22july2013

The EU must be reading my posts. I said something like that after the keynote. I think it was on this website. I'm happy they are learning from me.

But the EU still doesn't have it right. Getting cut down as timber is actually BETTER for carbon reduction than if the tree falls down when it dies. As timber, it can be used in long term construction that can keep CO2 isolated for hundreds of years. You could even drop the trunk into the bottom of a cold ocean or oxygen-deprived muddy lake bottom where it could last for thousands of years... even tens of thousands of years. (Warmer waters will turn wood into worm food.) As deadwood in the forest, it can become CO2 when the forest burns. One of the very best things to do to reduce carbon in the atmosphere is grow trees, cut them, and use the wood in long term projects.

But for some reason environmentalists aren't keen on the idea of carbon sinks. They want us to reduce carbon emissions even though adding more sinks has the same end result. Apple's own words cite "carbon emission reduction" but they ignore "carbon sink increases." Why? Because people are stupid.

I was able to set it up, but there were three or four deviations from the instructions in this article. (In fact, documenting all my problems is longer than the entire article.)

1. There was no "Accounts and Lists" button on the top left. See item 3 below.
2. There was no dropdown with an "account" button. See item 3 below.
3. To find "Login and Security," when I was logged in, I had to press the icon of the face, then scroll up, then press the SEE ALL button in the YOUR ACCOUNT section. Why is my experience so different from the experience in this article?
4. After it said that passkeys was successfully set up, I logged out and logged back in. However it didn't log in using passkeys because I didn't notice there was a passkeys button and I had to logout again, attempt to login, find the passkeys button this time, and press it. And I have to do this each time I log in! In my opinion many users will not notice this button and will continue to login with passwords that were loaded into their iCloud keychain because the level of effort is identical.

In my opinion, the process really isn't complete until the user has deleted the password from their iCloud keychain, and the procedure in this article doesn't explain how to do that. The whole point to passkeys is to get rid of passwords, not to supplement passwords with a second system. This article fails to tell users to delete their passwords from their keychain.

Another omission is that there are several options to choose from when setting up passkeys, and this article doesn't describe them. I didn't want to spend 10 minutes researching them, so I just left the defaults as they were.

After setting it up, I was able to login using passkeys on my Mac, which is usually where I login to Amazon from. I'm happy and grateful that it's working. But I am surprised and disappointed that the Passkeys experience does not include informing me that I can use passkeys until I have entered my full username into the account login box. I was expecting the login screen to tell me that I can use passkeys to login to my account, including the name of my account. I thought passkeys would automate that part of the process, but it seems that it doesn't. I have to be honest, that's very disappointing. They didn't even use a cookie to pre-populate the account login field. Isn't this what cookies were invented for?

I'm still happy about Passkeys in general and plan to assist my friends and family use it as it rolls out, but most of them won't understand it. In fact, it takes slightly longer to login using passkeys because the FaceID process actually takes longer to complete than just populating the password field from your keychain. And I'm pretty sure using TouchID would also be slower than using the keychain.

Speak ill of China, get fired by Apple.

I don't dislike (or like) unions, at least not until I read the text of the specific agreement between the union and management. I used Google and found the union's website. I also found their X/Twitter website:

https://arwu.org.uk/ 
https://twitter.com/arwunion?lang=en

After reading these sites, I found that the union claimed they came to a contractual agreement last month with Apple that gave "most employees a 7% raise." I couldn't find the agreement. Most unions that I know about publish their agreements online (...it's really hard to keep those things a secret since every employee can read it.) AppleInisider should provide a link to the agreement so we can get informed.

One thing I don't like about this union is that they think it's funny to post a comic of Apple managers murdering another Apple manager for considering working with the union. Is that kind of online material even legal in the UK, where you can be jailed just for having silent prayer? And does Twitter allow that kind of promotion of workplace violence? (I really don't know.)

I don't recall ever using my Apple Pencil.