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A technology novice may know that iCloud syncs their documents across all their devices— iPhone, iPad, and Mac. Someone a little more tech-savvy may understand that the cloud, as a general concept, is also used to offload computing burdens like speech-to-text and virtual assistants.

We all know that our data floating in the cloud is being kept, monitored, analyzed, and sold. Tell Alexa your hopes and dreams, how perhaps you are having trouble sleeping, and he'll blab to Jeff Bezos about it. Maybe Jeff uses that gossip to sell you a better mattress.

Google Assistant and Cortana (RIP) are both blabbermouths, too. It's not unreasonable to think Siri rolls with the same crowds. But I'm not so sure. Most of what you tell Siri never leaves your phone. Even for processing your voice, it's all done on your iDevice.

Listen, I get it. We live in a capitalist world with faceless shareholders and petulant billionaires. Why would Apple be any different? Part of me knows that enough time passes and my foot will eventually reach my mouth. But right now, based on the information available, it's clear that Apple is killing the cloud as we know it. And it's doing so in favor of on-device computing and storage.

Anything that floats in the air is encrypted and out of Tim Cook's reach. That's an incredible feat. It shows a path for tech companies to profit without soaking themselves in our data. Will Amazon or Google ever give up their data addiction? Likely not. But start-ups sprout every day.

Over the last few years, Apple has favored on-device computing and encryption:

1. Siri processes on-device
2. So does dictation
3. And the Neural Network
4. Our files live on our devices first
5. All our stuff in iCloud is encrypted

Plus, iPhones increase storage every year like clockwork. We can get 2TB mobile devices. That's wild. I mean, it's overpriced like hell, but it's still amazing.

iCloud has essentially become a traffic guard that directs our digital lives from one iDevice to the next. And it never asks, “How's your day, hot shot?” That seems like a good thing.

Note: This post is mainly rushed thoughts. I'll keep adding and polishing.

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Type: #Note Re: #Apple #Technology

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Meta's vision for social media is a billion lobotomized users engaging with The Hamburglar's new value meal. To realize that vision, the conglomerate is downgrading “news” on its platforms.

Link to post here.

Instagram CEO Adam Mosseri has taken a wishy-washy stance on news and its roll on the Threads platform. He's mentioned “over promising” and “under delivering” at least a couple of times. Whatever the hell that means, I don't buy it.

Meta does not like posts that take you off its app, like ones with URLs. Like news. They never have. That's really the crux of this news situation.

Facebook learned that bullying news outlets into publishing natively on Instant Articles does not work. If it did work, and Threads could keep everyone on the app while offering breaking news coverage, the folks at Meta would be singing a different tune.

Mosseri says he won't “amplify” news. He has yet to, as far as I'm aware, define what “news” is and isn't. He has not announced what “amplify” means, or if the opposite of that means “suppress.”

This whole news thing is a convenient problem for Meta because now they can flag all URLs as “news” and suppressed it in their algorithm. Are cooking blogs considered news? Who knows.

Anyway, let's all be good little users and creators who exist only to amplify Fortune 500 companies and produce content for Meta's large language models.

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Type: #Note Re: #Meta #SocialMedia

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There's a fundamental misunderstanding of what design sets to accomplish. Scrolling design-focused forums, you get the sense that design and art are viewed as interchangeable ideologies. We've somehow formed the belief that design, like art, can exist for its own sake without any consideration for function or purpose.

By all accounts from great designers, this aesthete view of design is a misguided dogma.

Design can absolutely be a work of art. But unlike, say, a painting, a logo design derives its beauty from function.

Art may live without any justification. It is art, and its purpose is simply to exist.

Design, however, must prove it is worthy of existence by demonstrating a functional ability. If design fails to meet this threshold, it is neither art nor design. It is noise.

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Type: #Note Re: #Design

A few things I stumbled upon last week. No theme. Just some cool stuff.

Every Noise Ever wonder what genre an artist belongs to? In an effort to categorize music and personalize playlists, Spotify “invented” a bunch of sub genres. Every Noise lets you enter an artist name and reveal the associated sub genres.

First iPhone Impressions Noted Apple blogger and Markdown inventor John Gruber writes about his experience with the first ever iPhone in 2007.

Autonomy Online A Case For The IndieWeb Name says it all. Good write up.

Twitter founder Jack Dorsey tweets his love for the stock Notes app on iOS (2018) Nothing wrong with using notes but, I never felt the urge to evangelize Apple's most neglected bloatware. Jack seems to love it. Good for him. Maybe he can write an apology in it for selling twitter to a child.

Publishing to 11ty with iA Writer and Micropub I am this close to building a custom blog. I've done a ton of research to find a good static blog framework and 11ty seems to be a favorite among bespoke bloggers. Here's what appears to be a great tutorial (haven't done it yet) that explains how to set up an 11ty-powered blog and post directly from iA Writer. It's exactly what I want to do so I'm excited to try it.

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Type: #Note Re: #Finds