I remember a bunch of people used to have these on their phone way back in the day. Probably in the iPhone 7 and 8 days, before Popsocket became the main game in town.

If you don’t know, they’re kind of like a Popsocket, except it is like a ring you can flip out, twist around etc.

I recently bought one. Partly to test it out, and to have something to use as a sling if the attachment that came with the iPhone sling starts to fail me.

There are things I like more about this design, and there are things that I prefer with Popsockets. They are both the same kind of thing, with some minor differences.

I prefer Popsockets as a general don’t have to grab your phone kind of thingy, and their accessories like car mounts etc are amazing. But I really like the ideal ring for some uses. Like when I want something really compact or attaching it to a hook.

Will most likely continue to have both available, since there isn’t really any drawback in a MagSafe world.

The other day I was dealing with a lot of changes to something all TypeScript, Java and C# developers most likely are familiar with: documentation in comments wrapped in various xml and other formatting.

We all do this to provide helpful information to other developers (or ourself in 2 weeks), either because it finds their way to some documentation generated from it like a web page etc or in your IDE of choice.

It is really fucking dumb.

Then I had to write some Python code and was reminded that they have built in support for doc strings. Not perfect but an improvement. And then I started to think: we are so few languages like this?

I vaguely remembered Clojure had something like this. And started to look into that. Their solution is interesting, and powerful but I wish it was a bit more integrated into the language for more symbols like parameters etc.

All of this brought me back to this:

• When you write some function, class etc you want to add some information to those who will use it
• It would be nice if languages had built in support for documenting any symbol, where it took care of all the details the language already know like types etc.
• Where you could make builds etc fail if not provided
• No comments
• No weird formatting etc

One of the new features that came with the first version of the Apple Watch Ultra was the action button.

Sadly, I don’t think it is that useful. I tried making it work with shortcuts for a while, but it is just too slow to be usable. I just ended up setting it up to open the Workouts app.

I’d love for it to be fast and trigger things on my iPhone.

AirPods Pro is almost certainly the thing I use the most. A lot of the time just for reducing noise etc and to listen to music, podcasts audiobooks etc. From everywhere to walking the dog, to in the office or the gym.

I have two pairs that is in active use. The first generation is usually in my sling or my gym bag as a backup in case I forget my main ones. And the new model is the ones I use most of the time.

The sound quality in the new ones is a bit better, and the new noise cancellation and adaptive stuff feels a lot better. But I’d bet that it is mostly due to being able to be smarter and not that the cancellation hardware being much better.

I like them better than the previous model, and I love the new case. Especially that they have put in holes to attach it to things and that it was USB-C.

For me the nose cancellation and being able to hear better in a bunch of situations plus having a backup makes it worth it for me. But if you have a new ish pair of version 1 it is probably not worth it until their battery capacity degrades unless you also want the adaptive mode.

I have a weird Apple Watch history. Skipped the first one, then I got the cheap 1.5 generation one, before getting the Series 3 and using that one until my then 2.5 year old daughter dropped it on the bathroom tiles and smashed the screen, and got the cheapest Series 7 that was in stock last summer.

All except the Series 7 was the larger size.

In general I enjoyed the smaller size, but the battery life wasn’t great.

This time I was having a hard time picking what to get. Eventually I ended up going with the Ultra 2. First and foremost because of battery life, the Action button and the Modular Ultra watch face.

The battery life is great, I have never been close to running out, even on the days when I charge it in the morning and go until the next morning. While the action button is something I’m still working on how to use for something useful. But the Modular Ultra face is great, it has six of the small round complications something that I love to have a lot of functionality available.

It is huge, but it bothers me less than I thought I would. I’d love to have more colorful bands though. I got it with then Indigo Alpine band, I just picked a random Alpine band to be honest. Waiting for an Orange one to ship. Will most likely get an Ocean and Trail too, at least the orange Ocean, and probably trail when they make one with a non boring color.

Very happy with it this far.

So much of the recent cool stuff Apple have been doing with their devices like the customizable home screens last year, StandBy or the Smart Stack on WatchOS is that in the first version there are no other way to configure them than to go into the mode.

I’d much rather have an area in settings to set it up. This is especially annoying for the smart stacks on iOS and StandBy.

For the WatchOS widget stacks it would be much easier and faster to just set it up through the Watch app on my iPhone instead of sitting really still and hoping it doesn’t jump out of the view after each change you make.

And for the StandBy it is just for my setups both at home and in the office just a really weird position (and rather uncomfortable) to sit/stand and configure it.

I’ve mostly used ad blockers all the time since Content Blockers became a thing on iOS. But I decided to give it a shot without them a while back.

For fucks sake.

The internet is unusable without them. So much ads and crap. I have no words.

When I’m trying to use focus modes on my iPhone I’m often left with the feeling that I’d love for them to two different things. Where Focus modes are about notifications and all of that, and a different setting for different Home Screen setups.

It all would make a lot more sense to me, and be a lot more useful if I could change the available home screens etc also on a second setting that was more current task related than a focus mode.

Where I’d get the notification settings of work, but hide screens because I’m in a meeting etc that I would find useful when I’m at my desk.

• Only syncing user data; but not other settings or state. Like if they have suffered through your terrible onboarding thingy or settings.
• Having export but not import
• The export only cover parts of the state
• Shortcut action only cover adding data, but not delete or edit

It drives me nuts when apps sync your data but don’t sync your settings or state. Like when you have to apply your settings on every single device or even