One of my favorite new features of Safari is Distraction Control. Although I usually don’t mind the presence of ads on web pages while browsing, I sometimes want to hide ads or other web page elements when saving a web page to PDF. To do this, click the Page Menu button and then click the “Hide Distracting Items” option as pictured above.
Equally important to know is that Safari remembers the items you’ve asked it to hide, so the next time you visit the same page, those distracting items will remain hidden. Additionally, if other pages on the same web site display the same items in the same way, those items will be hidden too. I learned this the hard way because after hiding distracting items on a certain page, they were hidden site-wide, and I thought that Safari had some kind of browser incompatibility with the web site.
To show hidden items, click the Page Menu button and then click the “Show Hidden Items” option. You can also un-hide distracting items across all web pages. On a Mac, go to Safari > Clear History… and then select the timeframe that you’d like to clear. On an iPhone or iPad, go to Settings > Apps > Safari > Clear History and Website Data and then select the timeframe you’d like to clear.
I euthanized a Western Digital My Passport 1 TB external hard drive (Model WD10JMVW-11S5XS1). It belonged to a relative who passed away, and I was hoping to retrieve important information from it (namely bank account information, a will, and/or an estate plan). The drive failed to mount, but I was able to extract files from it using Disk Drill.
Following data recovery, I attempted to format the drive, but attempts to do so using Disk Utility and Terminal commands were unsuccessful. Therefore, I decided to destroy the hard drive to ensure that data could not be recovered.
Curious to see the inside of the hard drive, I disassembled it by popping off the plastic casing and removing the Torx screws. When I finally uncovered the platter, I bent the read/write head and arm so it could no longer function. I then grabbed the platter with pliers, and to my surprise, it shattered to pieces. I had assumed that the platters were magnetic media similar to floppy disks but apparently modern hard drives have platters that are made of glass or glass-ceramic base materials which are then coated with a thin layer of magnetic material where the data are stored.
I was not wearing protective eyewear, and fortunately I did not sustain any injuries other than a small superficial scratch on my finger. If you ever decide to disassemble a hard drive, be careful! Next time I euthanize a hard drive, rather than taking it apart I might smash it with a hammer instead.
When compressing images such as .jpg or .png files, I usually use ImageOptim which is available as a macOS application as well as an online interface that works with any operating system.
However, did you know that you can accomplish the same thing with Google Photos? As long as you store your photos using Storage Saver mode (which compresses your images, as opposed to original quality which does not compress your photos), you can download them in their compressed state.
I decided to compare file sizes and image quality for these two techniques. For ImageOptim, I enabled all compression methods, opted to strip JPG metadata, and enable lossy minification with JPG quality set to 80%. In all fairness, I do not know if these settings are equivalent to the compression algorithms used by Google Photos, but I believe these were more or less the default settings that were present when I installed ImageOptim.
From a recent photo shoot, I edited 93 photos in Adobe Lightroom Classic and exported them in JPG at 90% quality. These 93 JPG photos occupied 530.9 MB. After uploading them to Google Photos and downloading all 93 photos, the collection was compressed to 172.1 MB (32.4% of the original size). After compressing them with ImageOptim, the 93 photos were reduced to 159.7 MB (30.1% of the original size).
In terms of image quality, I cannot see any noticeable degradation in quality when displaying the photos in full screen mode on my 32-inch monitor. It is possible that if I enlarged all photos to 100% magnification I would see artifacts in the compressed images, but for all practical purposes, the compressed images with both Google Photos and ImageOptim look no different to me than the original uncompressed images.
In summary, I observed a minor advantage in file size when compressing JPG images with ImageOptim as compared with Google Photos, but this may simply be due to my ImageOptim compression settings. I think the one advantage of ImageOptim is that you can choose your JPG compression quality, whereas compression with Google Photos is limited to their default settings. Another advantage of ImageOptim is that image compression is quick, whereas compression with Google Photos requires uploading and downloading images so is limited by internet bandwidth. Overall, I find both compression methods to be perfectly suitable for my needs, but I’m sticking with ImageOptim for macOS because of its convenience.
I purchased my iPhone 12 Pro Max in November 2020. After using it for 4.5 years, its ability to hold a charge has decreased noticeably, and the iOS Battery Health & Charging setting displayed a “Service” indicator (as pictured above) with a maximum capacity of 78% (as pictured below). Because I am happy with the features of my existing iPhone, I decided to replace the battery and hold off on upgrading for at least a couple of years.
There are 2 Apple stores in my area, and both are situated in crowded malls. I initially dreaded hunting and paying for a parking space and battling crowds just to visit the Apple Store, but I discovered from the iPhone Battery Replacement website that my local Best Buy was an Apple Authorized Service Provider, so I scheduled an appointment there. My local Best Buy is less than a mile away, there is plenty of parking, and it’s usually not very crowded. There were also more appointment slots available, and I was able to find a time that matched my schedule the next day.
Upon walking into the Best Buy for my appointment, I discovered that the service was performed by Geek Squad. Nothing wrong with that, just an observation. Despite me scheduling an appointment through the iPhone Battery Replacement website and specifying that I wanted my iPhone 12 Pro Max battery replaced, the Geek Squad staff did not receive that information. After telling my service technician that I had an iPhone 12 Pro Max, he checked their inventory and said that I was lucky because they had 1 battery left. I think Apple could provide more seamless services by notifying their Apple Authorized Service Providers about the details of the service. Had they run out of iPhone 12 Pro Max batteries, I would have had to reschedule my appointment. If I ever use an Apple Authorized Service Provider again, I will know to call ahead of time and inquire about parts inventory. Anyway, the service technician ran diagnostics on my phone and confirmed that the battery needed replacement. I paid $89 + tax and was told to return in about 3 hours to pick up the phone. After picking up my phone, I verified that the Battery Health & Charging “Service” indicator went away and the maximum capacity was back at 100%.
I’ve only been using the new battery for 2 days, but I’ve felt that its ability to hold a charge is only slightly improved, whereas I expected a dramatic improvement. Following my non-scientific observations, I speculated whether they might have accidentally installed an iPhone 12 battery in my iPhone 12 Pro Max, and I had a brief conversation with ChatGPT, It stated that it’s possible that an incorrect battery was installed and that an iPhone 12 Pro Max battery should have a capacity of ~3,687 mAh. It said that I could check my battery capacity with coconutBattery and so I did. It confirmed that my battery had a full charge capacity of 3839 mAh and a design capacity of 3666 mAh, so the numbers are compatible with an iPhone 12 Pro Max battery.
ChatGPT also stated “Let it go through 2–3 full charge cycles to see if calibration improves performance.” There is an Apple Support article about recalibration of battery health. Note that recalibration in this context does not refer to fully discharging the battery to 0% and fully charging it to 100%. Instead, recalibration happens automatically with normal use of the phone. Although my phone does not state that it is recalibrating the battery, I will wait a couple weeks to see if maybe my perceptions of battery life change and/or recalibration results in more accurate reporting of remaining battery life.
Did you know that the state of California is holding more than $9.3 billion in unclaimed property and money? According to the California State Controller’s Office:
“California’s Unclaimed Property Law requires financial institutions, insurance companies, corporations, businesses, and certain other entities to report and submit their customers’ property to the State Controller’s Office when there has been no activity for a period of time (generally three years). Common types of unclaimed property include but are not limited to: bank accounts, stocks, uncashed checks, insurance benefits, wages, and safe deposit box contents. Property does not include real estate.”
To check if you have unclaimed property, visit https://www.sco.ca.gov/search_upd.html and click the “Search for Your Property” button. From there, you can enter search criteria for the Address and City fields. If there are too many records (e.g., if the address is an apartment complex or there are multiple occupants for the same address over time), you can further restrict your query by populating the Name field.
Read more about unclaimed property here. It is my understanding that each state has different laws related to unclaimed property, so if you do not live in California, I suspect that a quick web search will lead you to the relevant information about how to find and claim unclaimed property in each state. If you found money that belongs to you, leave a comment!
Yahoo recently introduced New Yahoo Mail. Normally I try to avoid making negative remarks on this blog, but I feel that there are 3 major changes in the new version of Yahoo Mail that make it worse, not better.
First, space utilization is poor. In the image above, you can see how each message consumes far too much vertical real estate, thereby limiting how many messages can be viewed on the screen. This applies to both the desktop/laptove and iOS mobile versions of Yahoo Mail. Disabling message previews helps a little bit, but there is still a lot of wasted screen real estate. And those silly icons next to the sender names? No thank you. Exactly what purpose do they serve? Recommendations to Yahoo: Give users the ability to toggle between the current view and a compact view of email messages. Also give users the ability to show or hide the icons.
Second, Yahoo Mail introduces AI-generated email summaries. Again, no thank you. I know how to read, and I don’t need Yahoo Mail to summarize things for me. Everyone is trying to add LLM features to their products for the sake of adding LLM features, rather than solving real problems. When I see the AI summaries such as the 2 examples above, I am reminded of a humorous Reddit post. Recommendation to Yahoo: Give users the option to show or hide the AI-generated summaries.
Third, the new folder structure is confusing. I have some custom folders where I store emails of various topics. However, the Archive, Spam, and Trash folders have been moved to a new location that can be displayed by clicking on the 3-dot icon. This is something that I will probably eventually get used to, but for now I have been repeatedly been clicking on the “Folders” icon to look for the Archive, Spam, and Trash folders, only to be reminded that I have to click elsewhere. Recommendation to Yahoo: If something is not broken, don’t try to fix it.
Overall, I do appreciate having a free email service, and even though I think the new New Yahoo Mail is a downgrade, it is probably not as horrible as I might have made it seem. Maybe I’ve reacted negatively because change can be hard sometimes, but there is really nothing about the New Yahoo Mail that I see as a positive change. I wonder how others feel about the New Yahoo Mail—am I overreacting?
