Bradley Chambers:

Who’s anyone? Which teacher has time to make custom books for his or her class? One of the things I’ve become concerned about is the number of items we tend to keep adding to a teacher’s plate. They have to manage a classroom of 15–30 kids, understand all of the material they teach, learn all of the systems their school uses, handle discipline issues, grade papers, and help students learn.

When do we start to take things off of a teacher’s plates? When do we give them more hours in the day? Whatever Apple envisioned in 2012, it’s clear that did not play out.

Chambers works in education, and has been paying close attention to the market for years. He knows what he’s talking about, and his main point is that Apple hasn’t made a good enough value proposition for schools to wean them away from Google.

The optimist in me would like to think that Apple’s system would work, but people who actually work in the field are saying otherwise.

Michael Flarup:

See, I was recently commissioned to come up with a redesign of the calendar and note-taking app Opus One and I was excited to share this particular bit of work— not only because I really liked how it came out, but because it represented the sort of work I have always loved doing: Themed UI carefully crafted to create a memorable experience through textures, lighting and dimensionality. A UI that is fun, takes cues from the real world for context and aims to be delightful, simply for the sake of invoking a feeling in the user.

In other words; a skeuomorphic design.

I think this looks great, and the concept is in keeping with how I think of my devices as “digital notebooks”. The clean iOS 7 style is fine, but I do think that both macOS and iOS have lost some of the whimsical touches that made Apple design stand out. Like the wormhole background in Time Machine. Completely unnecessary, but it always made me smile.

I’m not sure Opus One is an app that I personally need, but if more design like this started making it’s way back into iOS, I’d be all right with that.

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Probably for the first time since I started MacStories nine years ago, I feel comfortable using Apple’s services and hardware extensively not because I’ve given up on searching for third-party products, but because I’ve tried them all. And ultimately, none of them made me happier with my tech habits. It took me years of experiments (and a lot of money spent on gadgets and subscriptions) to notice how, for a variety of reasons, I found a healthy tech balance by consciously deciding to embrace the Apple ecosystem.

Federico comes to the same conclusion I did eight years ago. Apple and I have a deal. I give them money, and they provide technology that allows me to get things done without having to muck about. Investing in the Apple ecosystem has paid off over the years, and continues to be, from my humble perspective, a wise investment. There may come a time when Apple no longer is able to hold up their end of the bargain, but that time isn’t here yet, and doesn’t appear to be on the horizon any time soon.

Link

Yale asked participants in the study to imagine a magic genie and being given either the power to fly, or complete physical invulnerability.

But if they had instead just imagined being completely physically safe, the Republicans became significantly more liberal — their positions on social attitudes were much more like the Democratic respondents. And on the issue of social change in general, the Republicans’ attitudes were now indistinguishable from the Democrats. Imagining being completely safe from physical harm had done what no experiment had done before — it had turned conservatives into liberals.

In both instances, we had manipulated a deeper underlying reason for political attitudes, the strength of the basic motivation of safety and survival. The boiling water of our social and political attitudes, it seems, can be turned up or down by changing how physically safe we feel.

I haven’t read the study, so I can’t vouch for it completely, but this rings true to me. Why do they need guns? Because they are afraid of being harmed. Why do they not want immigrants? Because they are afraid of their way of life changing. Why do they not want social change? Because they are afraid of the unknown. Understandable, given the sources of information.

Link

We all know that the world is going to hell. Given the rising risk of nuclear war with North Korea, the paralysis in Congress, warfare in Yemen and Syria, atrocities in Myanmar and a president who may be going cuckoo, you might think 2017 was the worst year ever.

But you’d be wrong. In fact, 2017 was probably the very best year in the long history of humanity.

It’s good to get some perspective, get away from the talking heads on TV and dire predictions of gloom and doom and realize that, by the numbers, the world is actually getting better, not worse. Can and should we do more? Absolutely. But let’s not let the weight of what’s not gone right burden us so much that we can see what has.

Link

You can draw a straight line from the bad incentive structure forced upon news outlets to the unprecedented divisiveness in our country. And it’s time we realized what’s going on.

Fantastic read, well worth the time.

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Obviously, Scrivener doesn’t turn you into a writer anymore than handing you a paintbrush turns you into Picasso, but if you’re looking for a tool to help you on your journey, it’s a great choice.

I used Ulysses when writing my NaNoWriMo novel, but Scrivner was a close second choice. I’m not sure if it’s quite for me, but it’s an intriguing app.

Link

SOCRATES: In fact, it is as if you know that you are wrong, and yet rather than seek that which is right, you complain whenever others point out how wrong you are.

This is so, so good.

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Every week we post a new interview with someone about what software they use on their Mac, iPhone, or iPad. We do these interviews because not only are they fun, but a glimpse into what tools someone uses and how they use those tools can spark our imagination and give us an idea or insight into how we can do things better.

I’m not sure why I decided to do this, but there it is. I love my desk, my Mac, and working from home, I suppose that’s why I felt like sharing it.

Spoiler: yes.

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Back to the headline. Could this be the future of the Mac? As iPhone processing power increases, could Apple create a hybrid desktop product driven by some future version of the A10 Fusion (the 64-bit system on a chip that drives the iPhone 7 and 7 Plus), a product that looks and acts like an iPhone, but that doubles as a desktop experience when you plug it into a dock, complete with large display, mouse, and keyboard?

I’ve been saying this is the future for years. This is the only direction that makes sense. Given enough computing power a phone will eventually be the only device we need.