple har brukt størrelsen, og den generelle markedsposisjonen deres, for å sørge for at Apple Music har en større markedsandel enn den hadde hatt hvis de måtte konkurrere rettferdig. Apple er 80 ganger så stort som Spotify. For å sette det i perspektiv, så er det samme forhold som et nesehorn og en golden retriever. ¹

Hunden slår kanskje nesehornet på "mengden pels" - men jeg ville likevel ikke kalt den "mektigere".

Her er noen av de mindre tinga Apple gjør

Jeg trykker «Play» på Macen, og ingenting spilles, så åpner operativsystemet Apple Music - selv om jeg aldri har brukt det.
De kaster prøveperioder på brukere når de kjøper produkter fra dem, som iPhone og AirPods. **Og de har til og med reklame for tjenesten i Innstillinger-appen på telefonen min! **
Når jeg bruker funksjonen i Kontrollsenter for å kjenne igjen en sang som spilles (Shazam), så gir den meg bare Apple Music-lenke

Ingen andre enn Apple har tilgang på Kontrollsenter, så Spotify får ikke lov til å lage et alternativ til funksjonen.

Men dette er altså ikke hovedgrunnen for klagen

Hvorfor Spotify «ikke har råd» til å tilby kjøp i appen

La oss gjøre litt enkel matte:

Spotify og Apple music er hverandres hovedkonkurrenter, og begge koster ca. kr 100 i måneden og betaler ca. kr 70 av dette til artister. ² Dette gir hvert selskap ca. kr 30 i overskudd — som er det samme Apple vil ha av Spotify. Er det så vanskelig å se hvordan dette gjør det vanskelig for Spotify å konkurrere?

Spotify kan jo øke prisen, for å betale til Apple. Da får vi følgende:

Spotifys økte pris: kr 140
- Til Apple: kr 42
- Til artister: kr 70
- Spotifys overskud: kr 28

Som du ser, så må de i såfall betale mer til hovedkonkurrenten sin enn sitt eget overskudd, og de må ha mye høyere pris enn denne konkurrenten. ³

Marginene til dagligvarebutikker i Norge er på rundt kr 3 per hundrelapp. Hvordan tror du det hadde vært for Rema 100 å konkurrere mot Kiwi, dersom de plutselig måtte betale kr 3 (per hundrelapp) til Norgesgruppen?

Hva bota egentlig handler om

Apple sier, «Men Spotify betaler oss jo ingenting!», men dét er ikke relevant her. ⁴

Forrige avsnitt forsøkte å forklare hvorfor Spotify «må» tas seg betalt utenfor Appen — og bota er for hvordan Apple gjorde den opplevelsen elendig.

For a decade, Apple abused its dominant position in the market for the distribution of music streaming apps through the App Store. They did so by restricting developers from informing consumers about alternative, cheaper music services available outside of the Apple ecosystem. This is illegal under EU antitrust rules, so today we have fined Apple over €1.8 billion.

Margethe Vestager, Executive Vice-President in charge of competition policy

Apple sier «men vi endra reglen om at de kan lenke ut fra appen i januar! Så vi burde ikke få denne bota.» Det er omtrent like godt forsvar, som om én som er tatt for fyllekjøring sier til dommeren «Men jeg er edru nå!»

Og den «forbedra» regelen fra januar funker forresten slik:

Utvikleren får én link i hele appen.
De må spore alle som trykker på den i minst en uke,
og alt den brukeren kjøper på nettsida di i løpet av den uka, skal Apple ha 27 % av (og da er vi tilbake på regnestykkene over).
Og utviklere som vil benytte seg av en slik lenke, må sende hele regnskapet sitt til Apple med jevne mellomrom.

Kjempe-deal!

Apple sier altså at «utviklere konkurrere på like for», og dét er kanskje sant hvis man snakker tredjeparts-utvikler mot tredjeparts-utvikler. Men denne bota handler altså om Apple mot tredjeparts-utviklere - og dét prøver de ikke en gang å argumentere for at er rettferdig.

Jeg digger ikke DMA

Det faktum at, selv om du er selskapet med mest profitt i hele verden, så har du en «plikt» til å øke denne profitten ytterlige, er sørenmæ noe av det verste med det økonomiske systemet vårt. Dette profittjaget har gjort at Apple har kjørt hardt på service revenue, som igjen har hørt til at de har tviholdt på 30 % i App Store ⁵ og at de har gått inn i markeder hvor de ikke trengs.

Jeg tror oppriktig at den beste versjonen av iOS og App Store, hadde vært en variant med Apple som velvillig despot. En despot som ikke føler at de må ta en tredel av omsetninga til utviklere samtidig som de konkurrere direkte med dem. Men når de viser seg å bare være en despot, skjønner jeg at politikere prøver å skape en endring.

Folk glemmer ofte skala på denne måten når de diskuterer Xbox (Microsoft) vs Playstation (Sony) også. Men den størrelsen og mengden makt hele firmaet har er svært relevant når vi diskuterer konkurranse-forhold. Du kan ikke se deg blind på bare en liten del av kjempene. ↩︎
Noe som er for lite - og fordelingen er også kjip. Men dét er en annen sak! ↩︎
Og Apple kunne jo til og med brukt pengene fra Spotify til å sette ned sin egen pris, og øke prisforskjellen ytterligere - og likevel ha mer overskudd. ↩︎
Jeg tror Spotify hadde digga å kunne bruke kjøp i app, dersom Apple hadde en saklig provisjonsordning og ikke konkurrerte urettferdig. ↩︎
Som de sa bare «skulle dekke utgiftene de hadde»! ↩︎

Why I Think Apple’s Fine is Fine

Mon, 04 Mar 2024 17:15:00 +0100

Lenke til norsk versjon

Today, Apple got hit with a €1.84 billion fine — for anticompetitive behaviour in the music streaming market.

I’ve seen people saying this doesn’t make sense, as Spotify has a larger market share than Apple Music — but that’s not what the complaint is about. The thing is, that Apple has used their size, ecosystem and general market position to give Apple Music a larger market share than they would’ve gotten if they had to compete fairly. Apple is about 80 times the size of Spotify. To put that into perspective, that’s about the same ratio as a rhino compared to a golden retriever. ¹

The dog might have the Rhino beat on «amount of fur», but that doesn’t make it «more powerful».

Here are some of the smaller things Apple are doing:

When I hit «Play» on my Mac (if nothing is playing), the OS opens Apple Music — even though I’ve never used it.
They throw trials at customers who buy their hardware — and they even put ads for it in the freaking Settings app on my phone!
When I use the song recognition button (Shazam) in Control Center, it only gives me an Apple Music link.

No one else is allowed in Control Center - so Spotify isn’t allowed to make their own tool like this.

But that’s not the main reason for the complaint.

Why Spotify «can’t afford» In-App Purchasing

Let’s do some simple math:

Spotify and Apple Music are each others main rivals, and they both cost about $10 per month and pay about $7 of that to artists. ² This gives each company about $3 in margins, which is the same amount that Apple wants from Spotify! Is it that hard to see how that makes it tough for Spotify to compete?

Now, Spotify could increase the price to still get some margins. This would give the following breakdown:

Spotify’s increased price: $14
- To Apple: $4.2
- To artists: $7
- Spotify’s Margin: $2.8

As you can see, they would pay more to their main competitor than what their own margin is, and they would need to charge way more than that competitor. ³

Try to imagine that situation in whatever business you’re in… Like, if Bob’s Burgers, competing with Jimmy Pesto’s Pizzeria, not only had to pay 30% of their revenue, that the Jimmy Pesto didn’t have to pay — it was to Jimmy Pesto!

What the fine really is about

Apple says «but Spotify doesn’t even pay us anything!» — but that’s not relevant here. ⁴

The last sectioned aimed to explain why Spotify has to operate outside of In-App Purchases — and the fine is about how Apple is making that experience terrible.

For a decade, Apple abused its dominant position in the market for the distribution of music streaming apps through the App Store. They did so by restricting developers from informing consumers about alternative, cheaper music services available outside of the Apple ecosystem. This is illegal under EU antitrust rules, so today we have fined Apple over €1.8 billion.

Margethe Vestager, Executive Vice-President in charge of competition policy

Apple saying «but we changed our anti-steering this January, so we shouldn’t get this fine» is as good a defence as someone defending a DUI by telling the judge that their sober now.

And remember, if Spotify provides a link through the new anti-anti-steering API, they still have to pay Apple 27% — and we’re back to Bob’s Burgers.

Apple is also saying «developers compete on a level playing field», which might be true if you’re talking Third-Party Developer vs. Third-Party Developer (they’re at least giving fewer sweetheart deals than Google). But this complaint is about Apple vs. Third-Party Developers — and they don’t make any arguments about that.

I don’t love the DMA.

The fact that even if you’re the most profitable company in the world, you still have a «duty» to not only upheld those profits, but increase them, is one of the worst things about our financial system. This profitmania has led Apple to go in hard for that sweet service revenue. And that has lead to stuff like them going into more markets than they need to, and keeping a 30% cut that was set at a time when the App Store wasn’t even meant to turn a profit.

I believe the best version of iOS, and the App Store, would’ve been one where Apple is a beneficial dictator. One that didn’t feel the need to both take a third of developers revenue, while also competing directly with them. But when they’re just a dictator, I get why regulators are pushing for change.

People keep forgetting scale like this when discussing Xbox (Microsoft) vs. Playstation (Sony) as well. But the overall power a company has, is very relevant when discussing anti-trust, so you shouldn’t be blinded by just looking at a small part of the giant. ↩︎
This is too little, and it’s distributed poorly - but that’s a separate discussion! ↩︎
Heck, Apple could even use some of the payment from Spotify to decrease their price even lower than $10. ↩︎
I think Spotify would’ve loved to be able to use the App Store payment system, if Apple charged a fair commission, had reasonable policies, and didn’t unfairly compete. ↩︎

En god metode for å aktivere «home row mods» på en Mac

Mon, 04 Mar 2024 14:34:43 +0100

Link to English version

(Dersom du allerede kjenner til konseptet, kan du klikke her for å hoppe rett til min raske metode for å aktivere dem på en Mac - selv på det interne laptop-tastaturet!)

Som en del av min ergonomi-reise, har jeg jobba med å få aktivert home row mods ¹ på tastaturene mine. Denne strålende guiden gir masse informasjon - men dette er kortversjonen:

For å ikke måtte anstrenge henda like mye når du bruker modifikatorer (som shift og kontrol), kan du overføre denne jobben til bokstavene på hjemme-raden. Når du klikker dem, er de bokstaver, mens når du holder dem inne, er de modifikatorer.

The home row letters on the right side is usually used as well, mirrored from the left. Image from the guide.

Mange som bruker dette, kvitter seg dermed med de vanlige modifikator-tastene. Men det kan være nyttig å gjøre dette selv om det «bare» fører til at du bruker de vanlige tastene mindre.

Klikking vs holding

Men hva vil det si å klikke en tast, og hva vil det si å holde inne en tast? Dét er det sentrale spørsmålet her…

La oss si at vi har gjort slik at A -tasten blir Shift når den holdes inne.

Dersom jeg har bestemt at jeg må holde tasten i 500 ms før den regnes som å holdes inne, må jeg vente 0,5 sekunder hver gang jeg vil skrive en stor bokstav. Det kan jo være litt irriterende!

Åkei, så kanskje jeg heller sette grensa på 70 ms. Da går det veldig raskt å skrive store bokstaver! Men, det viser seg at når jeg skriver ordet «affekt» ², så holder trykker jeg F -tasten litt før jeg slipper A -tasten. Siden grensa nå er så lav, så ender jeg opp med å skrive «Ffekt» (med stor F) i stedet!

Finne balansegangen

En grenseverdi på 200 ms er et ganske vanlig utgangspunkt - og da funker det slik:

Input: Trykk ned (bare) A, og slipp den _før 200 ms.
- Output: «a» (klikk)
Input: Trykk ned (bare) A, og slipp den etter 200 ms.
- Output: shift-klikk (holdt inne)
Input: Trykk ned A, og så trykk F før 200 ms (selv om du fortsetter å holde inne A).
- Output: «af» (klikk)
  - (Men hvis du fortsatte å holde F-tasten, vil bare A skrives, og så vil det gå over i F-holding, som i mitt tilfelle vil bli Command.)
Input: Trykk ned A, og så trykk F før A slippes, og etter 200 ms.
- Output: «F» (Holdt inne - og shift-modifikatoren er aktiv så lenge du holder den inne, så du kan skrive flere store bokstaver, etc.)

Høyere grenseverdi:

Du må vente litt for at modifikatorene funker.
- Dette kan oppleves litt langsomt og irriterende, og du kan ende opp med ting som å skrive «fa» når du egentlig ville gjøre «Command + A».
Men denne typen feil er ofte mindre irriterende enn motsatt - å aktivere hurtigtaster når du vil skrive.

Lavere grenseverdi:

Mindre venting gjør at det føles mer som å bruke vanlige modifikator-taster.
Men dette fører også til flere feilaktiveringer - særlig hvis du skriver raskt og/eller holder inne tastene litt lenge mens du skriver. (Det siste kalles taste-rullinger, og er visst noe jeg gjør en del.)
- Du vil få færre feilaktiveringer dersom du lærer der å skrive med korte klik,
- eller du har et tastatur med dypere taster.

Guiden jeg lenka til i starten, anbefaler å starte med ganske høy grenseverdi, og så justere den ned etterhvert som du blir vant til konseptet. Ikke gi opp de ergonomiske fordelene med hjemmeradsmodifiksjoner selv om det ikke føles optimalt i starten! Det er også mulig å ha ulike grenseverdier for hver knapp - men jeg tror det kan være lettere å få det inn i muskelminne dersom de fleste er like.

Hvordan aktivere

Det er to hovedmetoder for å få til dette:

Via firmware i eksterne tastaturer (gjennom ting som QMK og ZMK).
Via software som kjører på operativsystemet (gjennom ting som KMonad og Karabiner-Elements).

Det er noen faktorer som må vurderes, når man velger metode:

Med firmware får du tilgang på noen litt mer avanserte funksjoner, som Permissive Hold og Retro Tapping,
- og du kan også binde taster til å justere grenseverdiene underveis.
- Jeg tror også denne metoden gir større fleksibilitet når du veksler mellom én eller flere ulike modifikatorer.
Hvis funksjonene ligger i tastaturets firmware, får du de med deg dersom du tar tastaturet til en annen maskin.
- Men en fordel med å gjøre det i software, er at det funker dersom du bruker et annet tastatur til maskina (for eksempel det interne laptop-tastaturet).
  - Det er også raskere og enklere å installere gjennom sotware.
Jeg synes det føltes veldig hakkete og ekkelt med home row mods gjennom QMK - men det kan være det var pga. oppsettet mitt. Og jeg vet andre ikke hadde noe imot samme oppsettet - men jeg foretrekker sterkt skrivefølelsen når jeg bruker software.

Jeg har ikke så mye imot å mekke med QMK-filer - men det er jo mye mindre komplisert med Karabiner-Elements-handlinger.

Ting jeg ikke kan justere i software, ting jeg ikke trenger å ha på det interne tastaturet, og numpaden, justerer jeg fortsatt i QMK.

Karabiner-Elements

Dersom du vil activere home row mods gjennom KMonad eller QMK, kan du følge guiden jeg lenka til i starten av innlegget. Men jeg klarte ikke å få KMonad til å funke på Macen min, og jeg fant ingen guider til hvordan jeg kunne få det til med Karabiner-Elements da jeg søkte. Så jeg håper denne guiden kan være noe andre i min situasjon finner seinere!

Jeg lagde handlingene med det strålende Karabiner.ts -verktøyet.

1) Installer Karabiner-Elements

Du kan laste ned appen fra nettsida deres, eller hvis du har Homebrew installert, kan bdu bare skrive brew install karabiner-elements i terminalen.

Du må gi appen masser av tillatelser, da!

2) Legg til actionene

Jeg har en GitHub-repo med litt ulike varianter av home row mods (og et par andre handlinger) . Selve handlingene er lange .json-filer, som du kan legge til i Karabiner-Element slik:

3) Tilpass grenseverdiene

Forhåndsinnstillinga for to_if_hold_down_treshold er 500 ms - som er veldig lenge. Du tilpasser den slik:

Dersom du ønsker å bruke flere modifikatorer samtidig (for eksempel Shift + Option ), så holder du inne to knapper samtidig. Grenseverdiensimultaneous_threshold_milliseconds er hvor tett inntil hverandre du må trykke for at det skal regnes som samtidig.

Hvis du har holdt A for å aktivere Shift, og så ønsker å aktivere Shift + Command, så må du slippe A og så trykke A og F samtidig. Dette er en begrensning jeg ikke har funnet noen vei utenom foreløpig.

4) Test og juster

Du vil ikke digge det med én gang! Så prøv å justere grenseverdiene, samtidig som du vurderer å justere hvordan du skriver litt. For, det vil alltid være noen trade-offs.

Når du tester, kan det være lurt å bruke noe som Keycastr eller Karabiner-Elements EventViewer, som du finner her:

På det bildet kan du også se at du kan ha ulike profiler i Karabiner-Elements. Dette kan være nyttig dersom du ønsker ulike grenseverdier på ulike tastatur. Her er eksempel på profiler du kan ha:

Laptop
Eksternt tastatur
Gaming (for å game med home row mods er A Bad Time™️)

Forhåpentligvis finner noen som søker på «home row mods karabiner-elements» dette, og synes det er nyttig! Lykke til.

Hjemmerads-modifikasjoner ? ↩︎
Særlig når jeg skriver det i affekt. ↩︎

A Good Way to Get Home Row Mods on a Mac

Sun, 03 Mar 2024 15:40:58 +0100

Lenke til norsk versjon

(If you already know about Home Row Mods, click here to go straight to my quick method for getting it on your Mac - even on the .internal laptop keyboard)

As part of my ergonomics voyage, I’ve been working on getting home row mods on my keyboard. This excellent guide provides tons of info on this, but the short version is this:

To contort your hands less when using modifiers (like shift and control), the letter keys on your home row serves double duty: They’re the letters if you tap them, but modifiers if you hold them.

The home row letters on the right side is usually used as well, mirrored from the left. Image from the guide.

Many users of this completely gets rid of the regular modifier keys. But it can be benefitial as a compliment to those as well, by reducing the amount you use them.

Tapping vs holding

But what’s constitutes a tap and what constitutes a hold? That’s the central question here…

Let’s say I’ve made the A key become Shift when held.

If I’ve decided that I have to hold the key for 500 ms before it counts as a hold, I have to wait 0.5 seconds every time I want to type a capital letter. That can be quite annoying!

OK, so I might say I only have to hold the key for 70 ms for it to register as a hold. But as it turns out, when I type the word «after», I hit the F key before I release the A key - so instead I wrote «Fter» with a capital F !

Finding your sweet spot

A normal place to start is at 200 ms, and then it works like this:

Input: Press down (only) A, and release it before 200 ms.
- Output: «a» (click)
Input: Press down (only) A, and release it after 200 ms.
- Output: shift click (hold)
Input: Press down A, and then click F before 200 ms (even if you keep holding A).
- Output: «af» (click)
  - (But if you kept holding F, it would type out the A, and then transition into an «F hold», which in my case is Command.)
Input: Click A, and then click F before releasing A and after 200 ms.
- Output: «F» (Hold - and the shift modifier continues to be held, so you can write more capital letters.)

Higher treshold:

You have to wait for the modifier function to kick in.
- This can be a bit slow and annoying, and can, lead to things like typing the letters «fa» instead of selecting all with «Command + A».
But typing instead of hitting hotkeys is often less annoying than the other way around.

Lower treshold:

Less waiting time, so feels more like regular modifiers.
But this leads to more misfirings - especially if you type fast and/or hold your keys a bit while typing. (The last thing is called key roll, and I do that quite a lot it turns out.)
- You’ll get less unintended activations if you learn to type with shorter clicks,
- or you have a keyboard with more key travel.

The guide linked above recommends starting quite high, and then work your way down as you become more familiar with the concept. Don’t give up on the ergonomic upsides even though it’s not optimal the first days! It’s also possible to have different tresholds on ondividual keys - but I think it might be easier to get the muscle memory if it’s not too different.

How to activate

There are two main alternatives to get this function:

Via the firmware in external keyboards (like QMK and ZMK).
Via software running in the OS (like KMonad and Karabiner-Elements).

These are some of the things you need to consider when choosing your method:

With firmware, you get access to some more advanced functions, like Permissive Hold and Retro Tapping,
- and you can also map keys to adjust the tresholds on the fly.
- I also think it’s a bit more flexible when transitioning between several modifiers.
If the functions are in the keyboard’s firmware, you also get it when connecting to a different computer.
- But the flip side of this, is that doing it in software makes it accessible regardless of the keyboard you’re using with your computer (like an external keyboard without QMK support, or the internal laptop keyboard.
  - Also, software is quicker and easier to install, so doing it on several computers isn’t that hard.
I found the typing feel way nicer (much less lag) with Karabiner-Element (software) vs QMK (firmware) - but that might be due to my settings.

I don’t mind messing with QMK files, compiling and flashing. But it’s much more complex than adding actions via Karabiner-Elements.

I still adjust the numpad and features I only want on the external keyboard with QMK. And I keep home row mods and other dual layer functions on Karabiner - both because I want it on the internal keyboard, and because I prefer the typing feel.

Karabiner-Elements

If you want to do it via firmware or KMonad, you can follow the guide I linked in the beginning. However, I didn’t manage to get KMonad to work on my Mac, and I haven’t found any guides online for how to activate via Karabiner-Elements - so that’s what I want to provide here.

I made the actions using the excellent Karabiner.ts tool.

1) Install Karabiner-Elements

You can download the app from their website, or if you have Homebrew installed, just type brew install karabiner-elements in the terminal.

You do have to give it bunch of permissions in the OS, though!

2) Add the actions

I have a GitHub repo here, with some variants of the home row mods action (and a couple more). The actions themselves are long .json files, that you copy and paste into Karabiner here:

3) Adjust the tresholds

The default to_if_hold_down_treshold is 500 ms - which is very long. So here’s how you adjust it:

When using multiple modifiers (like Shift + Option ), you press and hold the letter keys simultanously. The simultaneous_threshold_milliseconds is how closely you must press them to be counted as being pressed at once.

**If you first hold A, to activate Shift, and then want to activate Shift + Command, you have to release A and then press A and F together. **This is a limitation I haven’t found a way around yet.

4) Test and adjust

You won’t love it at once! So try to adjust the tresholds, while also consider adjusting how you type a bit. Because there will always be some trade-offs.

While testing, I can recommend using something like Keycastr or Karabiner-Element’s EventViewer, which you’ll find here:

In that image you can also see that Karabiner-Elements can hold different Profiles. This can be useful if you find that you prefer different tresholds for different keyboards, so you might have three profiles named something like:

Laptop
External
Gaming (because gaming with home row mods is A Bad Time™️)

Searching for «home row mods karabiner-elements» has given little useful in the past. Now I hope someone will find this, and find it useful!

Wed, 28 Feb 2024 21:31:33 +0100

Via Kottke:

Studies have shown that people who ride e-bikes get more exercise than those who ride pedal bikes. «Researchers have discovered that when riders find it less grueling, they tend to go on longer rides.»

I totally believe this! I want an e-bike 🚲 in my future. 🙂

Wed, 28 Feb 2024 20:08:07 +0100

I’m trying to get comfortable with home row mods… ⌨️
It’s a constant struggle between minimising lag/unintended modifiers and how hard it is to actually use the modifiers when I want.

Anyone out there with experience on this?

Doing it with QMK worked well, but I hated the lag. And doing it with software is preferable, as I then can have the same on the internal Mac keyboard. Using simlayers in Karabiner-Elements atm.

#MechanicalKeyboards #Allheimen

Tue, 27 Feb 2024 20:03:18 +0100

Så heldig å få låne et slik av den bestete Glenn.