I Want a Better Mac, so I’m Cheering for a Better Linux

My recent column on Apple’s declining software quality hit a nerve. So why do any of us put up with software that grows increasingly buggy? One word: hardware.

Apple Needs a Snow Sequoia

The same year Apple launched the iPhone, it unveiled a massive upgrade to Mac OS X known as Leopard, sporting “300 New Features.” Two years later, it did something almost unheard of: it released Snow Leopard, an upgrade all about how little it added and how much it took away. Apple needs to make it snow again.

Chasing the Unified Messaging Dream

Microsoft gave it a try in 1999 and failed. The same tantalizing possibility returns every few years: a single place to communicate rather than an ever-expanding cacophony of apps, each with its own quirks. Are we any closer to this hope a quarter century later?

Tech Shouldn’t Die Young, But Increasingly Does

The Humane Pin has died and HP has killed it. The burial of last year’s tech darling, DOA as its concept was from the get-go, isn’t that important in itself, but continues the troubling trend of things we buy dying unnatural deaths.

KiiBoom Phantom 81: The Loudly Quiet Keyboard

KiiBoom isn’t exactly a name that rolls off the tongue. The company’s Phantom 81 is what their name is not: smooth, with glossy acrylic keys and custom lubricated switches.

AI Training and Category Confusion

I keep hearing people say Open AI has no room to complain if DeepSeek distilled their data, since they crawled the web for data. The article on the Verge about this seems to think that way. We need to quit being lazy and start making careful distinctions in life again; a basic requirement if we are going to ever think seriously on anything.

The web has existed from early on dependent upon spiders grabbing publicly exposed data to make things like search engines work. AI is an extension of that, quite directly, as we’re seeing AI chatbots start to supplant search engines. If a human can read something and learn from it (because it is publicly released), artificial intelligence that’s genuinely going to show any “intelligence” needs the same opportunity.

This is different from signing up for a license to use an API — something that is “paywalled” so to speak — and then breaking the license agreement, which is what DeepSeek did if it used OpenAI’s programming interface to teach its own model. That’s akin to music or software piracy. There’s a difference between learning from a book and writing about it and taking a chapter out of a book and reprinting it — proper AI training is like the former, distilling is like the latter.

The Social Media Seesaw is Why We Need the Fediverse

Last week, I praised Meta’s move from censoring information to using Community Notes to provide transparent, crowdsourced accountability. This swift reversal is encouraging, but its speed and decisiveness warn of the dangers of centralized social media like Facebook, X and even Bluesky.

The Fourth Generation Matias Tactile Pro Keyboard

The Apple Extended Keyboard's Torchbearer

Last week, I reviewed the Unicomp New Model M, the torchbearer for a line of keyboards that elicits reverent voices and knowing nods from those who have used one. Cross over to the fruity side of things and there was a similarly admired board, the Apple Extended Keyboard, and a modern continuation, Matias’s Tactile Pro.

The Legend Never Left: The Unicomp New Model M

Longtime keyboard enthusiasts will tell you there is one keyboard that stands above the others: the legendary IBM Model M. Dating to the 1980s, the board is large and loud, beloved for its feel and revered for its reliability. It is peculiar we don’t see more people using them, because here’s a secret: the Model M is still in production.

Intriguing Cyber Monday Deals

There are an overwhelming avalanche of great deals (and not so great ones masked to look great) on any given Cyber Monday, but here are a few of Testy Tim’s standout favorites for 2024.