pkamb

ThinkPad's announcement of 16:9 displays in 2009:

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> I stated in my last post that the industry is going to go through yet another display ratio change over the next year or so.

> For years we've had 4:3 “square” displays. These have all but disappeared from the market as the current standard is 16:10 “wide.”

> The industry is about to move yet again to true 16:9 wide. This means that the ratio of your PC display will match that of your HDTV. This change won't happen overnight, but will phase in gradually. In fact, it's already started. Many of the newest consumer notebooks, especially in the 15″ class now sport the more rectangular 16:9 display.

> Again, we can thank the LCD manufacturers for this change. By cutting everything in the same aspect ratio, they have less waste per large sheet of glass. Since these manufacturers make more selling TV displays than laptop displays, the PC vendors have almost zero say in this change. We simply have to adapt. As much as I would like it to be so, 4:3 is not coming back.

> For readers of this blog, yes, I had our team run the math. In order to provide a high end IPS display option, we'd need well over 15,000 confirmed orders to make it even worth considering. This is due to minimum order quantities, creating models, stocking replacement parts for years to come, etc. If someone enterprising wants to create a database of (legitimate) credit card numbers of confirmed, non-cancellable orders, I'm sure that it would get some attention around here. (For you legal types, this does not constitute an offer to sell.)

> https://web.archive.org/web/20111030050311/http://www.lenovo...

ThinkPad T61 models changed from 1400x1050 (SXGA+) to 1440x900 (WXGA+) when they went widescreen.

They literally just lopped off 150 vertical pixels. There wasn’t some corresponding gain in horizontal space. You could fit the same number of xterms side-by-side on either laptop.

Yeah, this kind of content/UI is definitely available on Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat, and probably Facebook.

YouTube and Twitch though seem to have some of the strongest "content creator" culture and are both still stuck in landscape videos and other sub-optimal phone UI.

Where is the vertical video app that lets you watch your favorite YouTube/IG/Twitch-type “content creators” on your phone in the same easy/addictive format as Stories?

That seems to be what people want, not network produced scripted tv made brief + vertical.

It’s crazy that there aren’t better tools for paid podcasts.

Chapo and C*town provide 2 RSS feeds. The free/paid feeds don’t show up next to each other in your podcast app because they’re named differently (dumb). No way to merge feeds in the popular podcast apps.

Smart producers like Stratechery/Dithering provide individual personal RSS feeds that combine the free and paid. And deliver only the free if your subscription lapses. But those are one-off CMSs that most Patreon podcasts don’t have the means to deploy.

I'm talking mostly about normal tabs in normal desktop browsers. When you open a new tab, it should keep the "Back" history of its parent.

Safari for iOS, too, has a feature where you can temporarily go "Back" from new tabs. But like you said it breaks if you do anything else. Kind of a hack for mobile convenience rather than a true feature.

Instagram Stories and Snapchat both prove that there absolutely is a huge demand for mobile-only portrait short-form video content.

Maybe not "produced TV shows" in that format, as Quibi seemed to be pushing.

But I'd much prefer watching vloggers/YouTubers/Twitch/etc. in that format rather than in a landscape video on my phone.

How about just an option for new tabs to retain a “Back” history to their parent.

“Send with Transfer...” pollutes the context menu of every folder on my Mac, not just in the Dropbox folder. Is there a way to remove that menu item?

https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/389415/remove-drop...

ThinkPad X40 is the perfect machine for this. I’d love to see a dedicated disro with only writing + simple local and/or network backup.

I think most of these buildings are great. What I can’t stand are the contemporary “modern” mixed-use buildings sweeping cities such as Seattle. You know the ones: multi-colored, multi-setback, multi-material. Awful.

Directly answered here: https://hey.com/apple/iap/

30" Cinema Display has better than 5k iMac resolution, but at 1x. 160 extra vertical pixels.

Still the best monitor around. $3000 MSRP now available used for $200-300.

> I have now heard from multiple developers, both big and small, that over the last few months Apple has been refusing to update their app unless their SaaS service adds in-app purchase. If this has happened to you please email me blog @ my site domain. 100% off the record.

https://twitter.com/benthompson/status/1273079296618201093

This "URL eliding" makes parameters impossible to click and select. So annoying. I filed a bug for desktop Chrome:

https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=108440...

I'd love a service that surfaced "architecturally desirable" homes for sale in your area, at various price points.

This is a hard criteria to define. But I know it when I see it. Some combination of materials, craftsmanship, age, and design. Not necessarily location or price.

It's very hard to filter for using Redfin or Zillow. I wish there was an MLS site that showed you 50+ listing thumbnails on a single page and allowed you to click through on any that caught your eye.

Exactly. For Reddit the AMP version and the mobile site look almost exactly the same... except the AMP site performs worse due to the AMP restrictions.

So none of the "nice" Reddit mobile site features actually work, and supposed "one-time" annoyances like the "Download the App" pop-up don't get cookied under AMP and continue to annoy on every google search. Insane!

I don't understand why Reddit specifically puts up with AMP.

They already have a "good" mobile site. The AMP pages break reddit results and result in the constant annoyance of having to dismiss "Open in App?" banners both in the AMP view and on the mobile site. Everyone hates the AMP page. Why keep it? You already invested a ton of resources in the fast/nice mobile app...

I've never understood how their Apple TV apps (Amazon Prime Video, Twitch, etc.) are so bad.

If the Prime TV app was better I'd honestly probably cancel Netflix. But as-is I avoid using it completely.

Then I interviewed for a mobile position at Amazon. Now I understand. A Facebook iOS recruiter laughed at my experience.

I edit and improve hundreds of posts on Stack Overflow.

I want to edit posts on SuperUser too... but SE won't let me. Despite having enough rep for complete trust on SO, I'm a bit short of 2000 on Super User.

If I try to edit a post, it goes into a queue for review by high-rep SU users. But there aren't enough of those, because the site is lower-traffic. So it takes hours to review. High-rep SO users, of which there are MANY, cannot contribute to this queue.

The questions and answers and culture between Stack Overflow, Super User, Ask Different, and their other "tech" sites are essentially exactly the same. There's no reason I couldn't contribute to any of those sites. But their multiple account system makes it impossible.

Stack Exchange is even better, for sites with sufficiently large communities. Stack Overflow and Ask Different are amazing.

But low-traffic SE sites just don't compete. I wish SE would change their account system and/or design so that their smaller sites became a better resource.

Don't discount Instagram killing many of those communities.

So much easier to take a picture on your phone and post it to your Instagram page or story. Better dopamine rush, too, from a bunch of Like/Comment notifications rather than maybe a single forum reply hours later.

I'd love a search engine that mainly searched Stack Exchange, (old.)Reddit, and some subset of blogs or single-author websites.

Especially removing Quora, Pinterest, and aggregation/reposting/SEO/affiliate blogs.

And all "product" images with a white background. Only show real photographs.

I hope this does not change the usability of large numbers of tabs in Chrome, which are still completely usable when they shrink down to Favicon size.

In contrast to Safari, which never shrinks tabs below ~1 inch and instead changes the tab bar to an awful horizontal scrolling/carousel view.

Safari tabs are completely unusable past around 15 tabs when it starts hiding and resizing the tabs on the edges. It's the main thing preventing me from switching from Chrome to Safari.

Sadly no Apollo House from Peep Show.

    Location: Seattle
    Remote: Ok
    Willing to relocate: No
    Technologies: Swift, Objective-C, Xcode, mobile, AppKit, UIKit
    Résumé/CV: https://www.linkedin.com/in/pkamb/ - https://stackoverflow.com/users/1265393/pkamb
    Email: [firstname][lastname] @ gmail (see linkedin)

I recently released an app on the Mac App Store: https://servicestation.menu/

Now looking for my next gig in the iOS or Mac world. Been working on Apple platforms for the last 10 years.

I don't really want/need to use a new horizontal tab paradigm that supports thousands of tabs. I just want a really good implementation of the standard top-of-the-window tab bar.

Built in "New File" functionality is definitely on the to-do list, and a very popular request from Windows users.

Running a support/issues website on GitHub without hosting the code is perhaps slightly weird, but it has been working well for me. GitHub does not mandate any licensing requirement.

"New Terminal at Folder" does work if you right-click a folder... but NOT if you right-click the background of a Folder you already have open. That's the primary way I want to open Terminal.

But more importantly it's the UX difference between these two images:

https://imgur.com/a/pt3yQ2q

You can definitely already launch applications and scripts in macOS via "Open With" or the "Services" submenus.

Service Station moves them to the top of your right-click menu, gives them icons, and lets you completely customize the menu including targeting menus to show for only very specific selected file types.

I would absolutely switch to Safari or Firefox except for the fact that I find Chrome's tab system to be so good.

Chrome tabs load and appear instantly. As you add more tabs they shrink down to a tiny but still usable favicon size. As you close tabs they resize well and with nice little UX behavior like the next close button always appearing directly under your mouse. They close and re-open instantly.

When you press enter in the address bar Chrome always loads your Search, unlike Safari, which often requires second press, or weirdly loses focus. Even doing simple web search feels so slow and broken in Safari tabs. When you have a moderate number of tabs Safari switches to this horizontal scrolling mode where half of your tabs are no longer visible. Basically unusable.

Chrome tabs are so good compared to the standard macOS tabs found in places like Safari and Finder. I wish I could have them everywhere.