Samit Sarkar reports about the impending closure on Polygon:

“Unfortunately, the highly competitive Pay TV industry, with expensive content and network deals, has been slower to change than we expected,” said John Kodera, deputy president of Sony Interactive Entertainment, in a statement on the PlayStation Blog. “Because of this, we have decided to remain focused on our core gaming business.”

That’s too bad, but not at all surprising.

I never understood why someone would want to watch TV on their PlayStation. For me, at least, gaming and TV don’t mix at all. I feel a huge mode switch between interactive and non-interactive entertainment. It wouldn’t occur to me to want to do anything other than game on a gaming console.

Also, to me at least, Sony is not a brand I strongly identify with and want to align with additional areas of my life. I do like my Sony headphones, and did have a Playstation Portable long ago, but Sony has never been, in my opinion, a warm and appealing brand.

🎵 Peter Buck and Mike Mills (of R.E.M. fame) are in a supergroup that only performs original songs about baseball. The world is a weird and wonderful place.

Maybe macOS 10.15.1 will stop Xcode edit windows form tearing and revealing snapshots “The Matrix” behind them when I switch tabs. 🤞

I hate to admit it, but I love reading a good pan of an expensive restauarant. Case in point, today’s review of Peter Luger, the Brooklyn steakhouse, by Pete Wells, in the New York Times:

The restaurant will always have its loyalists. They will laugh away the prices, the $16.95 sliced tomatoes that taste like 1979, the $229.80 porterhouse for four. They will say that nobody goes to Luger for the sole, nobody goes to Luger for the wine, nobody goes to Luger for the salad, nobody goes to Luger for the service. The list goes on, and gets harder to swallow, until you start to wonder who really needs to go to Peter Luger, and start to think the answer is nobody.

Once again, WinSCP is making me happy. It would be even nicer if I could drag from one instance of it to another, though.

🎮 I got the Xbox Wireless Controller that I ordered today, after a weekend of telling myself I will cut back on the hours I spend on gaming (only a few per week, but still).

📺 I remain excited for the “His Dark Materials” series. The last preview I saw made me wonder if it would be more goofy than good, but this teaser, in which author Philip Pullman provides some soundbites, has pulled me back in to being into it.

Dan Moren, on Six Colors, reports:

Boasting a new design with flexible ear tips, the AirPods Pro add the highly-anticipated Active Noise Cancellation feature to remove background noise and provide better sound.

I am happy that the AirPods Pro will not replace the base AirPods model, which I like precisely because it (1) does not fit inside the ear canal, and (2) lets outside noises in, which is great for safety and comfort.

🎮 “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.