Everyone’s A Critic.

When In Rome.

Jamie was giving haircuts tonight. He’s the resident barber, and a real one as well. I decided to jump in on the fun and had him shave off my mustache. 

Back when he was in barber school I let him practice his straight razor techniques on my face and he did a great job. Tonight he just grabbed the clippers and electric shaver and scraped off my grey hair.

It’s been a while since I’ve been clean shaven; I think I’ll keep the look for a while.

Stomp.

My husband and I went to “Broadway in Tucson” and saw “Stomp”. This was a Christmas gift and it was fun to re-indulge in the holiday spirit as we enjoyed dinner out and the made our way to Centennial Hall.

We were amongst the first folks to take our seats.

I found the production to be quite interesting. It was unlike anything I’ve seen before on the stage and honestly, I was prepared for it to be a bit louder than it turned out to be.

For those not familiar, “Stomp” is basically a percussion performance piece, using every day objects. The beats are intermingled with humor and movement. Overall it’s quite an enjoyable experience.

With all that’s been going on in the past couple of weeks, it was good to escape to this performance for a little while.

Intelligence?

Apple has been touting “Apple Intelligence” hard since last year’s WWDC (Worldwide Developers’ Conference). All the marketing said Apple Intelligence would be available with the release of the iPhone 16 series. It wasn’t released with the new phones but has rather been ‘dribbled’ out to users over the last few months since late October. Apple has stated these releases are in “beta” status, which means they’re not polished, still under active development, etc.

Why a company is hinging its latest and greatest thing on beta software is beyond my comprehension as a software developer. Can you imagine this scenario if we sent astronauts to the Moon using beta software? “I’m sorry folks, we need to reboot the onboard computer due to a glitch, hold your breath for the next 10 minutes while we look into the bugs”.

Beta software being released to the general public has significantly lowered expectations in computer hardware and software and frankly, across society in general. Everyone expects bugs and glitches to be everywhere now.

We live in a society infested with virtual fleas.

I’ve been trying to use the dribs and drabs of Apple Intelligence since their soft release in late October. I’ve let the A.I. sort my email. I’ve smirked at horrible text and mail message summaries. I should have grabbed one particularly funny screenshot, “Mother is making screaming noises”. I believe the actual text had something to do with frustration with an iPhone.

But it’s in beta, so it is what it is.

That’s Apple’s excuse for everything now. Slap a “beta” on the feature and call it a day. If Apple Intelligence were to summarize this approach, “Apple doesn’t really know its direction or platform. Wedging Apple Intelligence into everything. Please stockholders”.

Today I turned off Apple Intelligence across my devices. The ‘feature’ is getting in my way too often. I upgraded my MacBook Air to the latest version of MacOS and now I can no longer do a spotlight search for an application. As a keyboard centric user, if I want to open my web browser I’ve always been able to hit CMD-SPACEBAR, type Firefox, and hit return. Now the top result of that search is a W-2 form from 2020 when I used Firefox to download the associated PDF.

In no way is that intelligent.

When I turned Apple Intelligence off I was warned that Siri would no longer be able to use the advanced features of Apple Intelligence. If what I’ve experienced with Siri since late October is the result of Apple Intelligence, well then Apple needs to just give up the ghost. To put it another way, I often fantasize of hitting a HomePod mini with a baseball bat and watching it fly out into the wash behind the house, but I don’t want to pollute the desert with garbage.

I’ll take my chances with Siri until I move to something a little more intelligent.

I honestly don’t know what Apple is trying to achieve outside of lining the pockets of stockholders these days. Anything that used to make Apple stand out has all but vanished. Yeah, the hardware is excellent but nearly not repairable. For a company that featured the awesome Octavia Spencer as Mother Nature, they seem to be doing everything they can to try to shove Chiffon in her face.

As I finish up this blog entry I am listening to motivational music using Bluetooth headphones connected to my iPhone. The music just abruptly stopped, even though the player shows everything humming along nicely on my iPhone display. I had to restart the app and restart my headphones to get things working again, and even then Bluetooth seemed to struggle.

Bluetooth has been around for only a few decades, so perhaps it’s still ‘beta’.

I gripe about Apple more than I praise them these days and I’m not ashamed of this. It’s warranted.

I don’t want Apple Intelligence and I’m pretty sure anyone reading this doesn’t want it either. With the latest AI (LLM) models coming out of China and completely spanking the American “AI” industry, I’m hopeful this stupid AI bubble will pop sooner than later.

And that’s smart.

Halloween.

Halloween is my second least favorite holiday of the year, right behind April Fools’ Day. I’ve never been much into Halloween. When I was a kid I’d wait until that morning to figure out if I was going to wear a costume to school or not. As an adult it seems quite loud.

If I’m going to dress up in a costume I’ll do it any day I please.

Hacks.

We finished up season three of “Hacks” on HBO Max. I definitely enjoyed this season of the show. I don’t know if I enjoyed it more than season two, because this new trend of releasing these short bursts of series with no rhyme or reason to timing kind of messes with my memory and I don’t really remember season two. But I liked the way season three went along. The screen time afforded to the supporting players seemed a bit more proportional to their importance to the story.

I was a little surprised at the amount of “very progressive awareness” with some of the storyline choices. Sometimes I feel like the writers were checking off boxes on a checklist, but for me it worked 99% of the time and I didn’t roll my eyes once. Maybe I’m just getting old. That being said, it was interesting to see two main characters of different generations having their take on key topics of that nature.

I’m purposely writing in a vague way and without any spoilers in case you want to watch the show. I absolutely think you should give it a go. And Max comes from with your AT&T cellular subscription! I don’t know why AT&T has buddied up with HBO Max but we live in a crazy country like that.

Finale.

A Still from For All Mankind Season 4 Finale, Episode 10.

We finished up the latest season of “For All Mankind”. This was the fourth season of the Apple TV+ series, which highlights an alternate history based on the Russians being the first to the moon back in the late 1960s. Season 4 took place in the early to mid 2000s.

In this alternate history, the space race never stopped, and by 2003, seven countries have come together as the “M7” and there’s a well established colony on Mars. Russia is still very much the USSR and Al Gore is president of the United States. The spirit of what we know as the space race in the 1960s is still very much present and technological advances are happening quicker in this alternate timeline because of each country’s drive to be first in everything related to space, despite the cooperation taking place between the countries. In season four, a lot of the space industry has gone to corporations, specifically, “Helios Aeronautics” is the main contractor for much of the technology.

Earl and I had a hard time with the first couple of episodes of this season; it just seemed to be going in weird directions. The series has never focused solely on Science Fiction, there’s a lot of human elements, and in a similar vein to the the original Star Trek, the series takes on current events in their own way. The employees of Helios, the political climate, and many of the other socioeconomic based story lines feel very familiar. After all, no matter the technology present, humans will always be humans that do unfortunate human things.

The season finale was undoubtedly my favorite episode of the season. Clocking in at around 80 minutes, things were tidied up fairly well, there were a couple of lefts and rights in the story line that I didn’t expect, and at times I had a hard time deciding who I was suppose to be cheering on. I thoroughly enjoyed the viewing experience.

Apple has not confirmed a season five as of yet, but the episode left room for growth without being too obvious about it. It’s my understanding the writers have written out a plot intended for seven seasons. I’m hoping they get to see that come to fruition. Though the tone of the show has changed a little bit and as the alternate universe diverges from our reality more and more as the decades go by, I still enjoy the show and while this finale was satisfying, I’d really like to see the rest of it come to its intended conclusion.

Remote.

I’ve worked at home for over a decade. I’m wired to work from home and I do well working in my own office with minimal distraction. My career has advanced nicely while working at home.

I heard a news story recently indicating the mayor of Washington, D.C. has been lobbying the U.S. government to have government employees work from offices instead of working from home. Not to increase productivity or anything, no, this is so the employees in question can patronize the downtown businesses in D.C.

This is why an economy based on services and not centered on manufacturing is a bad thing. It shouldn’t be the responsibility of productive employees working from home to prop up businesses in a retail area that are struggling because of hybrid work policies. I believe in small businesses and we should support them in any way. However, small business owners should always be reviewing their business plans and going after the next big thing.

Quality Control.

For a while, there were major quality control issues with the manufacture of license plates in the Empire State. New York has been slowly replacing their license plates over the past few years with a new black-on-white design, but it’s still quite common to see license plates shredding and/or decomposing on vehicles.

What’s interesting is license plates made 20 years ago (beginning with “A” or “B” on passenger cars) are still quite intact and looking good. It’s these plates beginning with a “G” that are having issues.

It’s not always a great idea to go with the lowest bidder.

Dear Apple, Part Two.

Dear Apple,

What are you doing with HomeKit? Do you know? Does anyone on your team know? Because Siri doesn’t know. After the latest update (to 16.3?) things will work in the morning but absolutely not in the evening. Or vice versa. Or my HomePods will no longer recognize my voice. Enter password. Enter your password. Enter your password on every HomePod you own. Enter again.

Apple could have knocked it out of the park with HomeKit and the associated HomePod line of hardware. But no, it’s taken a back seat and no one knows why. Promises of things getting better and easier to navigate and more reliable fall by the wayside.

We need more love for HomeKit. Full stop. I want my home automation to live in the better security of iCloud but more importantly I want it to be reliable.

It’s not reliable right now.

Do better.