It looks to me like BookBub is a portal to the deals that are already available on some or all of the major platforms. From the “What Is BookBub?” page:
“BookBub is a free service that helps you discover books you’ll love through unbeatable deals, handpicked recommendations, and updates from your favorite authors. BookBub doesn’t actually sell books. We simply introduce you to books you’ll love that are available on retailers like Amazon’s Kindle store, Barnes & Noble’s Nook store, Apple Books, and others.”
From the “About Us” page:
"BookBub is a free service that helps millions of readers discover books they’ll love while providing publishers and authors with a way to drive sales and find new fans. Upon joining, members receive unbeatable deals selected by our expert editorial team, handpicked recommendations from people they trust, and real-time updates from their favorite authors. BookBub works with all major ebook retailers and devices, and partners with thousands of the industry’s leading publishers and authors to promote their books. " (Emphasis mine.)
The Partners section gets at the heart of their business model: Freemium ebook marketing tools. Nothing wrong with that! (Although I’m always alert to the possibility that “free” means I’m the product, of course.)
ETA: Aha! BookBub has a similar audio book service: Chirp Pubmark Inc is the parent company of both.
I think FireFox was the first browser I used that would automatically delete all cookies, etc. when I closed the program. In any event, that’s been my habit ever since. I delete my history after each browser session. I have to do it manually on Safari, but Brave does it automatically. So, I can’t be tracked by a cookie or an image, but of course there’s not much I can do about fingerprinting.
As far as email, I don’t load remote images and never click on a link in a message. But I don’t worry about the messages in my account. Because, as I told my users for years, someone else has a copy of all your email. The people who have sent you messages, and those to whom you have sent an email. Unencrypted email is never private.
iOS particularly: passwords typically require digits and special characters. Why do we have to use shift keys when they could all be put on the display together?
When iOS started out it had innovative but skeuomorphic numeric dials that span from the minimum to maximum values but stopped at minimum and maximum rather than going “round the back” from max to min. Now the numeric spinners spin endlessly so you can’t just throw them to one end or the other.
The following isn’t an “app needs polish” topic. This is a “there are too many apps, let’s take a long hard look at them” topic.
We still have a good deal of what I call “functional skeuomorphism.” The apps don’t have the appearance of leather or green baize but their functionality is still rooted in pre-digital physical artefacts such as a calendar, an alarm clock, a reminder list, an address book, a paper map.
As an example, I wanted to be reminded to take a screenshot at a specific time of day, every day without fail. Naturally, I started out by trying to use a reminder for this. Most days it didn’t work for me - I didn’t notice the reminder. I switched to using an alarm instead of a reminder. Now it works and I take the screenshot at the appointed time nearly every day. Why does the reminder fail and the alarm work? A reminder fires once. An alarm keeps going until you silence it. But both consist of an action that you want to do in future + a time that you want to do it. Why are the outcomes different? Why isn’t there a single class of “actions I want to take in the future” with optional one / off versus repeat variants?
Why is it that Apple Maps will show me icons for all the businesses who pay Apple for listings but will not show me icons for my own contacts, unless I “bookmark” or “favorite” them? Why do I have to go to the Photos app to see my photos on a map? Why isn’t Apple Maps a primary view where I can view my contacts or my photos or the weather, provided by Apple or third party apps?
Why is there a separate map in every app that has geographical data? Instead of a single Apple Map with layers provided by the other apps? Example: I’m navigating while somebody else drives on a long road trip. There’s a storm. I want to navigate around the thunder cells because sometimes it rains so hard that you have to stop and wait till it passes over. To do this I have to switch between the map app and the weather app; there is no way to view my route with a weather overlay.
As pointed out in the episode, Mail is really good example of where Apple is at vis-à-vis its own apps.
I am a MailMate fan but I’m no longer able to use it because my employer (a university) will only let me use either Outlook, Mail, or Thunderbird. I tried Mail at first and found it to be fine. I particularly enjoyed the scriptability.
However, I recently realised that Outlook has far better AppleScript support than Mail. Both more extensive and better maintained (which isn’t saying much, admittedly).
I definitely don’t love Outlook but it’s a better integrated Mac app than Mail, ironically…
Apple eliminated the position of Product Manager of Automation Technologies in 2016. Sal Soghoian had held that position since 1997. IMO, that tells me a lot about what Apple thinks of serious automation these days.
I used Podcasts with no complaint until I had to (yes had to) binge listen 300 episodes of the Pen Addict. I realized I had to use Overcast for its silence skipping and more granular speed controls. Then one day it re-downloaded all the podcasts I subscribed to, chewed through our entire family shared data plan in a day and caused data overage charges. Never used it again.
Out of curiosity, have you never had that re-download problem with other clients? I’ve seen it come up occasionally, but always on a single-podcast basis and it’s something that I’ve always seen to be a glitch with the underlying feed.
I use Overcast for the same reason you gave, and I have it set to wi-fi only. I just sync it at home if I’m going out for the day. Also though, current versions prompt you to confirm if you have a ton of episodes queued up to download. It’s nice.
Fantastic episode. One of my favorite in a long while.
Constructive criticism. Not a huge deal. One point that I didn’t get was when they said that System Preferences is the exact same it’s been since Mac OS 1 in the 80’s. But the picture of Control Panel on the original Macintosh looks completely different from System Preferences today. Am I missing something?
Anyways, I have seen what System Preferences looked like way way back in NeXTSTEP, the precursor to macOS and it definitely looks exactly the same, so System Preferences is definitely overdue for a redesign.
I’ve been thinking about the podcast for a couple of weeks, and have procrastinated making a reply. I hope this makes some sense, and it might be a little long.
David and Stephen both went on a bit about Data Detectors and the need to acknowledge their importance. I had to spend some time searching it down but, as I remembered, Data Detectors were created in the pre - OS X era. In fact, they were created in Mac OS 8, along with the beginnings of new technology like OpenDoc and LiveDoc. Part of that history is here.
I’m not sure if you missed it, or consider it a different category, but the Finder is a hot mess. My personal objection is a way that organizing information is insinuating throughout the whole system, starting with the Finder deciding the categories of your information, when to show what, and the inability to easily discover file categories that are hidden, or to create more complex organization models outside the base model. And I don’t mean that we should get Devon Think to do it.
If we include window management as part of the Finder function, there have been some improvements over the years, but often at a loss to consistent function. The “stoplights” are an example, and “discoverability” especially in a desktop OS should be one of the key notions.
Mail — you covered that well, but I think gave short shrift to recent changes in organization of mailboxes and functionality of smart mailboxes. It is now possible to spend some time, for instance, finding the correct Trash or finding anything at all that you may have deleted. And when you find which account hides it, the “self-organization” of Mail into Favorites still presents an ugly list.
On my MacBook Pro 2013 with 16Gb RAM I have to wait sometimes 10 seconds or more for a Smart Mailbox to update, and no combination of tricks will give me a view or a count, and none in less than full seconds.
Yes, Podcasts and Music are also a mess, and the incrementalism Apple uses to address problems in those heavily-used apps doesn’t bode well for them working better or having options for organizing media.
Contacts — In a world where my map program can accurately auto-complete addresses sometimes after no more than a dozen characters are entered, why can’t my Contacts fill in city and state after I complete the Zip; or give me a full street address with 10-digit Zips and not auto fill 10 digits on a form in Safari? Or any number of trivial completions, including, based on my name, or someone else’s, filling in the complete address after simply entering a name and the street number.
Just came across a hilarious one. You can set multiple timers on Apple Watch, but only one on iPhone. I just tried to set a second one and it kept asking me to replace the current one.
I never used anything else for years, I use Overcast for some podcasts now. But I never had a problem with Apple podcasts. What are the issues? So if I hadn’t read this I wouldn’t have said there was any problem with it. I do use it eccentrically I think and maybe I just got lucky?
From what I can tell, priority is absent. Any ability to easily say “I want to listen to a, then b, then c” seems to be absent. I haven’t dug around too much, so it may be possible - but it definitely doesn’t seem intuitive.
I looked up the latest MPU episode, and I don’t see any way to view show notes. Again, maybe it’s there - but I can’t find it right offhand.
Playback speed adjustment is typical, but it sucks. Making people cycle through 2x to get from 1.5x to 1x isn’t good.
The “nice to haves” like silence skipping aren’t there. I don’t know if it does audio normalization / voice boost or not.
If you listen to a small handle of podcasts, it may be perfectly fine. If you just subscribe to a couple of shows, and you listen to every episode of all of them, maybe it would be okay.
But for navigating new episodes on a large collection of subscriptions - especially if you have preferences about exactly what you want to listen to and when, it’s not great.
Ahh ok my wife says the same as you. If you have a large number…, she does too and she says something similar to what you say.
You can view show notes, ‘go to show’ from a drop down menu in “Up Next” and there is a ‘play next’, ‘play last’ option there too which I do use sometimes. I hardly ever go more than three podcasts so that works fine for me.
I don’t use the speeds at all myself and the other stuff and I am very ‘low fi’ and always was: I don’t even use the noise cancel on my airpods, not at all now. I do use the transparency when I feel I want to be aware of stuff around me. I find the podcast app works well, as I use it anyway, with airpods. My wife doesn’t find that though she says.
I understand what you are saying and, as I said it resembles what my wife says. I don’t listen to every episode by any means but I have a relatively small number of subs I think.
