Exploring the Apple Ecosystem
Apple is expanding its Private Cloud Compute (PCC) technology beyond its own data centers by collaborating with Google and NVIDIA to run Apple Intelligence workloads on Google Cloud Platform. This move extends Apple’s strong privacy and security commitments for AI inference from Apple devices to third-party cloud environments, enabling more complex AI tasks to be handled while maintaining user privacy.
Mouseless is a cross-platform app that enables fast, precise mouse control entirely via the keyboard, supporting comprehensive mouse actions like clicking, dragging, and scrolling without needing a physical mouse. Designed to boost productivity and reduce ergonomic strain, it provides a modern alternative to traditional mouse keys and offers accessibility benefits for users unable to use a mouse. The app runs on macOS, Windows, and Linux and aims to keep users in their workflow by minimizing the time needed to perform mouse actions.
LosslessCut is a free, open-source tool for fast, lossless editing of video and audio files, enabling users to trim, cut, merge, and remux without re-encoding or quality loss. Designed for efficiency, it provides features such as track selection, snapshot capture, and metadata adjustment, making it ideal for tasks like removing commercials, extracting tracks, or fixing video orientation. The app is available for macOS, Windows, and Linux, with official versions available via app stores for easy installation and updates.
The author reminisces about the macOS 10.5 Leopard feature called Spaces, which allowed virtual desktops arranged in a customizable grid, enabling efficient spatial navigation that was lost when macOS Lion replaced it with a single-row Mission Control interface. To restore this functionality, the author developed GridLion, an app that recreates grid-based virtual desktop navigation on modern macOS versions despite API limitations and complex permission hurdles, emphasizing the ongoing value of well-crafted software.
https://blog.hopefullyuseful.com/blog/macos-needs-its-grid-back/
The Liquid Glass interface update for iPhone includes improvements such as adding haptic feedback for swipe gestures, fixing toolbar behavior on iPad, resolving login issues with x.com, and addressing various crashes and UI inconsistencies. Additional fixes enhance private browsing distinctions, favicon display, and overall stability, ensuring a smoother user experience across devices.
https://orionbrowser.com/updates/orion-iOS-release-notes.html#ios-release-1-4-19
The latest Orion browser release introduces features such as multi-account containers similar to Firefox, a service workers menu in the develop menu, and support for renaming tabs. It also includes numerous bug fixes and improvements addressing performance issues, scroll animation lag on macOS Sonoma, translation defaults, extension script retention, tab group display, and several stability and usability enhancements.
https://orionbrowser.com/updates/orion-rc-release-notes.html#macos-orion-1-0-7-146-1