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Apple introduces macOS Mojave

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Re: Apple introduces macOS Mojave

#441

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed -- as a Deaf person who uses visual languages to communicate, it's allowed me to actually begin to express myself using a set of pseudo-language visual elements. Some of them roughly map over to ASL expressions; I am looking forward to when they add ASL-specific emoji, or ASL language support, or even hands in the new animoji.

There's no way to say this without being insensitive, but this reminds me of a grade school joke without a punchline - "how do you write in sign-language?" Can you help me better understand what ASL language support would look like or what that would mean to you?

I'm not deaf, but as per the GP's comment, I can immediately see animojis with hands performing sign gestures.

If you consider how ingrained and emotionally significant that expressions in your native language are, animojis with hands - which will take that emotional significance and put a cute spin on it - is going to be massive.

Re: Apple introduces macOS Mojave

#442
post #421

WWDC 2018, from underwhelming to boring. I will lose my mind if i hear *oji one more time. Will they ever stop with this nonsense? Favicons in Safari? It took them 6 years for the browser to remember the zoom setting per site, now we have the luxury of having favicons.

its so disappointing, with all the resources and talent at their disposal, that the pace and direction of macOS - to truly advance a desktop system - is so lack luster, "un-courageous", and as you put it boring.

I'm just curious, what "courageous" changes would you like to see in macOS?

Last time I saw a courageous desktop OS change, it was Windows merging their Mobile and desktop OS, and that was a hard fail.

It's a workstation. I prefer reliability and consistency. I think Apple knows they need to keep the general public buying macbooks with stupid superficial features, while maintaining consistent, reliable, functionality for the power users out there before they get annoyed and migrate to Linux machines. Hopefully they address the hardware reliability issues (ie. keyboards) in their next hardware release.

Re: Apple introduces macOS Mojave

#443
post #124

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spec? localstorage errors are not standardized, every browser gives quota exceeded error different name and number, you have to use something like '' e.name.toLowerCase().includes("quota")

But localStorage.setItem() throwing an error definitely is in the spec, so if someone isn't handling Safari's localStorage behaviour in Private Browsing Mode (that is, throwing exceptions) then they aren't handling the parts of the spec.

The web isn't built on specs, it's built on conventions. Safari breaks the convention.

Re: Apple introduces macOS Mojave

#444

I'm not sure what I'm expecting to be honest, but I never use any of the in-built macOS apps so I just skim over those announcements. They don't seem like they should be part of what's considered the OS.

Why not? Would you rather macOS shipped with no system apps?

I guess I'm expecting system wide features that only Apple could add because they involving updating the underlying OS. Adding group chat to their video chat app that I never use for example isn't that interesting to me and shouldn't require an OS update.

Re: Apple introduces macOS Mojave

#445
post #219

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Good riddance. OpenGL has been an awful API for many years now. The drivers are way too complicated, and applications don’t have enough control to deliver smooth performance. All OpenGL does now is let you kind of mediocrily put things on the screen.

What do you think about them forcing you to use Swift or Objective-C for this? Forcing you to use languages that use ref counting and object oriented pointer tables that are traversed at runtime? How much of the gains does objc_msgSend eat up? I though you are against such things? How ugly would the JAI code to need to be to interface with this? I wish they had a simple Metal C API, but their new API comes with a bun…

When you're calling any library, that simple C call invariably goes somewhere else inside the library itself. For OpenGL this is because there's always hooks for introspection, or because the GPU driver wants to implement something themselves, etc. For many other libraries it's just because people don't feel like they've written "production quality code" unless it goes through a bunch of hoops and ends up in some method with five underscores in the name.

In Metal the Obj-C abstraction is part of the design and used to eliminate any other abstraction people would want to introduce. The objects you get back from the API are implemented straight in the GPU vendor code, and the debug tools can swap the methods out for extra validation, recording, etc.

Re: Apple introduces macOS Mojave

#446

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let me put it another way: what’s the point of these newfangled moving pictures when we already have books?

That's a better argument, but it still doesn't really explain what qualities make emoji a better medium of expression, or why we need 2000 of them.

The fact that they’re wildly popular should provide some indication that the qualities exist.

Communication is rife with ambiguities, emotion, shortcuts, and mistakes. And between people who share friendship or more personal relationships, those “flaws” are often features, not bugs.

The concept of emoji, I feel, embraces those flaws.

(And personally speaking on the subject of emoji vs common text shorthand, if I never see “lol” again it’ll be too soon.)

Re: Apple introduces macOS Mojave

#448
post #427

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How many languages do you speak well? Very likely less than the amount of different native language speakers who understand the vast majority of your emoticons/emojis. I suppose you don't care cause you just speak your native language with other people who are native speakers. But a universal language on top of that has huge benefits in international circles. And, my 3 month old understands the :) smile. One of the v…

So let me get this straight: emoji is both highly contextual and simultaneously universal? I find that difficult to believe. On the other hand, given enough time and global interaction in that medium, it could develop a stable enough meaning across a large enough conceptual space to have a situation no worse than exists between any "standard" language and its various dialects. That'd be interesting, but I'm not holdi…

> So let me get this straight: emoji is both highly contextual and simultaneously universal?

Well, not always universal. Some are generally well understood. They're easy to learn (you might wanna also look into where to start if you're interested in learning many languages; I understood its best to start with an Asian language such as Japanese/Korean/Chinese), and on top of that even allow to learn languages easily (see Memrise and Duolingo who use SVG art to teach languages. They use the same SVG art in different languages!). Even on school when children learn their first words (which are in Dutch: boom/roos/vis/vuur, English meaning: tree/rose/fish/fire) this is done via pictures!

Emoticons and emoji are contextual, yes.

If I say:

That's fun ;) :)

That has a different meaning than:

That is fun :)

or

That is fun ;)

Different context, yet a wink or smile is universal.

And if I'd write:

Dat is leuk :)

You wouldn't understand it because you don't speak Dutch. But you would understand the smiley. Without using any translator. The emoticon & emoji always describes the text around it, like an adjective (though it could also describe other smileys). As such, it is descriptive.

True, sometimes the emoticons (and especially emoji) explanation must be explained. Once it is explained, it can be used in combination with any language. For example, the kappa emoji [1] which originates from Twitch can be used on an English stream, but also on a Spanish or Japanese one. Its generally understood within the gamer community, but if you'd start using it within your local hockey club they'd first need to understand the meaning.

[1] https://www.twitchemotes.com/emotes/25

Re: Apple introduces macOS Mojave

#449

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely. A unified subscription model would be a boon to readers. It's proven complicated to implement due to no standard among publishers for handling subscriptions. Outside of the more innovative companies, it seems a bit ad hoc as new technologies rise, appreciate into maturity, settle into mediocrity (where they are adopted), and fall (while they're increasingly difficult to maintain until the next third state…

I'm not sure we even need something that elaborate honestly. I was imagining just a straight up RSS reader. It doesn't seem like we need to invent anything new here, just make a version of RSS that can natively serve rich multimedia content and be gated behind a subscription.

That would definitely work to an extent—especially for newswire producers and consumers like wire services or newspapers.

Magazines and some newspapers, however, are very zealous about their design—and rightfully so. Apple has tried to find a middle ground with the Apple News format[0], but it's still a little wanting with regard to print design standards. Some art directors/teams are more accepting of new constraints than others as well.

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[0] https://developer.apple.com/documentation/apple_news/apple_n...

Re: Apple introduces macOS Mojave

#450
post #355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For most people emojis (and animojis) have opened a whole new way to communicate with each other Wow that is an extremely generous characterization. At best they're just prettier versions of :) and :( and I don't see how they allow people to convey ideas they couldn't do just as well via text.

> At best they're just prettier versions of :) and :( Do you really think this? I don't really 'get' emojis but I think you're woefully underestimating their impact on communication and language. The emoji library on a normal iPhone is enormous.

>Do you really think this?

...yes?

>you're woefully underestimating their impact on communication and language. The emoji library on a normal iPhone is enormous

What does one have to do with the other? Yes, there are a lot of dumb icons to chose from. How does that directly lead to "[having a] large impact on communication and language"? If that's true, do you think it's a _positive_ impact?

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