Tired: Axe the [carbon] tax
Wired: petrol prices too are the government's fault
Tired: The grid can't handle electric vehicles
Wired: Shortages are due to petrol hoarders
Tired: Experts want road user charge for electric vehicles because they don't use petrol.
Wired: Experts say to cut the fuel excise due to high price.
Tired: Not everyone can cycle, smug McSmugface.
Wired: So many new e-bike riders out there now. I'm scared for them.
HCB Solar, which I think has been a well regarded #solar installer in the Newcastle, is no longer installing solar or batteries. Things must be changing a lot in this space.
#squaredle game. Rort is not an accepted word. Neither is yawnathon, which would have been a great word. 🥱
4 hours after the earlier post, I randomly checked, and found that the space that Photos took up on my iPhone had fallen drastically to 12GB. So, now the iOS 26.1 update is downloading. Yay.
I guess that Apple Photos was doing some background thinking before re-syncing photos to/from phone.
#apple needs a better way to update #iOS software on "low"-capacity devices. I inherited a 128GB iPhone, and use iCloud Photos (Apple One).
iCloud Photos is set to optimise storage. I've tried for ½ hour to offload and delete apps. But the big gorilla is the 20GB space that photos takes up. When I disabled iCloud Photo syncing to this device, that space *increased* to 22GB. And when I reenabled iCloud Photo syncing, it increased further to 28GB (now 30GB), taking up space that I just freed up.
Updating through a Mac (Tahoe 26.1) doesn't work either, with a message that 26.0 is the latest version for my iPhone. 🙄
Dear Apple: maybe intelligently, temporarily remove photos, or 6GB of Apple Intelligence data, or offload apps for me, when updating software? This should be an operating system feature.
Installed #macOS #tahoe 26.1 public beta. Much better. Turned off Reduce Motion and Reduce Transparency for now. Previously tried doing those with 26.0.1, but performance was poor.
I quite like Liquid Glass on the iPad and iPhone. Putting aside Tahoe performance problems, I haven't seen a reason to dislike it on macOS, so far. I mean… it's not Brushed Aluminium-bad.
#apple M1 MacBook Air 16GB
After a week on #macOS #Tahoe, I switched back to using Safari. Safari had been incredibly laggy for the first few days after installation, and I switched to using the Waterfox browser (which is very good).
For some reason, Safari is now back to normal speed, so I am guessing some of the initial Tahoe-slowness was background apps being overactive?
I also turned "Reduce Motion" off. "Reduce Transparency" remains on for now.
On the 5K external monitor, I moved from "Larger Text" to "Default" in the Displays Control Panel/Setting. Just because the interface elements seemed larger than they needed to be. As a result, some fonts in specific apps are too small e.g. Tapestry.app which is an iPad app that runs on macOS.
All in all, I'm now quite OK with macOS Tahoe. I liked the Journal app, but am very impressed with the new Spotlight as launchbar.
There's some performance problems e.g. drawing menus (of all things), and some crashy bugs… but no impetus to use Sequoia.
#apple M1 MacBook Air 16GB.
According to Everymac.com, my iPad Pro 11" 2nd generation and my MacBook Air M1 16GB are about the same vintage ≈ 2020 release. The MacBook Air has a M1 chip, and does AI stuff, while the iPad Pro has A12 chip, and doesn't. I've never used such good computers in my life; they *are* the best.
iPadOS 26 is fine: it is easy to forget that it is different from iPadOS 18. While #Tahoe feels like my MacBook Air hit a brick wall.
With Reduce Motion & Reduce Transparency, comparable (same) apps perform slower on macOS than iPadOS:
- Everything on Safari: scrolling, window resizing
- The new chat backgrounds in Messages
And yet, 3rd party apps are OK. I have switched to the Waterfox browser on MacBook Air, and it is incredibly speedy. The DuckDuckGo browser also works fine. For now, both have windows with the "older" corner radii.
I grew up in the era where one company released one or 2 basic operating systems. I think that it is unprecedented that one company releases so many operating systems, and all in one day. AFAICT, the other Apple OSes are ok and little changed: watch, TV, HomePod, visionOS, iPad and iPhone/CarPlay (yes, I use all these).
I don't think this is a Liquid Glass thing: Liquid Glass is fine, and not that big of a deal. #macOS performance is bad this year: is it because of a lack of time? Or because it's Apple’s more complicated OS? Dunno. Have to see what #apple does.
After 4–5 years, my MacBook Air M1 16GB has met its match: macOS Tahoe is slow on it. Double screen with 5K external monitor.
Partly a story as old as old operating systems: "visual treats" slow the computer down. Partly: feels bloated. Hopefully some is "new install" settling.
Liquid Glass is nice on iPad and iPhone, but weird on Mac. I sometimes cannot see which Safari window is active as the title bars look so different (depending on Safari window content). Crazy.
Third party apps seem to work quite well, including "background" stuff like Keyboard Maestro etc.
I've now turned on a couple of Accessibility features:
- reduce motion, because I didn't like the "physics" of scrolling in Messages.app
- reduce transparency: after which some performance returns
Enjoying things belonging where they should:
- Journal.app on macOS (and iPadOS).
- folders have colours and symbols
- Spotlight (as Launchbar/Quiksilver/Butler etc) works much better.
Some buggy stuff, but generally, I quite like iOS 26 and Liquid Glass. #apple #publicbeta
iPadOS 26 seems to be quite buggy. Getting used to not having slide over. But also got some serious work done using pdfs in overlapping windows on a 11" iPad.
