Esoterica: Time Makes Fools of Us All
Fruit of the Poison Tree
The Apple event announcing new products from the other day came and went without my noticing. In years prior, these were events I would watch with interest, or follow along with while at work by refreshing the live coverage from The Verge or similar.
No longer.
Everything has its golden era, and I think the tide has really gone all the way out on my appraisal of Apple. This company has always been a bit of a tyrant, famously subjecting its customers to arbitrary and often inane design decisions, but the upsides of their singular vision often made up for the bargain. More recently, the dysfunctional mess of their products ecosystem has finally caused me to wake up and start looking elsewhere. There’s nothing quite like scanning your fingerprint to get access to a list of your passwords when… wait, you just scanned my face and have my fingerprint...why are you now asking me for a 6 digit passcode? Or should I ignore that and just double tap to confirm on my AppleWatch? I lack some of the technical curiosity to explain this friction accurately, but it’s sufficient to say all devices now interact with one another in increasingly unpredictable and baffling ways (to say nothing of the adapters and different cables you need to make sure you have before heading to the airport).
Strange login scenarios aside, a lot of my ire is directed toward the HomePod and Siri. To my endless humiliation and debasement, I end up wasting my time talking to a speaker in increasingly frustrated registers, begging it to set a timer (which it will confirm and then forget/lose entirely, which is excellent when you’re cooking something) or asking it to play a song from my library (for it to instead tell me I don’t have that song or to play me random garbage I’d never request, thereby contaminating future autoplay algorithms, which is just another reason not to use autoplay). Why is finding out what wifi network a HomePod is on buried 4 clicks deep in the obtuse ‘Home’ app? These speakers have a habit of spontaneously switching from my main router’s network to my mesh network (which can be the difference between playing a song in all of my rooms versus being limited to one room—guess I’d better check each one). By contrast, we have some Sonos Move speakers out in Palm Springs and they work perfectly, are portable, and I don’t have to talk to them.
Then, the more I thought about it, the more I realized I sort of hate all of my Apple products (with the MacBook Pro as the only one getting some clemency from me, as it mostly does what it is supposed to do). After the HomePods, the Apple Watch1 and the Apple TV (the latter having a thin highly, losable remote, coupled with a frustratingly unreliable backup in the form of the iPhone remote control) might get the most scorn from me. I don’t bother criticizing the iPhone here because it’s been done better by others and I barely use it when I can get away with it.
Every Apple product is designed to dutifully replace a few other, more beautiful, better and interesting objects. I also realized Apple published the most compelling visual indictment for this phenomenon itself, with a widely reviled ad from over the summer entitled “Crush,” in which a massive hydraulic press atomizes so many of the inconvenient tools of the arts and humanities. Look at all this obsolete junk! Just use an iPad Pro instead. Actually, just toss yourself in the press too. You are now legally married to Siri and your new name is Taargüs.
In response to one of my HomePods dying last weekend, I dusted off an older Tivoli radio to use instead. It could be novelty only, but it felt great to use real buttons again and not talking to my objects is excellent. Maybe KCRW also sounds better over the air, on an FM channel as the NPR Gods intended. I’m a maximalist in a lot of areas, so I am not sure why I’ve tolerated Apple flattening my at-home life for so long.
So while this bit from Larry David has characterized my present, I won’t let this be my future:2
Liberation (or just living with a bit more intention) takes time, but it’s exciting even as a work in progress. Give me back my stuff Tim Apple.
//
Internet Bycatch
The internet’s benthic zone has been once again duly trawled for you.
Tell every middle-aged white guy you know, because Father John Misty is coming out with a new album, Mahāśmaśāna (Sanskrit for “great cremation ground”). He’s reportedly been playing this song at shows before this, but it’s an absolute bop (made even better by whatever car or other ad YouTube decides to play before it—I got a Tina Fey Booking.com ad and then one for the Nissan Altima):
The death of National Geographic (magazine) has not been exaggerated. I don’t like promoting Substacks that are a little too into this platform (you know, the really successful columns published by the kinds of people who write on Substack about Substack and show up in Notes a little too often), but this still was a fascinating read about the decline of a magazine we all loved.
Finally stopped in to a Jacques Marie Mage. Some very interesting ideas and designs at work for their eyewear, but an equally nice reminder that every product category is a rabbit hole you can fall into.
If you’re like me, you’ve already been served this article in The Atlantic about the most academically rigourous efforts to decipher the Voynich Manuscript to date. If you haven’t, or aren’t aware of the Voynich Manuscript (a 15th century illustrated tome written in an indecipherable script and depicting many unknown rituals, plants and animals), then please enjoy.
I know a lot of people wear an Apple Watch. I know it’s allegedly useful. I’ve just come to resent its existence and I reject whatever vision of a more productive life it’s pitching to me. I’ve owned one since generation 2 and I don’t think it solves any problems that actually need solving. I further think filling your tracking circles everyday is Sisyphean madness and letting this watch recommend anything to you in terms of behavior is bad news. When I meet people who have the luxury of not wearing an Apple Watch (e.g., not needing fitness tracking, or reminders, or to be reachable, etc.), I consider them very wise and rich indeed.
I was early for an appointment the other day and I asked Siri to show me ‘coffee shops nearby’ my destination while driving, only to be greeted with results for random businesses in Fresno, California, 250 miles away. I could probably write an essay just chronicling these kinds of weekly provocations from Apple.