Failure is an interesting word. My brother and I were talking about it earlier today. 

First, I love how stories get to the heart of so many things we wrestle with each day. From a recent quote I learned, attributed to Cassandra Clare:

Fiction is truth, even if it is not fact.

I’ve found this to be true over the last few decades. I’ve learned so much from the books around me. 

From Jonathan’s post:

I’m drawn to continuous improvement, to progress over perfection, even as I struggle internally with accepting that plans not working as expected is OK, is unavoidable, is human, and as part of a forward-moving process is essential to building something that lasts.

I don’t have as much negative feelings toward the word failure, but I do get it. We should talk about the work we do (whether it succeeded or not) in ways that don’t strike us as negative. 

From the book Burnout:

We thrive when we have a posiitve goal to move toward, not just a negative state we’re trying to move away from. If we hate where we are, our first instinct often is to run aimlessly away… We need something positive to move toward

Everybody’s dunking on Magic Mouse, meanwhile I’ve tried all the MX’s and MSFT mice, and always come back to it. Even prefer it over Magic Trackpad.

From Stephen Robles on Threads. 

I’m a massive fan of the Magic Mouse. When I’m working away from a desk I use the builtin trackpad on my Mac; but at a desk I use a Magic Mouse exclusively. I love the swipe gestures, and even though it’s likely not as ergonomic as others, I’ve gotten so used to navigating through a Mac interphase with swipes that it feels slow to do it any other way. 

I remember the days of working in an office, nearly a decade ago, and can compare that now to working remotely; and the common thread through that is the value of my work has been tied to autonomy, clarity, and combined trust between me and my colleagues. 

When it comes to the remote versus in office debates, it matters less where you work (although I 100% prefer remote and love to occassionally meet up with my colleagues), and more whether the right ingredients are there for a team to function well. 

Because of the types of companies I’ve worked with (mostly startups), and because of years of freelance with smaller teams, I’ve had the privilege to work with a ton of people since 2007.

In all that time the biggest factor that came down to my personal enjoyment of the work was the people. 

Yes, the work matters. I want to be part of projects that are going to have an impact, that will help people, and that will help me learn and grow. All those things are important, and if given the choice I want them all. 

But, above all the top factor is the few people I’m working with day to day. Do we feel like we’re in it together? Are we wrestling through a problem and trying to figure it out, or is one person dictacting to the rest what will happen? 

There are so many intricacies to being part of a team, and I’m still trying to understand them all. But, after all these years I am getting a good gut sense for whether the people aspect is in place, and when it is my joy for work shoots up.

A half apology is a little like half a balloon. It takes effort, but it doesn’t have much utility.

Seth, as usual, nails it. 

The opportunity for an apology is just that–an opportunity to demonstrate to the person you care about that you see them, understand them, and are concerned enough to extend yourself.

This is something I think many, including myself, struggle with. I’m working on getting better at my apologies and making sure when I say them that they’re meaningful. See also, it does no good to force apologies from others. 

Apple Inc. will introduce a new homegrown app next week called Passwords, aiming to make it easier for customers to log in to websites and software, according to people with knowledge of the matter.

From Mark Gurman at Bloomberg. 

This was a topic with my cohosts on Ultra Pro Max a few months back. Apple’s solution to passwords isn’t good enough for my use case. But if they end up coming out with a standalone app I would seriously consider switching from 1Password; an app I’ve used and happily paid for over a decade now. 

This week we were joined by the fantastic Heather Corallo as she came back on Fractional to talk about finding customers as a fractional business owner. It was a fantastic chat. If you’re interested in being in freelance/fractional work in general you’ll find the topic fun to listen to!

It’s Ben Surtees, the original developer of Bartender. Twelve years ago, I embarked on a journey to create Bartender, a macOS app designed to help you manage your menu bar items. Over the years, it has been incredibly rewarding to see Bartender grow and become an essential tool for so many of you. Your support and feedback have been invaluable in shaping the app into what it is today.

Posted by Ben Surtees.

Over the last few days Apple internet has been blowing up with folks talking about Bartender and the concern with it being taken over by a new owner without clear transparency on the shift. I’ve been a Bartender user for years. Love the product, and how it simplifies the menu on my Mac. 

This letter feels like one forced out of necessity with the new company not wanting all their customers to abandon them. 

I appreciate the apologetic tone, and I also personally get it; if I’d worked on something for years and finally saw an opportunity to take a break and potentially have revenue, that’d be interesting. 

But to do so without letting anyone know ahead of time feels off a bit. 

What I hear over the next few days will likely decide whether I keep using Bartender or not. 

Over the last year I’ve started to share my thoughts on something before digesting what others think. It’s really fun! In the past I would hear a bit of news and instantly try to understand it through the lens of someone else. Taking a moment to write out my own thoughts first, then seeing what others have to say, is incredibly fun. Sometimes my initial gut reaction is right, many times its wrong, but I learn more by pausing to gather my own thoughts first. 

From Adobe’s new terms, according to 9to5mac:

Solely for the purposes of operating or improving the Services and Software, you grant us a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free sublicensable, license, to use, reproduce, publicly display, distribute, modify, create derivative works based on, publicly perform, and translate the Content. For example, we may sublicense our right to the Content to our service providers or to other users to allow the Services and Software to operate with others, such as enabling you to share photos

I’ve been following the saga of Adobe and generative art for the last year, with their claims that they are taking a different approach to things. Instead of scouring the web for their source data (which would be breaking copyright of art), they’re pulling it from sources where they own the license. That’s interesting, but as Ben Thompson has pointed out in podcasts, they’re banking on being the place that corporations go to avoid any issues with copyright infringement. 

That may win out in the end, but this now seems to be the other side of it. If they’re now claiming that the art I’ve done, as an illustrator for 20+ years, could all be theirs? I find that absolutely outrageous. I’ve been on the fence for a while now about discontinuing Adobe products; this just might be the final piece to make me walkaway for good. 

Study consisting of 600 UK and US software engineers finds projects adopting Agile Manifesto practices are 268% more likely to fail than those which do the opposite.

From the Engprax blog.

This headline is catchy. So many of us have been involved in Agile projects over the last 10-20 years, and many designers, engineers, and managers, have felt the frustration with Sprints, Scrum, Kanban, Agile, etc. However, I’m struggling a bit with the premise of this study. I’d like to understand more about the why.

I don’t necessarily thing the study is wrong, but there seems to be more to it. 

If the trial is successful, the researchers hope the drug will become available for all forms of toothlessness sometime around 2030.

From Popular Mechanics.

A bit of a random topic, but I’ve spent more time thinking about this than is warranted. Seeing articles listing the ability to grow new has me wondering if this is the future.

Talked to a friend (who is also a dentist) about this, and he explained the obvious thing I’d missed. Would adults have the patience to wait a few years for a tooth? In America would the cost ever come down enough to warrant this?

Also, who knows if this ever comes out. But I’m excited to see sciency things happening.

Maybe you’ve been here before. You’ve pushed all your energy and effort into a project, worked your tail off for months on end, and finally came to the theoretical finish line to see the reward for your labor. Then somethign shifts, somethings changes. You pause and look back, and see the broken line leading up to that point and see where things went wrong.

In the moment, when you’re pressed down and trying, it’s hard to see what’s happening around you, and you often feel isolated and alone.

If this is you, know that others feel the same. 

I’ve been there, in fact I feel a bit there today. It’s ok, be kind to yourself, take rest, take time to think, and you’ll be ok. 

To see it all shift this way, everywhere all at once, is a bit like a complete solar eclipse. It’s rare and we won’t see a shift like this happen again soon.

Seth on theatrical runs. 

I’ve been paying more attention to theatrical and streaming the last few years, and am incredibly curious if we’ll get back to the big box office days of Avengers and the like. 

Following up my last post about piracy, I’ve often struggled with this for myself. I want to write, podcast, and share things with the world. I also dream of a world where I can make a little side income off of my writing. But then I feel like I’d be another person asking for money. It’s a conundrum that may face who are interested in creating. 

As a teenager I pirated a lot of music and software, games, and the likes. I’m pretty sure every other kid with any technical savvy did the same. As I got older I stopped doing that, especially when the software I was purchasing was helping to support my growing career as a designer. 

I support people who create and make the tools and entertainment I love. 

With that said, it’s getting pretty hard to keep paying. Every day we see a new announcement that some service has gone up in price. At some point things will have to break, right? The reason iTunes was because the pricing model was simple, affordable, and better than the current tools for piracy. 

It’s getting to the point where I’m actively deciding which services to keep and which to let go. 

I don’t quite know how to do small talk well. I’ve studied up on it and have a decent grasp of it, and can hold myself well for a while in a group. But it’s draining. I see the value, but it wears me out. Instead of that I just ask crazy questions. Recently in a group of friends I asked a series of questions. That’s been my mode for a while now. Questions such as:

What is something you wish your spouse did more often?

What’s something odd about you most people don’t know?

I find these to be a lot of fun, and generally try to push to these types of topics when I can. 

From Apple Insider.

Or, the only reason you had an old Apple TV lying around was to watch Netflix in the first place. I bought an Apple TV from the earlier generations and was extremely dissapointed in it. The hardware and software were absolute junk. The thing stopped working entirely after about a year, and I switched over to Roku, FireTV, and Chromecast; anything to take the bitter taste out of my mouth.

Finally, after joining a streaming company last year, I realized I needed to try again. I got an Apple TV and love it. It’s my favorite of all the hardware currently. I wonder if others experienced the same thing as me. While it’s the most expensive, I prefer it now over all the others.