from the desk of
Nick Heer.
Articles
All Posts
Sponsorship
About
December 6, 2023
Forums of Pain
November 16, 2023
Interpreting Twitter CEO Linda Yaccarino Based on Recent Events
November 10, 2023
So Far, A.I.-Generated Images of Current Events Seem Rare in News Stories
November 7, 2023
Computers Are Magical; Computers Are Awful
November 2, 2023
Managing ‘A.I.’ Risks
October 31, 2023
Raw Power
October 25, 2023
The Markup’s Uncredited Reporting in the Wall Street Journal
October 8, 2023
Fake It ’Til You Fake It
October 5, 2023
The Pixel Pinky Promise
September 24, 2023
Pride and Purpose
September 22, 2023
Standards Are Good
September 15, 2023
iPhone Pricing and Inflation
September 5, 2023
The iPhone 12 Pro: A Three-Year Review
September 1, 2023
Setting Up a Time Machine Server in MacOS Ventura Requires Psychic Powers
August 25, 2023
Pants on Fire
August 8, 2023
Copying on Purpose
August 1, 2023
This CBC Article About the Online News Act Is a Real Stinker
July 31, 2023
The Fix Is In
July 24, 2023
CarPlay’s Road Ahead
July 11, 2023
A Closer Reading of App Privacy Labels
June 26, 2023
Priming
June 21, 2023
The Best Time to Regulate A.I. Is Today
May 31, 2023
Wishing Well 2023
May 19, 2023
Deconvergence
April 13, 2023
Twitter and Hate Speech
April 11, 2023
Go Indie
April 6, 2023
Changelog, 2023–04
March 31, 2023
I’ve Got Another Confession to Make
March 24, 2023
A Vatican-Sized Flag Mystery
March 14, 2023
Now We Are Cooking Without Gas
February 21, 2023
Congratulations, Gen Z: You Are the New Societal Scapegoat for Longstanding and Systemic Problems
February 10, 2023
The ‘Brand Vandalism’ Is Coming From Inside the House
January 25, 2023
Apple Could Maybe, Possibly Be Distancing Its Products From Google, but It Is Difficult to Tell Right Now
January 25, 2023
Everybody Panic: A Finder Bug, Since Fixed, Was Sending Empty API Calls to Apple
January 18, 2023
Disk Usage and iCloud for Messages
January 12, 2023
What Phone Cameras See in 2023
December 23, 2022
User Stylesheets Are Still Pretty Great and Should Be More Widely Supported
December 8, 2022
Twitter’s New PR Team Finds More Normal Behaviour to Spin Conspiracies Around
November 28, 2022
One Wild Month
November 21, 2022
Oh, the Places Your Apple ID Will Go
November 2, 2022
Two Great Things in MacOS Ventura
October 26, 2022
The Ad Store
October 18, 2022
Semafor Who?
October 13, 2022
Lipstick on a Pig
September 14, 2022
What Is in a Name?
August 30, 2022
Free, as in Context
August 28, 2022
‘Silicon Values’
August 15, 2022
‘Unclear Effects’ Responses and Corrections
August 10, 2022
Ad Tech Revenue Statements Indicate Unclear Effects of App Tracking Transparency
August 3, 2022
Unplugged Responds, Kind Of
July 27, 2022
Unplugged Mysteries
July 18, 2022
A 14-Inch MacBook Pro and a Few Thoughts
July 12, 2022
Migration Assistant Magic
July 8, 2022
Matt Y, the Cable Guy
June 29, 2022
The Problem of TikTok
June 13, 2022
Ahead of Their Time
June 8, 2022
Google’s Fabricated Summaries and This Website
June 4, 2022
Choices, Choices
May 17, 2022
Reporting Live From This Glass House
May 9, 2022
Works as Currently Designed
May 4, 2022
Yield
May 1, 2022
Apps Not Busy Being Born Are Busy Getting Killed Off
April 25, 2022
The Last Time an Unlikeable Buyer Took Over a Likeable Social Network
April 13, 2022
Apple Is Throwing a Third Party
March 29, 2022
The Possible Impact of the Digital Markets Act on Messaging Privacy
March 16, 2022
My ‘Not a Shadowy Nonprofit Group’ T-Shirt Has People Asking Questions Already Answered by My Shirt
February 18, 2022
Meta Launders Its Reputation Through Small Businesses
January 31, 2022
Substack, Spotify, Speech
January 27, 2022
Old Man Yells at Cloud
January 11, 2022
Responsible
December 31, 2021
Something New in Something Old
December 6, 2021
Privacy and Repairs
November 18, 2021
Not What Windows Wrought
November 10, 2021
Craig Federighi and Tim Cook on Sideloading
November 3, 2021
The Trials and Travails of Digital Vaccine Cards
October 25, 2021
Facebook and Google’s Alleged Collaboration to Fight Privacy
October 12, 2021
TikTok Talk
October 6, 2021
Zuckerberg Zags
September 21, 2021
Bain Brains Take Pains to Ascertain Gains in Mains’ Reign
September 14, 2021
Ex S
September 10, 2021
WhatsApp Encryption Hullabaloo
August 31, 2021
What We Talk About When We Talk About Privacy
August 23, 2021
Tying Together Some Loose Threads
August 19, 2021
Discovery Dumpster Diving
August 9, 2021
Capability and Policy in Apple’s Child Safety Efforts
August 5, 2021
Apple’s Child Safety Initiatives
July 19, 2021
Security Is the Story We Have, Not the Story We Want to Have
June 24, 2021
Some Digital Packrattery
June 17, 2021
Safari 15 and Chickenshit Minimalism
June 9, 2021
Open Rates and Mail’s Market Share
May 31, 2021
Street-Level Imagery in a Pandemic
May 24, 2021
The New York Times Takes the Bait
May 20, 2021
The Albergotti Spin
May 7, 2021
All Developers Are Equal, but Some Developers Are More Equal Than Others
April 29, 2021
Spring
April 27, 2021
Gorge
April 16, 2021
There Is No Way to Report App Store Scams
April 14, 2021
Private Exploit Marketplaces May Have Broad Security Benefits
March 29, 2021
Concentrated Influence in the Internet’s Stack, Not Just Platforms, Creates Different Venues for Control
March 24, 2021
Mac OS X Turns Twenty
March 18, 2021
Privacy, Policy
February 12, 2021
Supermicrofragilisticexpialidocious
February 11, 2021
Allowing Apps to Access Your Contacts Remains a Glaring Privacy Violation
February 3, 2021
Let’s Play the Blame Game, for Sure
January 30, 2021
Grading Apple’s 2020
January 28, 2021
Sidebar: Translucency
December 29, 2020
Objects of Power
December 14, 2020
A Brief Look at ProRAW
November 12, 2020
Assorted MacOS Big Sur Design-Related Observations
November 10, 2020
M Powered
November 7, 2020
Biden–Harris
October 28, 2020
Regarding That FT Report About Apple’s Search Engine Ambitions
October 26, 2020
A Seamless Whole
October 13, 2020
New iPhone Day 2020
September 29, 2020
‘The Social Dilemma’ Dilemma
September 24, 2020
The Peculiar Rise of the Paid Email Newsletter
September 10, 2020
A Step Back
September 8, 2020
The Money Store
September 3, 2020
For Sale: Millions of Back Doors
August 23, 2020
App Store Desire Paths
July 29, 2020
Big Tech’s Power Comes Under Fire at Congressional Antitrust Hearing
July 15, 2020
Google’s Abuse of Its Dominant Position Isn’t Only Maybe Illegal, It Also Makes for Worse Products
July 3, 2020
Climbing Up the Walls
June 23, 2020
Only Apple
June 18, 2020
Hey, Wait, I’ve Got a New Complaint
June 16, 2020
Hey, Nah
May 15, 2020
Security Theatre in Safari Download Permissions
May 5, 2020
Streaming Follows a Trail Paved by Thieves and Pirates
April 17, 2020
The Bullshit Web’s Ubiquity
March 19, 2020
A Status Update on the Toaster-Refrigerator Project
February 26, 2020
Why TV?
February 21, 2020
Catalina’s Dialog Bureaucracy
January 29, 2020
Neil Young Is Back on His Audiophile Bullshit
January 17, 2020
Rage Against the Machine Learning
January 14, 2020
An Avenue by Which It Might Be Technically Possible to Give an iPhone ‘The Software Equivalent of Cancer’
January 13, 2020
Framed
January 8, 2020
Why Not Both? Or: Privacy Laws Won’t Fix Everything and That’s Okay
December 5, 2019
A More Incremental iOS
November 28, 2019
From Garages to Geopolitical Quagmires
October 9, 2019
A Handful of Links and Thoughts Concerning the Future of Transportation
October 4, 2019
One Year After ‘The Big Hack’
September 27, 2019
Art in the Age of Digital Subscription
September 13, 2019
Lock-In and Ecosystems
September 10, 2019
Assorted Items of Note Following Apple’s September 2019 Product Launch Presentation
September 6, 2019
Don’t Speak
August 8, 2019
The FTC Completely Blew Its Settlement With Equifax
June 19, 2019
Theft With Permission
May 20, 2019
WWDC 2019 Prelude
May 12, 2019
Questions About 5G Safety Are Being Politicized
May 4, 2019
Defining ‘Free’ For All
April 24, 2019
The Apple Watch Turns Four: Some Thoughts
March 25, 2019
Some Brief Thoughts on Services, Generally, and Apple’s Announcements Today, More Specifically
March 15, 2019
A Sensation Not Unlike Slapping Yourself in the Face
March 14, 2019
Rich Lowry Pennybags
February 6, 2019
Messages’ Mixed Messages
December 12, 2018
A Touch of Touch
November 26, 2018
On Apple Portables in the Approximately $1,200 to $1,300 Price Range
October 30, 2018
Pioneer
October 4, 2018
Thinking About Bloomberg’s Report on Hardware Vulnerabilities in Servers Made in China
September 26, 2018
Reading the Tea Leaves
August 16, 2018
The Landowner and the Apartments
July 30, 2018
The Bullshit Web
June 15, 2018
Best Before
May 24, 2018
Notes on Notifications
May 7, 2018
VI Months With the iPhone X
April 13, 2018
The Other Irresponsibility
April 10, 2018
Updates From Indonesia
March 9, 2018
The Original Siri App Compared to Siri Today
March 8, 2018
In Defence of Surfing the Insecure Web
February 8, 2018
Reports of Google’s Newfound Design Prowess Have Been Greatly Exaggerated
January 16, 2018
A Brief Critique of the Horrible UI of Hawaii’s EMA Alert System
January 8, 2018
The App Store’s Giant Pool of Money
December 19, 2017
Slow Down
November 28, 2017
Ben Thompson Is Wrong About the Deregulation of ISPs
November 21, 2017
Ajit Pai’s Giant Middle Finger
November 14, 2017
The iPhone X
October 31, 2017
Seeking Trust
October 25, 2017
On Bloomberg’s Report That Apple Downgraded the Accuracy of Face ID to Improve iPhone X Production Speed
October 17, 2017
Dust and Tedium
September 19, 2017
iOS 11: The Pixel Envy Review
September 14, 2017
Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Sailor
August 31, 2017
On the Intercept, Conflicts of Interest, and Journalistic Independence
August 23, 2017
The Ruinous Sameness of Kinja and Medium Websites
August 17, 2017
Privately Public
August 2, 2017
Amber Rudd’s Ruddy Dumb Case Against Encryption
August 1, 2017
Apple in China
July 17, 2017
The 2017 iPad
July 12, 2017
Comcast and Verizon, Counting on Ignorance, Claim to Support Net Neutrality
July 10, 2017
Pro
June 23, 2017
Snowballing App Sizes
June 12, 2017
Appholes
May 30, 2017
The Boutique Smartphone
May 24, 2017
Destroying Internet Freedom
May 3, 2017
Trust in Apple’s Services
April 13, 2017
How to Make a Backup of a FFFFOUND Account
April 13, 2017
Lies, Damned Lies, and Numeric Ratings
March 28, 2017
The Facebook Model of Innovation
February 20, 2017
A History of Uber Since January 2014, in Excerpts
February 9, 2017
Sufficiently Great
January 18, 2017
Requiem for the Thunderbolt Display
January 3, 2017
It’s About Trust
December 20, 2016
The Mac
November 15, 2016
Onboard Flash Storage vs. ‘Onboard Flash Storage’
November 15, 2016
Housekeeping
November 9, 2016
Privacy and Data Collection During a Trump Presidency
October 18, 2016
Good Design, Inside and Out
October 7, 2016
Control
October 5, 2016
iCloud Storage Pricing
September 20, 2016
Novelty and Legacy
September 18, 2016
Pulitzers, Pardons, and the Post
September 13, 2016
iOS 10: The Pixel Envy Review
September 7, 2016
Thoughts on Today’s Apple Event
August 21, 2016
Blonde Bombshell
August 14, 2016
Breadth and Depth
August 9, 2016
Diversity of Tech Companies by the Numbers: 2016 Edition
July 31, 2016
Intuition and iOS
July 20, 2016
Limiting Harassment, Not Speech
July 5, 2016
The Danger of Dependencies
June 21, 2016
The Sound of Lightning
June 8, 2016
One Week With the Microsoft Lumia 650
June 2, 2016
Christmas in June
May 10, 2016
Criteo and AdRoll, the Web’s Cookie Monsters
May 6, 2016
What’s the Yams?
May 5, 2016
Ten Months of Apple Music
April 21, 2016
Ad Tech Is Completely Broken
March 22, 2016
Biggie Smalls
February 26, 2016
Prioritize Wi-Fi Networks on Your iOS Device
February 24, 2016
Ample Concern
February 22, 2016
An Adjustment of FBI Director James Comey’s Blog Post for Candour
February 4, 2016
Brown Note
January 29, 2016
Unbundled
January 4, 2016
Picking Apples
December 22, 2015
Audio Files
November 20, 2015
Travelling Indonesia With an iPhone 6S
October 26, 2015
An Imagined Conversation Between Airbus and a China Airlines Representative
October 18, 2015
Fuzzy User Interfaces
October 9, 2015
“What Do You Think?”
September 27, 2015
On the Supposed Water Resistance of the iPhones 6S
September 15, 2015
iOS 9: The Pixel Envy Review
September 11, 2015
Rosy Glasses
September 9, 2015
“Hey Siri, Are You Feeling Stereotypical?”
August 13, 2015
Diversity of Tech Companies by the Numbers: 2015 Edition
July 20, 2015
The Mobile Web Sucks, but You Can Do Something About It, Nilay Patel
July 3, 2015
Clarifying the Apple Music DRM Situation
July 1, 2015
Assorted Thoughts and Observations About Apple Music
June 16, 2015
Ignoring Apple’s Fundamental Thinking
June 6, 2015
The State of iOS: Addendum
June 5, 2015
The State of iOS
June 4, 2015
On Privacy and Service Offering Quality
May 14, 2015
Snooping on Facebook Instant Articles
April 24, 2015
The New Photos Paradigm
April 9, 2015
Future Present
March 11, 2015
Assorted Additional Thoughts on Monday’s “Spring Forward” Event
March 9, 2015
Spring Forward, Indeed
February 17, 2015
My Favourite Records of 2014
January 5, 2015
Functional High Ground
December 16, 2014
All-Canadian Duopoly
December 8, 2014
Untransmitted
November 19, 2014
Thoughts on WatchKit
November 1, 2014
Let’s Talk About Money
October 29, 2014
A Translation of MCX’s Hastily-Written Blog Post from PR-Speak to Plain English
October 5, 2014
On iPods, iTunes, DRM, and Lock-in, in 2014, for Some Reason
September 17, 2014
iOS 8: The Pixel Envy Review
August 13, 2014
Diversity of Various Tech Companies By the Numbers
July 28, 2014
Needs Must
July 17, 2014
Translation of Stephen Elop’s Memo to Microsoft Employees From Weird Corporate Euphemisms to English
July 16, 2014
Quick Note Regarding Post Frequency
June 2, 2014
El Capitan
May 27, 2014
Photo Post-Production on an iPhone
May 26, 2014
Spitballing WWDC 2014
April 26, 2014
On Peak iPad
April 3, 2014
Brendan Eich’s Freedoms and Mozilla’s Freedoms
March 10, 2014
Dot One
March 8, 2014
GeoGuessr House Rules and Hints
February 19, 2014
(Partially) Recovering From a Bizarre iTunes Error Turned Catastrophic
February 7, 2014
Cloudlike: The Morals of Appropriation of Contemporary Artworks
January 24, 2014
My First Macintosh
January 21, 2014
Thoughts on Beats Music
December 31, 2013
My Favourite Records of 2013
December 27, 2013
Intellectual Property Brouhaha
December 16, 2013
A Swing and a Miss
December 3, 2013
Two Weeks With the Retina iPad Mini
November 13, 2013
Legroom Becomes Equal
November 7, 2013
The Kübler-Ross Stages of BlackBerry
October 25, 2013
Exploring the New iWork for Mac File Formats
October 22, 2013
Brian White is a Really Shitty Analyst
October 15, 2013
Spitballing Apple’s October Event
October 6, 2013
iPhone 6B, for Big
October 2, 2013
Wristy Business
September 25, 2013
FaceTime Audio Over a Cellular Connection
September 24, 2013
Unsucking Apple’s Mapping Data
September 17, 2013
iOS 7: The Pixel Envy Review
August 9, 2013
The Problem Exists Between Nerds and Normal People
August 1, 2013
Enablers
July 16, 2013
Ghost Town
June 15, 2013
A Surprisingly Simple Fix for Imbalanced Volume From Apple In-Ear Headphones
June 12, 2013
The Hierarchy of iOS 7
June 10, 2013
Dub Dub
June 6, 2013
Everything the Rumour Blogs Say Apple Will Be Introducing at WWDC
May 17, 2013
Growing Pains
May 13, 2013
Thoughts on the New York Times’ Prototype Article Redesign
May 10, 2013
Design Is How It Works
April 30, 2013
What a Stupid Idea
April 26, 2013
Recommended by 4 Out of 5 Dentists
April 9, 2013
A Snobbish Canadian’s Review of Tonx
April 2, 2013
Housekeeping: RSS Feed Issues
March 25, 2013
Springbored
March 4, 2013
Voodoo Meditation
February 19, 2013
Skipping Pebbles
February 5, 2013
The Verge Reviews Microsoft’s Surface Pro
January 31, 2013
Why I Don’t Stream My Music: A Somewhat Specific Set of Qualifications
January 4, 2013
Voyeuristic Tendencies
December 27, 2012
The Best Albums of 2012, Edition Ten: Held
December 22, 2012
The Best Albums of 2012, Edition Nine: Grimes
December 21, 2012
The Best Albums of 2012: Honourable Mentions
December 20, 2012
The Best Albums of 2012, Edition 8: ‘Allelujah!
December 19, 2012
The Best Albums of 2012, Edition Seven: Frank Ocean
December 18, 2012
The Best Albums of 2012, Edition Six: Dum Dum Girls
December 17, 2012
The Best Albums of 2012, Edition Five: DJ Shadow
December 16, 2012
The Best Albums of 2012, Edition Four: Deftones
December 15, 2012
The Best Albums of 2012, Edition Three: Clams Casino
December 14, 2012
The Best Albums of 2012, Edition Two: Kindred
December 13, 2012
The Best Albums of 2012, Edition One: Silver Age
December 12, 2012
Google Maps for iPhone
December 7, 2012
First Third, 2013
November 10, 2012
Tick Tock
November 2, 2012
Every Article I Neglected to Post Regarding Apple’s Big Executive Switch Which, by Now, You Must Be Sick and Tired of Reading About
November 1, 2012
Record Player Elegance
October 30, 2012
The Best Possible Situation
October 29, 2012
Bubble Wrap
October 23, 2012
Thoughts on Today’s Apple Event
October 19, 2012
UDID to IDFA FUD
October 5, 2012
More Small iPad Spitballing
October 4, 2012
Spitballing a Smaller iPad
October 1, 2012
Regarding Snappli’s Claim That Only 4% of Their iPhone Userbase Are Using Apple’s Maps
September 22, 2012
Hold Me Closer, Betteridge
September 17, 2012
The Subtlety of Progress
September 10, 2012
The Cola Wars
September 2, 2012
My Broken Mailbox
August 27, 2012
Diagnosing an Oft-Dropping AirPort Extreme Connection
August 22, 2012
Translation of Selected Portions of AT&T’s Blog Post Regarding FaceTime Over Their Cellular Network
August 21, 2012
New Hotness
August 16, 2012
Proposed Browser Support for Retina-Ready Images
August 11, 2012
Eight Inches
August 3, 2012
Armchair Rumour Speculation
July 30, 2012
Please Stop Stacking Arial in Front of Helvetica in Your Stylesheets
July 24, 2012
Lightweight Embedding of Facebook Page Updates
July 22, 2012
Tuxedo
July 15, 2012
Everybody Hates Windows Phone
July 14, 2012
Pixel Envy
July 11, 2012
This Whole EPEAT Kerfuffle
June 25, 2012
Designing for Destruction
June 11, 2012
Peanut Gallery: WWDC 2012 Edition
June 8, 2012
Seven Inches
May 31, 2012
@2x Pedantry
May 11, 2012
Hypothetical Television Set
May 8, 2012
iTunes: Thor, or the Hydra
May 1, 2012
BookBook for iPhone: The Final Verdict
April 28, 2012
Improvements to Permalinks and Citations
April 26, 2012
Optical Lamination, or the Lack Thereof
April 24, 2012
My iOS 6 Wish List
March 29, 2012
Two Weeks with the New iPad
March 12, 2012
9 AM
March 7, 2012
About that BookBook…
March 3, 2012
Rob Enderle: Wrong Again
February 25, 2012
Followup: BookBook for iPhone
February 21, 2012
Every Product is a Killer Product
February 12, 2012
The Critical Thought of Creativity
January 20, 2012
The New Education
January 12, 2012
Notes From the Android Design Guidelines
January 9, 2012
They’re Exactly What You’d Call “Guidelines”
January 5, 2012
Dear Comedy Central
December 31, 2011
Future Nostalgia
December 28, 2011
Resolutions
December 23, 2011
The Larger Scope
December 5, 2011
That “Store” Button in iOS 5’s Music App
November 26, 2011
You Get What You Pay For
November 25, 2011
The X-Factor
November 16, 2011
Two Weeks with the iPhone 4S
October 30, 2011
Google’s Moral Duality
October 29, 2011
Visions of the Present
October 19, 2011
It’s Like Rain on Your Wedding Day
October 12, 2011
The “F” in “Five” is Either For “Fantastic” or “Finally”
October 5, 2011
Remembering Steve Jobs
September 18, 2011
Ephemera Regarding Permanence
September 7, 2011
Sony’s Inspired Unlimited Music Designer
August 30, 2011
Open
August 24, 2011
The Ex-CEO, the New CEO and the Future of Apple
August 12, 2011
Review: BookBook for iPhone 4
July 21, 2011
Yet Another Entry in My Series of Poorly-Considered and Ill-Advised Bullet-Point Thoughts
June 29, 2011
Translating Apple’s Final Cut FAQ into Plain English
June 21, 2011
“I’d like your pointiest boot.”
May 22, 2011
Free Ideas for Developers
May 19, 2011
Don’t Wake the Dragon, But Maybe Strike Up a Licensing Deal With It
May 10, 2011
It’s the Experience, Stupid
April 24, 2011
You Suck at Making Coffee
April 13, 2011
Translation of Selected Portions of Microsoft’s “Mango” Press Release to Plain English
April 5, 2011
Observation RE: NY Times Subscriptions
March 26, 2011
Various Bullet-Point Thoughts on the iPad 2
March 15, 2011
Multitasking, etc.
March 2, 2011
Followup to “2”
March 1, 2011
2
February 14, 2011
Wherein I Discuss Layout Decisions
January 18, 2011
It Might But Probably Won’t
December 29, 2010
Not So Fast, Bucko
September 25, 2009
Thoughts on Wireless Power