🎮 “Hollow Knight” kicked my ass this evening. I tried to beat The Trial of the Fool for about an hour, to no avail. The game was so much easier when I was playing it for a couple hours every night. I lost a lot of muscle memory since I stopped.

John Gruber took note of the terrible UI decisions Apple made on its iOS Mail app.

The new toolbar in iOS 13 Mail is just strange. The old toolbar had discrete buttons for Flag, Move, Trash/Archive, Reply, and New Message. Now it’s just Trash and Reply, with all of the other functionality stashed in the new Reply action sheet, pictured here half-height and full-height. That new “Reply” action sheet is really a “Do Something With This Message” sheet — I’m not sure what the icon for this should be, but the Reply icon seems like an odd choice. I know a few people who assumed that iOS 13 removed the ability to move messages to other mailboxes because the folder button was removed from the toolbar. They — reasonably! — never thought to look for it by tapping what clearly looks like the old familiar Reply icon.

I wanted to write about this for the past couple weeks, but decided not to complain to my blog about software that I could probably replace, if it really bothered me enough. I thought that Mail was perfect on iOS 12 and now it is much, much worse for me. The functionality I use most often—delete, archive, flag—is now two or three taps (or taps and swipes) away, when it used to be all in one tap at the bottom of the screen.

🎮 I just used the last of my birthday money to purchase an Xbox wireless controller, which I can use with my Windows 10 PC, my Apple TV, and my iPad Pro. I’ve had my eye on one since Apple Arcade came out. I’m starting to eye Steam, too, for more metroidvania-style games.

🎮 I started a third playthrough of Hollow Knight last night. I am eagerly awaiting its announced sequel, Silksong, and don’t know what other game to buy that will scratch the same itch for me. It is such a well-crafted game, and its bosses are still quite challenging to me.

My commit history, in my apps and in my life (if that is a thing), is a mess.

📺 I watched the premiere episode of “Watchmen” a couple days ago and am still a little shaken by it. I am not sure I liked it, but it certainly made an upsetting and confounding impression on me.

I noticed that Lucas/"AppleProgramming" is posting new tutorial videos to YouTube, after a 3-year absence. I learned a lot from his videos when I was developing my first Mac OS X app. (He has lots of iOS tutorials as well.) His videos are really good, and there is a terrible dearth of information on the web about Mac programming.

📺 I got to watch it a bit late, but I was please that “The Good Place” returned to form in their last episode. I have thought that Season 4 has felt tired so far (the new characters really don’t help), but last week’s episode was sharp and funny. I hope tonight’s is as well.

Tech podcasts have been a huge bummer to listen to lately. Tech used to be fun (for the most part), but it is now it is so entwined in the downfall of civilization that I am seriously considering unsubscribing from podcasts I have listened to for over ten years.

⚾️ MLB At Bat has been crashing on me every time I try to watch a World Series game this morning. 🙁

🎵 I have been listening to all the singles and EPs from Us the Duo while working the past couple hours. Their recordings all sound great and are relaxing, but not too relaxing, sounds to work to. (I think some of the songs are covers, but I’m not sure.)

I noticed a big price drop on the Chord Mojo, a highly rated headphone DAC/amp combo. I have birthday money in my pocket, but I don’t think a new DAC is the best way to spend it.

🎵 There’s a new, remastered version of “Jollification” by The Lightning Seeds out now.

Things don’t look too good for “Sunnyside”, which looks to be cancelled in all but name. I watched the pilot a couple weeks ago, and found it the most sitcom-y of Michael Shur’s shows so far, which isn’t a good thing.

At some point, Apple Music started supporting a lot more terrestrial and online radio stations. I’m listening to WQXR American Standards, which wasn’t available before unless I launched the TuneIn app or something similar.

I don’t know what to say re: everything at the moment. 🤷‍♂️

Chris Welsh from The Verge reports:

Beats is today introducing the Solo Pro, a $299.95 set of wireless headphones that add noise cancellation to the on-ear form factor shared by the company’s long line of previous Solo headphones. These are, for all intents and purposes, the Solo 4 Wireless, but they’ve been rebranded to match the Powerbeats Pro (and iPhone 11 Pro and every other tech product that now has “pro” tacked on to its name). The new headphones, Beats’ first on-ears with active noise cancellation, will ship on October 30th.

I wonder if these are the rumored Apple over-the-ear headphones. I will hold out hope that they are not, and that some crazy high-end audiophile headphones are still in our future.

🎵 How did I not know there was a new Avett Brother’s album?

I have learned that my 2013 rMBP is too old to be compatible with Catalina’s Sidecar feature. I guess it’s one less thing I have to worry about.

My Catalina upgrade was a headache. Here is a bullet list of my woes:

• The install process stalled for about an hour on “Setting up your Mac”. I eventually gave up waiting and forced my Mac to shut down. Luckily, after a reboot, the installation continued and completed in mere seconds.
• System Preferences alerted me that there was a problem with my iCloud account sign-in. Entering my credentials again (several times) did not resolve the warning. I ignored it, at first, until I discovered the following two items.
• All my iCloud drive files in the Documents and Desktop folders were missing.
• My iTunes library was not displayed in the new Music app. I eventually found a preference that had to be enabled that brought them back, after a slight delay.
• To fix the iCloud account and iCloud Drive problems, I signed out of iCloud Drive. During the sign-out process, I let it back up all my files to a local folder, which took a long time. After the backup finished, I signed back into iCloud, and iCloud Drive re-downloaded all my files. It took a while for my files to re-appear; the wait was stressful, even though I have backups.

This was another one of those years in which a macOS upgrade made me wish I was an iOS (and now iPadOS) user only. That said, my computer did not get bricked, which happened with an automated Windows 10 update on one of my other machines a little while ago.

The local high today is predicted to be 93º. I really miss fall, which is a season we used to have between late September and late December.

🎵 I discovered new albums by “The New Pornographers” and “Belle & Sebastian” today. They totally made my day.

Apple Maps is significantly better in my part of the world (New Jersey) than it was a couple days ago. Justin O’Beirne documented many of these improvements in an epic article, full of graphics that illustrate the types of improvements that were made:

On September 30, 2019, Apple’s new map expanded to the Northeast U.S. This is the fifth time that Apple has expanded its new map since its public launch in September 2018.

The before-and-after screenshots in his blog post tell a dramatic story about filling in all sorts of mapping data gaps. I am seeing the same kinds of dramatic changes illustrated in this article in the maps of my hometown in the metro-Hartford area and of my current town, in the metro-New York City area.

I hope that Apple was also able to improve its routing algorithms for driving directions. I have been disappointed with both Apple Maps and Google Maps on numerous trips to, and around, New York City in the past year. Both were bad at recommending a sensible route, and in similar ways.

I should start a “Why did I even read this article?!” link blog.

📺 I am excited that “The Good Place” is returning tonight. This season will be its last. I hope they nail the ending. 🤞