Day: November 6, 2022

From Monospace to Duospace: In Search of the perfect writing font

From Monospace to Duospace: In Search of the perfect writing font:

Designers have pointed out that, with all the structural benefits that may or may not come from using a monospace font when writing, there are typographical compromises in typewriter fonts that are mere mechanical constraints that can and should be overcome. Due to the way mechanical typewriters worked, using the same horizontal space for each letter was inevitable at the time. As beneficial as this regular rhythm is for writing, do we really need to squeeze every letter into the same square? Can we not at least make some exceptions?

[Yes, please. I’ve been using this for quite some time, but never pointed to their article. Allez!]

Bike Outliner: Outline Writing tool, lists, notes app for Mac

Bike Outliner: Outline Writing tool, lists, notes app for Mac:

I think macOS needs more “bicycles for the mind”.

Bike is small enough to fully understand. Once understood it’s flexible enough use for many purposes.

Bike is small, but designed for real work. It’s fast. It can handle big outlines that break other outliners. Bike’s also fast at the basics–opening files, scrolling views, and resizing windows. Bike won’t slow your Mac down.

Bike makes your writing open and accessible. Outlines are stored in text files using standard file formats. Bike is also scriptable. Automate and extend Bike with scripts.

[Nice.]

It’s not an experience

It’s not an experience:

Alto.com is a wonderful pharmacy that offers same day delivery. I have nothing but great things to say about them.

But they’re following a pattern I’m seeing far too often these days. They’re trying to track everything, and asking people to attribute "experience" to things that are mere, routine happenings.

They ask me to rate my "experience". Thing is, I didn’t have an experience. The delivery person just left the package by the mailbox and I grabbed it when I got home. And what does it mean to even rate a delivery like this? It showed up, it was correct… Is that a 5-star experience? Would it only be worth 3 stars if the package was lying on the ground instead of propped up against the wall? There isn’t enough there there to even establish a value.

If you’re going to ask anything, a more apt question might be "Did the correct prescription show up on time?" Then I can answer yes or no. But rate the experience? And every time I get a prescription, it’s the same question about the experience.

I know what they’re getting at, and I’m probably belaboring the point, but I’m seeing this everywhere and I can’t help but think it’s generating data that’s incompatible with the actual situation. Being asked to rate minutia with a 10-point scale, and ascribe depth of an experience to something that’s effectively flat and one dimensional, is overshooting the goal.

[I don’t think Jason is belaboring the point. I started writing about this from a slightly different perspective — namely, that all these companies want to have a “relationship” with me — whatever that word means when you’re not talking about individuals. What I usually want is a transaction. You sell something or a service, I pay. I don’t mind a customer service check, but it needs to be thoughtfully considered and implemented.]

Source: Jason Fried

Did Apple really make the ANC in AirPods Max worse? Yes, but…

Did Apple really make the ANC in AirPods Max worse? Yes, but…:

The technical report demonstrates the latest 4E71 firmware for AirPods Max indeed reduces the ANC and it’s not just in peoples’ heads. At the time of this writing, Apple hasn’t yet addressed RTings’ findings. There’s no class action lawsuit, though some believe it could happen. There is, however, an ongoing lawsuit between Apple and Jawbone Innovations claiming that Apple infringed on its noise cancellation patents, as discovered by Reddit user u/facingcondor.

If Apple thinks it’s a real issue, it could do a recall, or more likely, fix the ANC reduction problem in a future firmware update.

[Yuck.]