eludwig

Physically, my best advice is to take good care of your back and your teeth.

These 2 things can make a huge quality of life difference once you are past 40. I would also add your eyes, but there is not a lot you can do about that one! Almost everyone needs reading glasses by 40. Glasses suck, but you get used to it.

Psychologically, the best I can say is to forgive yourself for any stupid things you did when you were young. Try to be as kind to yourself as you would be to others. I think of this as the "inverse golden rule." Really important as you get older, because regrets and self-doubt pile up otherwise.

>>* Marginally bigger display. * 120 Hz refresh rate (ProMotion)

These 2 things are huge for some people, including me. I had been using a 2019 MacBook Pro 13 until I picked up the latest iPad Pro 12.9, mainly for the pencil support (I draw things sometimes). The difference in screens is (to me) ridiculous! The aspect ratio, brightness and 120Hz make the iPad display the best 13" laptop I have ever used. The MacBook Pro looks kinds of sickly & squashed by comparison. It makes me wonder if Apple actually cares about the Mac laptops anymore.

Also, the processor in the iPad Pro is so fast, I honestly don't need any more speed for now[1].

[1] yes, yes, on an infinite timeline...etc...

When I was in Art School, the instructors there stressed that it was wrong, or rather, misguided, to infuse your beginner work with a "Style." Style should come from the inside out, not the outside in.

In other words, learn your craft and the way you express it will be individual to you. There is no need to create a "style" for your work. I think this relates to the topic!

It helped me to check "Displays have separate spaces" in the Mission Control panel. MacOS seems to remember what went where with this checked.

Gosh, I’m really sick of this argument.

Sure, everyone loves hand-crafted, beautiful, native apps. But I will tell you this: it is possible to build a great app using any technology. It’s just a matter of taste & effort. My favorite tool that helps me get my day job done is VSCode. Do I care whether or not the damn thing is native or not? NO! Do I care that it gobbles some meager gigs? NO! Memory not being used is memory being wasted. Use my RAM, dammit. I can buy more. Use whatever you have to do to keep making this lovely thing that saves me so much time everyday and practically reads my mind as a JS developer! It has a elegant, raw beauty to it that totally fits my needs.

If it uses some hybrid web technology stack, what do I care? Is it great? To me, yes!

Make great apps. I don’t care how you do it.

Apologies for jumping in here, but hopefully parent will answer your question.

I have noticed that a lot of the reviews & comments about the new Magic Keyboard for iPad Pro are separated by size. People who have the 12.9 seem to be much happier (on the whole) than people who have the 11. I have the 12.9 and I love it. The keyboard is fully as large as a laptop keyboard and the trackpad is smaller than a MacBook's, but still very usable. The 11 users complain that many of the keys are too small and the track pad is just too teeny to use reasonably.

Obviously, physical input devices are very personal and have much to do with your hand size, your height, etc.

I will say that one downside is that the case is heavy. It makes the 12.9 fully as beefy as the 13 inch MacBook Pro. The upside is that the ease of pulling the iPad away from the case encourages using the iPad naked (when a keyboard isn't needed), which is so nice for lap browsing, comic reading, etc.

I worked a second job in 1984 to score an Apple //c! I still have it safely tucked away in storage and had an opportunity to fire it up a couple of years ago. It worked perfectly.

Beagle Bros...oh yes. I so loved their software. Those guys had such a cool, retro aesthetic and the code was so much fun. Like Monty Python, but for BASIC. Such great times. I wanted a Mac so bad though, but there was no way to afford that, even with two jobs.

Programming my //c in assembly led me 3 years later to my first programming job (I was a staff artist at a Children's book publisher) -- programming the Mac in 68K assembler! So I ended up with a Mac anyway, if only at work.

The //c was such a sweet little machine!

Beautifully said and totally agreed on all points. Mort Drucker was a next-level talent.

I started buying Mad in the late 60's at the local 5 & dime store, back when you could actually buy stuff for 5 cents! (candy mainly).

When I started buying Mad, I didn't really relate to the movie parodies, but even then I could tell that Mort's illustrations were beyond good! He was a master, truly. He deserved every accolade and then some.

Rest in peace, Mort!

>>The 68000 hardware could support preemptive multitasking just fine; what it lacked was a hardware MMU.

Yes, exactly. Thanks for clarifying. As you say, the lack of preemptive multitasking was mainly an OS limitation, although a hardware MMU would have really helped. I remember at the time reading about the hoops that Andy had to go through to get Switcher (which, as mentioned in other replies, became MultiFinder) to work. One of the issues was that the single app OS model used a bunch of low memory locations as system globals...on every context switch these had to be saved and restored because each running application could change them. (ouch!)

The original MacOS only supported one application at a time. It also supported little apps called "Desk Accessories", which could float as a separate window within the applications space, but they required a small amount of support from the application itself, which could choose not to do so! Desk Accessories internally were coded as drivers, just like any other system-level driver.

It wasn't until Andy wrote "Switcher" that the Mac supported more than one app, which, the first time it demoed made my jaw drop! Andy is a really smart guy. To be fair, Switcher had limitations due to memory and no hardware multitasking support in the original 68000. It was more like cooperative coexistence than true multitasking.

Who knew? Keyboards turn out to be very personal. I am in your camp. I picked up one of the 13" MBPs when they rev'ed it earlier this year and I love the keyboard! I have never typed faster on any laptop keyboard.

Different strokes? (sorry, couldn't resist)

I generally find myself using my favorites menus rather than the url bar. Not sure I could get used to that. Thanks for the suggestion though!

Hmm..that could work. I do have KM installed. I will check it out.

What I would love is an extension (either FF or Chrome) that allows me to reuse an open, matching tab when I choose a bookmark. For example, I find myself opening a bunch top-level Google News tabs. In a window with 40 tabs, at least 6 or 7 are the top-level Google News page (or NYT homepage). I would love to be able to select my bookmark and have it find an already existing tab that contains an exact match and bring that tab forward.

This would reduce (for me) a large amount of tab flotsam. Maybe there is already a way to do this?

I agree with you, but I don't necessarily see a conflict between someone "teaching" me (what a guru basically is: a teacher, in a way) and other facets of their personality.

I've had many teachers that were superb at imparting their lessons while living with the foibles and flaws of being real people. You take what you need from the teacher and move on.

An example in popular culture: someone like Bill Cosby, who I am sure influenced countless people to be better people. Well, it turned out that he had major problems (to put it mildly!). Does that negate the "lessons" that he imparted in another aspect of his life? I would argue no.

I know you aren't negating this argument in your post, but I just wanted to say this and chose your post to glom onto! :)

Wow, so much HN hate for Polly? It's my opinion that Polly is a national treasure. Her shameless wit and sense of humor make me smile. Her profound love of humanity makes me deeply happy. Not only that, but her writing is so poetic and lovely. Truly a gem.

On the topic of this question/answer, I assume most of you are young? Or at least younger than I am. I can tell you now that the way you feel now will not last. Change is absolute. There will be a time where you will look around you for reasons to be thankful. Make as many reasons as you can. You will need them.

My particular cure (2 herniated discs with associated deep pain/sciatica) was to resume running again after a 40 year stoppage (HS cross country). Worked great. I do about 15-20 miles a week at an average 8:30 mile pace and the back pain is now very manageable.

I've been careful not to push too hard, as I do not want to trade one debilitating injury for another (knees, shins, etc). Highly recommended but surely not for everyone, just those so inclined (I have a lot of excess energy to burn!). A nice side effect is that the exertion is also a mood improver!

Don't underestimate vigorous activity (with sensible limits).

"Hello babies. Welcome to Earth. It's hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It's round and wet and crowded. On the outside, babies, you've got a hundred years here. There's only one rule that I know of, babies-"God damn it, you've got to be kind."

-Kurt Vonnegut

Relevant: http://vsap.lavote.net/

This is so, so true! I went to Parsons School of Design in the late 70s and the final presentations were ungodly brutal. It was very normal for people to leave in tears. The good part about this (the bad part is obvious lol) is that many people who shouldn’t have been there and would not have made it in the commercial art business would go and do something else after these reviews. It was probably for the best.

During my short career as an in-house illustrator, it was perfectly acceptable for the art director to kick your ass and generally abuse you. You learned to develop a thick skin really quickly!

Apparently not! From the press release:

15-Inch MacBook Pro Highlights

6-core Intel Core i7 and Core i9 processors up to 2.9 GHz with Turbo Boost up to 4.8 GHz

Up to 32GB of DDR4 memory

Powerful Radeon Pro discrete graphics with 4GB of video memory in every configuration

Up to 4TB of SSD storage2

True Tone display technology

Apple T2 Chip

Touch Bar and Touch ID

>>There should be a middle way between this and our current lifestyle

Exactly. There are countless ways to live. There are outliers and extremes that point the way to a sane middle ground. How else would we know the middle without exploration of the fringes?

Hilariously strange article...

It starts with the unbelievably blunt (and imo, true): "the self is an illusion." Then is proceeds to go on about how this illusion can be either magnified or diminished by doing certain things!

What!? How can something that doesn't exist be manipulated?

I know "I'm" being a bit dense on purpose here, but really!

Yeah, there is a whole subjective component to all of this that is hard to get good information on.

I am older, and drink both tea and coffee depending on mood, need for caffeine, etc.

There are some online guides that give ratios of caffeine in typical tea versus typical coffee. Of course, figuring out what "typical" is is the issue! What I've seen shows that black tea has quite a bit less caffeine per serving (bag, infuser full, etc): 1/10 to 1/5 of coffee caffeine. However, there seems to be a big difference in coffee strength! As an anecdote, I personally find little difference in caffeine between weak coffee (Dunkin Donuts regular is a good example) and a strong black tea (Tazo Awake, for example). On the other hand, Starbucks drip coffee is like getting a meth injection! Immediate symptoms: increased heartbeat, "speedy" feeling, fidgeting, etc.

Also, I hear you on water temps. At home I use an aeropress and 195 degree(F) water for coffee pressing. To me, there really is a taste difference (less bitterness, mainly) if I leave the water just below boiling, but some people don't see any difference and like their water hotter.

Experimentation seems to be the only way to get to your caffeine happy place!

>>I was gobsmacked at the ease and freedom it offered

Totally agreed. Same coming from Java. It is crazy how much I prefer it over Java. Maybe this is a consequence of coming from verbose languages? The lack of boilerplate is very refreshing!

Oh my god!! I loved MacGolf!! I think that back in the day I used TMON to break the copy protection scheme (for personal use only, of course!) so many good memories. Thanks so much.

Totally agreed. The first time I saw x86 assembler I almost cried.

There was also a great instuction called "movem.l" which moved multiple registers at once to almost anywhere (and vice-versa). It was used mainly to allocate stack frames, but could be creatively used to move stuff from place to place REAL fast.

The 68K was such a glorious processor to program, especially after coming from the 6502. Hardware multiply and divide? Sign me up! :D

The assembly code looked like poetry.

When you are this great, I think you can cast some stones. I find his prose achingly beautiful.