M1 Fever

2/20/2021Posted inGeneral4 Comments

I have to admit my resistance to the new M1 Macs is eroding quickly. Between the universally positive reviews from both reviewers and customers alike, I’m struggling to stay M1 clean. I have my eye on a Mac mini, but I think I would also enjoy a fanless MacBook Air or a MacBook Pro that has all day battery life.

It’s not that I need one of these computers. I have a fairly recent mini that I quite like. I really don’t need to upgrade. Yet, I’m being pulled into upgrading like a moth to a flame, or Guy Fieri to a diner. I’ve seen the mini for as low as $599 US at more than one place, and these sales are making things worse. Twice as fast and off the charts efficient is a combination that’s hard to resist. Add in sale pricing and I’m in serious trouble. 

Do any of you have one of these new M1 Macs? If so, please leave a comment below. I’m interested in your opinions on these new machines. 

In the meantime I’m going to keep resisting. For now. 

Urdu and Digital Typography

2/12/2021Posted inGeneralNo Comments

There’s a lot of complexity that goes into the display of text. Text features like ligatures, small caps, and font substitution surface some of the complexity, even for languages like English whose Latin letters have been part of technology since the very beginning (ASCII encoding was standardized in the 1960’s). For languages whose letters and typography aren’t as simple as English things are much harder.

This article on digitizing the Urdu language explains the bigger challenges. It’s fascinating to read about:

The shape of each letter changes, depending on the letter that comes before and after … In 1980, Mirza Jamil wrote out every combination of Urdu letters that he could think of — roughly 20,000 by most accounts.

The traditional nastaliq script also requires that letters change their height based on their position within a word. There’s a slant to everything, so the text looks like the “wings of flying geese”. You can see the slant in this sample image of nastaliq:

It’s wonderfully artistic, but a difficult writing system for fonts and technology to properly handle.

M1 Mac Boot Options

2/5/2021Posted inGeneral1 Comment

Remember when you needed to use various keyboard shortcuts to boot your Mac into Recovery Mode, or to reset your PRAM? If you have a Mac with an Intel chipset, you still need to remember these shortcuts. However, if you have a new M1 Mac (I’m not jealous of those of you who purchased one, not at all!), it appears that you can forget those shortcuts. 

According to an Apple support document, you now access the various boot modes by holding down the power button for 10 seconds. You’ll then see a new Recovery Options screen that shows your boot drive and an Options icon that will show you the various boot modes that are available. All the boot modes you are used to are there, plus a few new ones.

So to sum up, booting into Recovery mode on an M1 Mac no longer requires memorizing keyboard shortcuts. I have to admit it’s going to take a while before I unlearn these shortcuts, but this is progress I suppose.

Oh, and if you do own one of these M1 Macs, please hesitate to tell me, even though I’m really not jealous of you at all. Really.