Well, I’d like to see ol Donny Trump wriggle his way out of THIS jam!
Trump wriggles his way out of the jam easily
Ah! Well. Nevertheless,

That’s a popular meme from 2016 that still holds up.

The Apollo story is even uglier. Apparently, Reddit CEO Huffman is telling people that Apollo developer Christian Selig tried to blackmail Reddit for $10 million. Selig says that’s bullshit and he has recordings to prove it.

According to Selig, he said something on a call with Reddit officials that the officials initially took as blackmail. He said it was nothing of the kind, and explained himself, and the Reddit officials apologized—five times.

Enshittifying the Internet seems to be a theme this week. In addition to Reddit knifing third-party apps, Wordpress is adding generative AI capabilities to its blogging software, which will only lead to an explosion in clickbait search engine spam. It’s a naked revenue grab by Wordpress’s parent company, Automattic, at the expense of making the Internet vastly less usable for the rest of us. I thought Automattic was better than that.

Today is a day of petty disappointments. I’ve had a couple of business developments that are discouraging. Hopefully, they’ll come to nothing, but they’re discouraging in the moment.

Also, my five-year-old Macbook Pro is getting flaky. I’ve noticed the Internet slows to a crawl at lunchtime. Do you know what I like to do at lunch? Read things on the Internet. Do you know what I don’t like doing at lunch? Troubleshooting network problems.

Because the Macbook is so old, I routinely reboot it in the morning to optimize performance. Today, I also had to reboot it at lunch to make those networking problems go away. Yesterday, I returned from stepping away from my desk and found the MacBook had spontaneously rebooted itself, which is never a good sign.

I do not have a new MacBook in the budget this year.

I’m disappointed that Reddit is jacking up its API pricing and forcing developer Christian Selig to shut down his Reddit app Apollo. It’s one of my favorite iPhone and iPad apps. It feels like Reddit is flipping a big fat middle finger to me and many other people who enjoyed using Apollo.

I use Apollo to find about half of the memes, vintage ads, vintage photos, and other found media that I post regularly to Facebook and Tumblr. If you’ve enjoyed seeing those, then Reddit is flipping you the bird too.

I also use Tumblr to find those found media, and I’m not thrilled with the direction Tumblr is taking either.

UPDATE: A friend reminds me that Reddit is essentially killing all third-party apps, not just Apollo.

To me the Macintosh has always felt more like a place than a thing. Not a place I go physically, but a place my mind goes intellectually. When I’m working or playing and in the flow, it has always felt like MacOS is where I am. I’m in the Mac. Interruptions — say, the doorbell or my phone ringing — are momentarily disorienting when I’m in the flow on the Mac, because I’m pulled out of that world and into the physical one.

— John Gruber, Daring Fireball: First Impressions of Vision Pro and VisionOS

Yes! And the same is true for me on the iPad and also on the iPhone (but less so). And it’s not specific to Apple products; it’s true for any computer, tablet or phone.

And when I go to Facebook or other social media platforms or read RSS feeds, it’s like traveling to other places. Indeed, it sometimes surprises me to think how much time I spend physically in one room of the house because it feels like I’ve been out and about all day.

Gruber is discussing this feeling of placeness in the context of the Apple Vision Pro, which he tried, and how it will vastly enhance the sense of place when using computers.

The most impressive feature of Vision Pro is that it enables you to hang multiple virtual 4K displays all around your field of vision, some as big as the broadest widescreen TVs.

Gruber again:

Last night I chatted with a friend who, I found out only then, has been using Vision Pro for months inside Apple. … he spent weeks feeling a bit constrained, keeping his open VisionOS windows all in front of him as though on a virtual display, before a colleague opened his mind to spreading out and making applications windows much larger and arranging them in a wider carousel not merely in front of him but around him. The constraints of even the largest physical display simply do not exist with VisionOS.

I absolutely expect to buy the Vision Pro. But not at its opening price of $3,500. We don’t have that kind of money lying around (especially because Julie wants one too). But I expect the price will come down to an affordable range in three to five years.