Casey Liss

Migration Assistant does this quite well. This is the built-in first-run cloning tool when you start a new Mac. I'm on maybe the fifth or sixth generation of cloned user environment in however many years. Apps, preferences, data, all copied from older machines to newer ones. I recently ran into a scenario where that didn't work (on an iPhone) when a device is managed by MDM. This is the first time I've seen it fail other than 15 years ago on an edge case. For a Mac, Homebrew has an option (or maybe another tool leverages it) to create a manifest of sorts to reinstall all the right tools. That's a bit different. I know that Casey Liss, of the Accidental Tech Podcast (https://www.caseyliss.com, https://atp.fm) has talked about it on his blog. I just woke up, so apologies for not finding it for you.

I suppose if you put it quite far away, a 27" 4k @2x scaling would work well. It'd feel like a 24" 1080p monitor with retina sharpness. For all the folks confused why I'm saying you don't want a 27" 4k monitor for text, it's because the PPI isn't nicely sized for 1x or 2x, which means you have to set it to scaling that rounds and blurs subpixels. More info: https://www.caseyliss.com/2017/5/17/retina-monitors By the way, I'm sure most 27" 4k monitors look fantastic and you should enjoy them! Especially if you don't mind or notice the scaling rounding or if you run it @2x and like the 1080p real estate.

Until a few months ago, I had never really used BitTorrent to do anything - save for about 20 minutes back in HS almost 20 years ago (!) (I think I was running uTorrent on Windows, it was weird and I really didn't know how to use it.) However, in order to "acquire" [this][1], torrenting was realistically the only sensible option I had. A direct download from the Internet Archive would have taken roughly 7 hours @ 100 Mb/s. The torrent file was done in an hour. To my great surprise, the link isn't dead, so...yeah :) Transmission CLI FTW. [1]: https://www.caseyliss.com/2021/2/14/a-concert-for-charlottesville

Beautiful post by Casey Liss, co-host of ATP: https://www.caseyliss.com/2017/4/3/my-favorite-prankster

I have a bit of a messy setup due to availability issues and price fluctuations with the recent shortages. Currently, I'm using one LG UltraFine 4k display at 27" - it's beautiful, text looks super crisp and it works perfectly fine out of the box with my MBP. For a secondary display I use a 1440p BenQ which has been a source of pain with macOS, because macOS doesn't play well with 1440p displays. To make it work without looking like garbage I use betterdummy [1], but this also has the side effect of requiring a lot more window management that I sort of scripted with hammerspoon. It's really not a good time to get a monitor for a macbook: the onboard display on the new ones is gorgeous and very little on the market comes close at a reasonable price point. This recent article [2] goes into the dismal state of affairs better than I can put here. If you're just getting into external monitors and have a pretty large budget, I would recommend the LG UltraFine 5k specifically for its ability to have a single cable work for display + power + USB-C hub. I wish I could get one but they're heavily marked up here in India. 1: https://github.com/waydabber/BetterDummy 2: https://www.caseyliss.com/2021/12/7/monitor-liss

It doesn't help the way that Apple is using "internal" resolution and scaling versus how Windows does it. If you aren't within the density of "retina" display [1.] then there's solid chance the image you're looking at will be blurry. Even though you might have high quality display (whatever the size and resolution are) if you don't play by the rules Apple had imagined you're in tough spot. [1.] https://www.caseyliss.com/images/2017/5/marc-edwards-display-list.png

Toasters plus Hacker News should always equal John Siracusa’s glorious series of toaster reviews: https://www.caseyliss.com/2015/9/10/siracusa-on-toasters

They have a ton of different products and APIs and they just don't document them all. Even worse, much of the documentation they do have is hidden inside hard-to-search WWDC session videos or, ugh, Slack conversations with Apple engineers. External developers have complained for years. [1] [1]: https://www.caseyliss.com/2020/11/10/on-apples-pisspoor-documentation

I currently do this with HDMIs (I somehow make do with a measley 4K monitors). I assumed such a thing existed for thunderbolt but hadn't looked into it; it looks like you're right that this market is underdeveloped at present. Hopefully somebody does it! Or, the wisdom of HN will yield us some options. Otherwise, if you're willing to settle for affordable retina-quality monitors, this is the one I use: https://camelcamelcamel.com/product/B01LPNKFK0. Cribbed from this post which made the HN rounds not too long ago: https://www.caseyliss.com/2021/12/7/monitor-liss

Casey does as well: https://www.caseyliss.com/2020/2/6/peek-a-view

> Apple is quite good for developers targeting their platforms https://www.caseyliss.com/2020/11/10/on-apples-pisspoor-documentation https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24410652 https://www.theverge.com/2021/4/21/22385859/apple-app-store-scams-frau… https://v4.chriskrycho.com/2019/apple-your-developer-documentation-is-… > I don't expect developers targeting [. . .] consoles, to do it from other platforms either. Consoles are poor example since I don't know a single console that lets you compile your game on it. All console manufacturers provide a development environment that runs on Windows, Linux, macOS, or a combination of those.

It's not just you, nobody is more upset about Apple's documentation than the developers who are immersed in the environment.[1][2][3][4] [1]: https://www.caseyliss.com/2020/11/10/on-apples-pisspoor-documentation [2]: https://www.hackingwithswift.com/articles/231/reimagining-apples-docum… [3]: https://mjtsai.com/blog/2019/05/20/the-state-of-apples-developer-docum… [4]: https://kean.blog/post/apple-documentation

> ...without the documentation that would help you. Well, it's not really worse than their usual documentation on products they officially support: https://www.caseyliss.com/2020/11/10/on-apples-pisspoor-documentation

Casey Liss (host of Accidental Tech Podcast, among others) has a small writeup about that work at https://www.caseyliss.com/2014/11/22/how-i-make-podcasts

> I wouldn't take anybody's word for it, unless I knew them personally. Maybe that's the thing: We need reviewers that we "almost know", who aren't faceless, but also aren't as deeply corrupt as most YouTubers? A bit like John Siracusa reviewing toasters in podcasts [1]. At least with simple gadgets, I would rather trust him than Amazon reviews, even though I've only heard him talking for a few hours. [1] https://www.caseyliss.com/2015/9/10/siracusa-on-toasters

Do you know about John Siracusa and toasters (...toaster ovens, actually)? He has literally spent hours talking about toaster (...ovens) on various podcasts. https://www.caseyliss.com/2015/9/10/siracusa-on-toasters. Spoiler: there are problems with many toaster ovens.

The issue of subscription apps came up a lot in recent months on ATP [0] regarding Casey's new app Callsheet [1]. They've been arguing heavily FOR the use of subscriptions, and I came around to agreeing with them. The part that especially convinced me is that subscription revenue creates an incentive for the developer(s) to keep working on the app, in particular after the big wave of launch sales is gone. (You could argue that a lot of apps don't necessarily need new features, but I feel like especially on macOS and iOS, you want the app developers to check if their app still works properly on the new major releases, and issue fixes if something breaks.) The very important thing is the cost of the subscription though. It needs to be reasonable. I'm fine with paying a subscription even for a small app as long as it's a low yearly price (like 5-10$). I feel like that's the bigger issue with subscription apps nowadays - the prices are often unreasonable considering the type of app, and they end up charging 3-6$ A MONTH for apps that should be at most 1-2$ a month. [0]: https://atp.fm [1]: https://www.caseyliss.com/2023/8/7/callsheet

The Verizon versions of iPad Air, iPad Retina Mini, iPhone 5S and iPhone 5C are identical to those sold for AT&T and T-Mobile, and will work on any of those three networks[1]. (It's different/more complicated for older devices.) Also, an agreement Verizon signed when buying their LTE spectrum from the FCC says that all Verizon LTE devices must be carrier-unlocked out of the box[2]. However, Verizon will refuse to activate any device that was not originally sold for use on its network (they use a unique device hardware ID for this). AT&T and T-Mobile don't do this. Therefore, for maximum flexibility, buy Verizon versions of recent Apple devices. You can then switch to AT&T or T-Mobile (not Sprint), or back again to Verizon, at any time, as many times as you wish. This is what the author did[3]. [1]: http://www.apple.com/iphone/LTE/ [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_2008_wireless_spectrum_auc… [3]: http://www.caseyliss.com/2014/5/21/tmo-vs-vzw-plans