β†’ Links πŸ”— Mark Gurman is wrong

Apple didn't make a mistake by launching the iPhone Duo in 70 countries. Gurman doesn't know about marketing if he thinks Apple should have waited until inventory built up to a satisfactory level before launching the highly anticipated device. Apple is rolling out the device worldwide so more people can see it in action. Those who buy the Duo will talk to friends and family about it, creating even more desire and maybe more demand for it. Trust the process.

https://www.macrumors.com/2026/10/18/gurman-says-iphone-duo-preorders-major-mistake/

πŸ“‘βœ¨ Blips, now by email

Blips now has a newsletter. On the 1st of each month, you’ll get one email with everything I posted here the month before: the quick thoughts, the links, and the photos from my β€œI Was There” trails. Each blip is included in full, with its links, so you can read the whole month in one go without clicking through.

The first issue goes out November 1 and covers October. One email a month, nothing in between.

To subscribe, use the form in the sidebar or the one under any post.

For the curious: it’s built with an n8n workflow that pulls the month’s posts through the Scribbles API and creates the email in Buttondown. I’ll probably write up the details on meta.numericcitizen.me.

πŸ•– Now β€” Giving the iPad with external display another try

I've been doing this on and off since getting my M4 iPad Pro, and it always has been a mixed experience. The iPad is currently on iPadOS 27.2 beta 2. I'm using Apple Notes and Safari to prepare for my next trip in Thailand at the end of this month. A few observations:

  • Control Center is still not available on the external display! How hard is this to add? Reaching the iPad display for this is diminishing the experience of a "full-blown" computer.
  • Resizing windows creates such weird animation artifacts. Can this ever be improved?
  • Notifications coming at the top of the external display is nice but having them centered requires a long lasting animation from the top left corner to the top center that I find distracting.
  • I cannot make my Magic Mouse use my finger to scroll window content... only the track works. Does it requires a newer Magic Mouse?
  • There are many very small reminders that the iPad is not a Mac albeit all the efforts Apple put into iPadOS in recent years. As an example: clicking outside a windows on the external display doesn't bring the desktop. There is no desktop, only an Home Screen. Bunker. Another example: the absence of Raycast.
  • Leaving the iPad off for a day will force apps to be reloaded including Safari. Any unsaved work in a web page might be lost. It's a reminder that even on the Pro iPad, memory is tightly managed.
  • The lack of clamshell mode as found on MacBook is another bummer.
  • More to discover, for sure...