Newsletter 3.0
It’s nearly March 2025 and I am finally back with a Newsletter! Sorry about that 😬. I have been spending some time fixing up the toolchain behind the Newsletter as I intend to do more with it (and some new newsletters too) and wanted to build something that made it easier for me to get content together and keep a copy on my website. Anyway, back now, and with a fair backlog of content.
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35% off anything at Manning Publications
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So…How did Apple Music become a hero of streaming services, and Spotify a supervillain?
I’ve used Apple Music for a while. Now, perhaps thanks to the Superbowl, or its major competitor endlessly annoying its customers and artists, the service seems to be gaining mindshare.
Mac Power Users #784: Exploring AI & Productivity, with Michael Hyatt — Relay FM
Perhaps one of my favourite podcasts, this was a great episode of MPU, looking at useful, productive, and constructive AI tools with someone who has discovered real use cases for using them.
A Classic Pick 2: Hidden Gems
I often find that some Mac podcasts keep recommending the same applications… A secret app cabal, perhaps 😆. So it was great to hear apps in this episode that I have never heard of.
Tower: a graphical interface for git
Like many of you, I use Git regularly. Some of us use the terminal and other tools built into our IDE. Whereas I and many others like to use a dedicated git graphical user interface (GUI).
For many years, I have used Fork, but the good folks at Tower sent me a license to take their well-known and venerable git GUI for a spin.
Text-based diagrams taken mainstream with Mermaid Chart
The markup-based graphing and diagramming language Mermaid is popular in the technical world, with support in many tools and platforms. Now, the creators behind the open source project have a new commercial version.
WordPress is in trouble
The saga continues. And gets worse. Initially I was more pragmatic about Matt Mullenweg’s actions, but the more I hear and read about his recent and past actions, the more I realise that Wordpress has never really been as “open” as I thought.
Arizonas Tiny Taipei: How a Taiwanese Chip Factory Seeded a Community
A side effect of the Biden Administration’s Chip act has been the building of several chip factories, including one giant project from TSMC, makers of many of the chips you use regularly. In case you didn’t know, the “T” stands for “Taiwan”. And an influx of Taiwanese people, at least temporarily, into a small Arizona community seems to be surprising locals… Whatever your feelings on that might be, the main aspect of this piece that grabbed me was the sudden and spontaneous entrepreneurial spirit of many workers or existing Taiwanese to make the newcomers feel welcome with food and community spaces, creating something of a “Tiny Taipei”.
Why Trump Wants Greenland (and more)
Greenland has been in the news more the past few weeks than possibly in total the past few years. One of those places you’ve heard of but know very little about, or possibly where it even is, suddenly its vast sparseness is everywhere. This podcast episode gave some great background history and information on the historical why, why now, and what could happen next.
How macOS has become more private
SearchLink — BrettTerpstra.com
Brett Terpstra is infamous for his many useful macOS utilities and for ages I’ve been looking for a way be able to automatically search for a relevant link and populate it when writing markdown or similar syntax. The Drafts application already does this, as does Google Docs. And then I came across SearchLink which does this across all markdown style applications 🤯.
New Order — Blue Monday
The first of two great podcast episodes on the history of music creation. First Blue Monday, which emerged out of tragedy from a live filler song to biggest hit.
Protecting Undersea Internet Cables Is a Tech Nightmare
Anyone who’s followed my newsletter and/or podcast for a while knows I am somewhat obsessed with undersea cables as my Grandfather helped lay some of the older underwater copper telephone cables. Now they crisscross the world providing a valuable service and are increasingly part of a subversive submerged war.
How Adobes bet on non-exploitative AI is paying off
I’m using Adobe’s inbuilt AI tools somewhat regularly, but the quality of results can still vary quite wildly. While the companies moves has angered many in their community of users as an effort to “put them out of work”, in turns out that in a tools and service ecosystem that’s fairly anti-creative, Adobe’s efforts are far from the worst.
Episode 147: “Hey Joe” by The Jimi Hendrix Experience
As the podcast continues into the early 1970s (and I am at least a year behind the current episode) each episode of the podcast gets longer and more interesting thanks to greater fame and access to people who vaguely remember being there. I could recommend many of the episodes around the 145–150 mark, but the story of the song, Hey Joe, and Jimi Hendrix was particularly interesting.
