I’ve been quiet here for quite a few months—what can I say, life happened, including an epic 7,200+ mile, 23 state, and two countries in three weeks road trip.

I’ll have more to say about the trip in the future, but first up, our photos from the places we visited:

robservatory.com/postimages/_...

Moom 4.2 adds app launching to saved layouts. Combine that with macOS' ability to restore windows, and it's one click from a blank screen to organized windows in multiple apps.

There are some other nice changes, too…

manytricks.com/blog/?p=6574

Even with antialiasing disabled, Terminal smooths fonts aggressively (top image). To fix, run in Terminal and relaunch:

defaults write com.apple.Terminal AppleFontSmoothing -int 0

Much crisper, though there is still low-level anti-aliasing so it looks good (to my eye, at least).

Without reading the linked blog post, who knows what built-in macOS app I used to create this launcher? I had no idea it existed until yesterday, and yet it's been in the OS since macOS 10.15 (Catalina).

It can do a lot more than launch apps, too.

robservatory.com/create-macos...

Alright, after much futzing, I got it (mostly) working. This doesn't seem to work in Messages, but in other apps, it centers the frontmost window.

(I know this is built-in to Sequoia; I was trying to help someone who asked about it.)

I am not a Shortcuts user at all. (I use Keyboard Maestro for anything I want to automate on my Mac.) But I'm trying to help a user with a question, and I don't understand why this Shortcut doesn't do anything.

I think I've tried all possible inputs, but still, nothing. Help?

I have an AirTag in my wallet, taped into a corner. It works well, but changing the battery is a pain. I searched Amazon for AirTag wallets…and they're all designed to display the AirTag as a design feature?

Why would you make it so obvious to a thief that there's an AirTag they need to remove?

Surely there's some way to disable these asinine buttons in iOS' Mail app? I'll never use them, as they don't apply to my workflow at all. I turned off Apple Intelligence, yet the buttons persist.

Gads, they're hideous.

A friend said I should check out @macstories story on the best Mac apps of the year. I do usually read it each year, but hadn't seen it yet for 2024.

Was not expecting to see Moom as the Best Mac App—we are humbled and surprised!

www.macstories.net/stories/macs...

I was filling in a Nielsen Research survey on the web, from a URL they'd sent in the mail. It included the attached question.

A web form.
On the internet.
Asking me if I have access to the internet.

"I just don't understand it … 100% of our respondents have internet access. That's incredible!"

Moom 4.1 is out, with two oft-requested new features: Your assigned keyboard shortcuts now show up in Settings’ sidebar, and drop zones can be activated by dragging a window while holding down a modifier key. We also squashed a few bugs.

manytricks.com/blog/?p=6448...

TIL there's a setting for that!

Doesn't Apple tell developers not to do this very thing? Even if it's allowed, I think it's completely tasteless; what a waste of my time and screen real estate.

Last year, after using one flight stick on my Macs for 24 years, I was looking for a replacement. But there didn't seem to be much out there.

So I tried a TurtleBeach VelocityOne, though it wasn't marked as Mac compatible …ㅤit's been working great for 15 months!

robservatory.com/undocumented...

I’ve updated my history of macOS updates blog post for macOS 14.6. After peaking at 33 releases for macOS 11, it’s clear that Apple has slowed the pace of updates—macOS 14 may not even reach 15 releases.

Fewer updates with more stuff in each, I guess?

robservatory.com/a-full-histo...

If you're a user of our Moom app, and are curious about what the near future has in store for you, you might want to wander past our Discord channel for a glimpse into the crystal ball…

discord.com/channels/831...

Seems a local car dealer has hired an AI chatbot to write its marketing promotional messages.

Note that it's not my birthday, and yes, we went to the car show at the Convention Center…in maybe 2016 or 2017?

Bizarre!

They are *always* watching…

TIL that CSS "Gray" is darker than CSS "DarkGray." Try it yourself:

<p style="color:Gray">This is Gray</p>
<p style="color:DarkGray">This is DarkGray</p>

(And hello all; trying Yet Another Not Twitter; Mastodon seems OK but very geeky. This seems more approachable.)