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Critiquing is the way to learn to write
Cory Doctorow on what builds a writer:
The point of a writing workshop isn’t merely to make your stories better – it’s to make you better at writing stories.
That’s where critiquing other writers’ stories comes in. The process of reading and re-reading someone else’s imperfect work and devoting real mental energy to figuring out what’s not working in it and how to fix it is how you develop the creative instincts that allow you to automatically and unconsciously avoid pitfalls and make breakthroughs in your own work.
Even if none of the feedback you offer is ever incorporated into the story you’re critiquing, the act of preparing and delivering that critique is the most reliable fast-track to becoming a better writer yourself. There’s something very valuable in the combination of thinking critically, being exposed to other workshop members’ ideas about the story under discussion, and working with source material that you can look at with more objectivity because it didn’t come out of your own head.
Doctorow’s piece was written in the context of reports that people are using AI to critique their writing. The point is, that’s not what makes you better. Turning the tables and thinking critically about someone else’s work is what builds skill.
I minored in writing in college and took a creative writing class run by a cranky German writer named Reinhard Lettau in which we were graded not on our writing but on our critiques. What a learning moment that was. (Apologies to my classmates, because Lettau once concluded a critique of mine by saying, “Now that Jason has put down his surgical tools…”)
I flashed back to that classroom in San Diego when reading Doctorow today. It’s just so true. Engaging your brain is how you learn. If your goal is to make your brain work less, you are moving in the wrong direction.
By John Moltz
This Week in Apple: Open and shut reviews
The iPhone Duo is here (offer only valid for a select few)! Touchscreen MacBooks are almost here! And the original iPod is also here?
iPhone Duo review-o
Congratulations to you lucky few who are taking possession of an iPhone Duo today! The reviews are in and… eh, it’s pretty good?
If you have one in hand, you can draw your own conclusions but for the rest of us, Lex Friedman has provided a nice roundup of the reviews. If that’s tl;dr (too Lex, didn’t read) for you, the upshot seems to be that it’s the best foldable smartphone out there, but it still has some rough edges. Rough enough to rub Apple blogger and X super-fan John Gruber the wrong way a bit:
…It’s been a lot of fun trying the Duo out for a week but it feels like I’ve gotten to use an extraordinarily polished prototype — not a finished product that I’d want to buy and carry.
This is a post limited to Six Colors members.
By Jason Snell
iPhone Duo: 24 hours in the Splash Zone
For a company that’s poised at the cutting edge and focused on innovation, Apple can be quite conservative. It’s a very measure-twice-cut-once kind of company. It prefers innovation of the relentless, iterative sort. It’s harder to feel that pace if you’re the kind of person who buys a new iPhone every year; go without upgrading an Apple device for four or five years and you’ll suddenly see the results of the company’s annual grind.
But while Apple’s careful approach explains why Apple sat on the sidelines for the first years of the folding-smartphone era, once the company decided to get in the game, getting messy was inevitable.
I cover technology professionally, but the reason I do that is because I also love this stuff. There is nothing quite like putting your hand on a new tech product (or, to be fair, a new piece of software!) and discovering all the ways it’s amazing, or weird, or a failure, or—most commonly—a mixture of all of the above.
And that’s why I’m so excited about the iPhone Duo. It is a fascinating mixture, showing off Apple at the top of its game in terms of hardware and software design, while also being fundamentally weird in ways too numerous to count. Apple doesn’t like getting messy, ever, but the first folding iPhone was always going to spatter mud all over Apple’s metaphorical raincoat. Everyone who uses the iPhone Duo is in the splash zone. If you didn’t want to get wet, you shouldn’t have sat in the splash zone!
In my first day with the iPhone Duo, I have experienced the highs and lows that I was expecting. It’s fascinating to see carefully constructed iOS interface conventions crumble under the onslaught of radically new hardware. Control Center is now an icon on the side of the screen. Face ID is gone, replaced with a Touch ID side button that is frequently where you least expect it.
Just as one example, I knew immediately that my iPhone home screen icon placement, honed over many years, was entirely inappropriate for the iPhone Duo. Even the apps I chose to place in my Dock were wrong, because the Dock serves a different purpose on the iPhone Duo! (Dock icons are now smaller, and they’re on the side rather than right at the bottom of the device, so my old approach of using them as a quick-access tab has vanished.)
Among the lows I’ve experienced thus far: Encountering apps not optimized for iPhone Duo, even if they worked perfectly fine on the iPad. As someone who uses the iPad an awful lot, it’s been a constant reminder that even when open, the iPhone Duo is not an iPad; it’s a tablet-like iPhone. And some of my favorite iPad apps open on the iPhone Duo in the “shame rectangle” that makes them essentially unusable (or at the very least, deeply unappealing), because they haven’t explicitly been updated to support the iPhone Duo.
I understand the push and pull between Apple and its developers here, and I’m as sympathetic to why Apple chose not to let iPad apps adapt to the iPhone Duo as I am to the developers who may not have the ability to invest time in updating their apps for the iPhone. Still, the fact remains that I’m shopping for new RSS readers again after several years of settling on one, because it’s going to be hard to test reading on this thing if I’m using an unoptimized app.
I’m sympathetic to reviewers like Brian X. Chen of the New York Times, who apparently had to review the phone in a day, start to finish. If your editor wants it, you gotta do it. But as the editor of Six Colors, I have to be honest: I don’t see the point. All the embargoed reviews that dropped Wednesday were based on a week’s worth of use and consideration; it will take another week before any later reviewers can match that level of experience and consideration.
So I’m taking the slower path. I’m going to use this thing a lot (it’s my phone now, for the time being, and I’m traveling right now so it’s going to get a lot of use!) and I suspect it’s got a lot to teach me—surprising, frustrating, delightful, all of it. I’m excited to see Apple let its freak flag fly a little, and there’s no place I’d rather be than in the splash zone.
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By Jason Snell for Tom's Guide
25 things you need to know about the product that changed Apple (and the world)
The iPod is long gone now, but it was the product that turned around Apple’s fortunes, got PC users to take the Apple brand seriously, established Apple as a player in mobile devices, and went on to revolutionize the music industry and lay the groundwork for the iPhone. And it did all of that in a tiny window of time, from its introduction in the fall of 2001 to the rapid rise of the iPhone beginning in 2007.
Here are 25 things you might not know about how the iPod came to be, and its legacy.
by Jason Snell
Apple Music honors the iPod with… an iPod
To honor the iPod, Apple has placed a first-generation iPod (loaded with music… previews!) on its “page not found” page.
It’s a thorough emulation, right down to the era-specific preloaded music and the “secret” breakout game.
Check it out—but be sure to open the URL directly in Safari, because it doesn’t work if you click the link, which goes straight to the Apple Music app.
By Jason Snell
The iPod, which set Apple on its course, turns 25
We drove down the freeway from San Francisco to Cupertino with a pretty good idea of what Apple would be announcing, but with no idea how it would transform Apple forever.
“Hint: It’s not a Mac,” read the invitation to an event at the Town Hall conference center on Apple’s campus at Infinite Loop. Rumors abounded that Apple was going to announce a music player, but the details were hazy.
Three of the Macworld editors in the car (but not the other one) were primed to understand what Apple was announcing—we all had multi-gigabyte iTunes libraries already, and when we saw the iPod we realized just how transformative it could be.
Every five years when we hit an anniversary, I struggle to recontextualize the iPod. But this year, for the 25th anniversary, I’ve been thinking about Apple’s little music player a lot more.
That’s because I ended up writing a 12,000-word script for the current series of Designed in California about the origins of the iPod, leading up to its announcement on Oct. 23, 2001, and its release a couple of weeks later.1 I’ve had the iPod front and center in my brain for a while now, in a way it hasn’t been for years.
While Apple had (famously) experimented with non-Mac handheld devices—“Eat Up Martha!”—the iPod was the one that stuck, and changed the company’s fortunes. It’s the moment Apple Computer began its irrevocable journey from being a Mac-only company to becoming Apple Inc., a company that makes all sorts of connected devices.
In researching the Designed in California series, I was struck by just how quickly the iPod’s importance was overshadowed by the iPhone. There are barely more than five years between the launch of the iPod and the launch of the iPhone. While both products took time to grow into their markets, I think it’s still the case that the true “iPod era” was only a handful of years long, and it’s been entirely overshadowed by the product that came after it.
That’s a shame, in a way, because I think people who didn’t live through this era don’t understand just what a hit the iPod was. It completely changed Apple’s fortunes, rehabbed its brand identity, gave people reasons to go into Apple’s relatively new retail stores for the first time, and taught Apple lessons that it needed to learn before it could build a smartphone. (The iPhone’s hardware was largely built by the iPod team, even if the software came from the Mac.)
I’m also struck by how quickly Apple built the iPod. It basically went from idea to product launch in a year. I will admit that things were different then, and Apple’s current scale complicates its ability to launch any product quickly—but even new CEO John Ternus seems to agree that the company should be able to move faster when it needs to.
Not every product can, or should, be made at a breakneck pace. But Apple should have the ability to shift into that higher gear from time to time, when the opportunity arises. I’m not sure today’s Apple is wired that way, and maybe remembering how quickly the iPod came to fruition could serve as a little bit of a prod for Apple to work on getting that capability back.
(If you want to hear much, much more about the iPod, I recommend you listen to or watch the current series of Designed in California.)
- In between those two dates, my daughter was born, and there was a prerelease iPod in the delivery room—but that’s a story for another day. ↩
by Dan Moren
The one guy who manages most of PHP distribution is a volunteer, of course
As someone who both maintains their own Linux server and dabbles in web development1, I’d always noticed the update repository for PHP was surprisingly just called ppa:ondrej/php and wondered why exactly that was.
Turns out it’s named for Ondřej Surý the one (largely) unpaid volunteer who maintains it. As if he wasn’t load-bearing enough, he became even more significant the other day when a massive PHP vulnerability was uncovered.
The Atlantic‘s Charlie Warzel interviewed Surý about the situation, and he points out some hard truths:
Surý: When I started doing open-source, it was fun. And it kind of still is. But the environment has shifted. Open-source sometimes feels like exploitation. What I would like to see is to find a new model where people working on open-source would be awarded for their work and the hours and hours they put into it from the people who most benefit from their work. I would like companies to realize that this is exploitation. Any exploitation is not sustainable. And it will end up badly if this continues, because the people doing the open-source will stop being motivated to actually do anything in the end.
A reminder, as that XKCD comic linked above so saliently illustrates, that the massive profit-seeking ventures of the Internet are all too often built on the backs of unpaid labor.
- Yes, I’m on paternity leave, but also I spent the other day holding a sleeping baby and making sure my server’s PHP packages up to date. Multitasking! ↩
By Jason Snell
Is the beloved iPad mini the best iPad?
This week, the invitations went out1 for an Apple “experience” next Wednesday in Los Angeles, which indicates a major set of product announcements. One of those rumored products is a new iPad mini with an OLED screen, A20 chip, and improved speakers.
The iPad mini is also in the zeitgeist more than ever right now, thanks to the release of the iPhone Duo, which numerous reviewers are comparing to an iPad mini when open. (The Duo is quite a bit smaller.)
In thinking about the iPad mini a bit this week, a thought occurred to me: Is the iPad mini the best iPad? Obviously, if you’re talking pure specs, it’s not—those iPad Pro models are amazing, and I’m writing this post on one right now. The base iPad is a better value and the iPad Air packs a punch, too.
But let’s think about this a little more broadly. Aren’t the best products the ones that know what they are, that have a purpose, that are well defined? One way to identify such a product is customer loyalty, and when I bring up the iPad mini, I frequently see hearts appear in the eyes of the people I’m talking to. People who like the iPad mini love it. That’s a sign.
The larger iPads fall into that neither-fish-nor-fowl twilight zone too often. Should my iPad Pro really just be a Mac that can also run in a tablet mode? It’s got an M5 in it, so probably.
Not the iPad mini. It’s powerful but small. The size means it’s less likely to be dragged into service as a productivity device, but it excels at lean-back tasks like reading and scrolling and even watching video. I love an E Ink reader, but so many people view the iPad mini as the perfect place to do their reading. And I get it. You can hold it in one hand. It’s so small, you can grip it in one hand. And yet, it will basically do everything an iPad does.
There’s something to be said for a product that’s great at filling its niche, and in this case it feels like there’s a really good niche that’s just the size of the iPad mini.
I don’t know what the new update will bring for fans of the iPad mini. They will undoubtedly be thrilled by getting an OLED screen and a faster processor. They will be less thrilled by the price, which might be as much as $799, according to Gurman. But what Apple product prices do thrill us these days, exactly?
Still, when I do get the new iPad mini in my hands, I will need to keep in mind its special place in the iPad line-up. It’s not frequently updated and (unlike this week) rarely the subject of a lot of conversation, but it’s beloved—and that means something.
-
Yep, I got one.
↩
by Jason Snell
iPhone Duo reviews in a nutshell
Lex Friedman has done a very nice job of summarizing the first wave of embargoed iPhone Duo reviews:
The iPhone Duo reviews landed, and I read a slew of them. Because I care about you. And because I’m curious about Apple’s new folding phone.
Lots of links and some good summaries. Even if you’ve been devouring reviews today, Lex may point you at some opinions you haven’t seen yet.
(For the record, I expect to get my iPhone Duo review unit tomorrow or Friday, depending on a wild series of chance events.)
Our imaginary reviews of the iPhone Duo, how we stay open-minded and curious instead of becoming the “Old Man Yells at Cloud” meme, our current read-it-later methods, and pouring one out for the iPod and MP3 players.
Guiding Apple through its comeback, Steve Jobs comes up with a clever strategy to make the Mac the center of everyone’s digital life. The problem is, he’s failed to integrate music into the mix—and Apple will have to scramble to catch up.
The iPhone Duo reviews are in, the internet has problems and X still sucks.
By Philip Michaels
App Report: Help is on the way
As the song goes, we all need a little help from our friends. And that applies to apps for our Macs and iPhones as well.
Fortunately, the apps in the spotlight this week all aim to lend a helping hand, whether it’s tracking down files to free up space on your devices, expanding text or storing clippings to save time or even doing things with the photos and screenshots you’ve accrued over the years.
Do you know of any helpful macOS and iOS offerings? Drop us a line at apps@sixcolors.com with a brief description. We won’t be able to respond to every email we receive, but we will give any and all suggestions a helpful once-over.
Just as we’re busy pondering the HomeView and preparing for the iPhone Duo launch, word arrives of another Apple event on the horizon! Plus, Apple and Meta bond over local AI.
By Glenn Fleishman
Get a handle on Finder file and folder names
One of the most bizarre and sometimes useful features added in macOS 27 Golden Gate is contextual naming in the Finder, as well as other places where a name for a file is useful, using Apple Intelligence.1 I say bizarre because it's easy to be surprised by what's filled in—or that anything but Untitled Document or Untitled Folder appears.
Meanwhile, if you want to rename a big batch of files, you can opt for a little-known feature built right into the Finder, or dramatically increase your power with a third-party utility.
Apple Intelligence has some suggestions
There's not much to using Golden Gate's automatic file naming, which is the delight of a feature that's discoverable, self-explanatory, and useful:
- Select a file name or folder name in the Finder, wait a moment, and single-click it, so that the name becomes highlighted.
- Wait a moment. Because Apple Intelligence is involved, some behind-the-scenes analysis of the item's contents takes place.
- A drop-down list of suggestions appears, which may or may not match what you want. If one does, click it. This replaces the file or folder name.
You will also see suggestions appear in Apple's apps when you save a currently untitled document, as well as when you transfer files via AirDrop or text an image to a person or group. I've noticed when I text a screenshot on my iPhone, the name "Screen Image" appears in the message text without any detail.
As you can imagine, results vary. However, I've found in my testing that Apple Intelligence does a reasonably good job. This includes looking at what a photo or image file represents and suggesting a name derived from that—a kind of hidden Visual Intelligence.
If you don't like this feature, go to Finder: Settings: General and uncheck "Suggest file names."
It has a number of limitations:
- All Macs that can run Golden Gate are capable of Apple Intelligence, which requires an Apple silicon Mac (any generation). ↩
Continue reading “Get a handle on Finder file and folder names”…
by Jason Snell
HomeView versus Recipe Blog SEO
Apple’s new HomeView sure seems like a good fit for the kitchen, which is why the company’s press releases, demos, and ads seem to lean into the idea that you’ll be cooking with the little guy.
But is there an ugly side to all that convenience? Here’s Dominic Preston, writing for The Verge:
The HomeView is just the latest in a long line of websites, browser extensions, and smart home gadgets with the same promise: that it can take an online recipe and strip it down to the essentials…. There’s only one group of people likely to object: the food writers who created those recipes in the first place.
So wait a second. Apple building a product that gets past all the garbage that loads up recipe sites—not just the ads but the endless, meandering bad writing that exists because search engines apparently demanded it—to get to the actual ingredients and make their users’ lives better, is a problem because it might hurt the livelihood of the people who create those user-hostile websites?
Did… a recipe blogger write this?
I would know, since I’m one of them — I have my own food newsletter where I occasionally publish recipes, so I have a little skin in the game.
Oh. I see.
My recipe app of choice is Mela, which (like many recipe apps) already has a feature that grabs the details from a web recipe while avoiding the SEO garbage. With HomeView, Apple is doing the same thing. I approve.
Of course, as a 21st-century media professional, I feel for the recipe writers who got jerked around by Google and are now reaping the consequences. Preston mentions that a lot of professional recipe sources are now moving to subscription models, and I think that’s a positive development, whether you’re the New York Times or a small content creator with a paid newsletter.
One of my big concerns about the HomeView is that it doesn’t seem to have any facility to support recipe apps. It would probably be a perfect device for an extension of Mela or Paprika, but they’re not CarPlay audio/video apps.
I hope Apple can find a way to allow users to bring their personal recipe catalogs onto the device in the future. In the meantime, if I were the developer of a recipe app, I’d be looking into creating a web version, to be loaded in HomeView’s included Safari browser.
by Jason Snell
Charting Apple TV pricing
Following up on my discussion of the new $299 Apple TV 4K pricing, here’s Glenn Fleishman with a helpful chart and table:
I wondered what the entry-level, initial price of each Apple TV box at introduction was, from the March 2007 original to the Apple TV 4K (4th generation) announced October 13, 2026, adjusted for inflation. So I charted it.
Essentially, only the original, (Mac-based!) Apple TV was more expensive in actual dollars than the current model. And as recently as earlier this year, it was the second-cheapest it had ever been. Talk about whiplash.