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Original COO Talks Steve Jobs and Apple’s Early Days

Charlotte Henry ·

Before Tim Cook there was Del Yocam. He was Apple’s first Chief Operating Officer, the role held by Mr. Cook prior to becoming CEO.  In a fascinating interview with Cult of Mac, he discussed mentoring Steve Jobs and Apple’s early days.

He also served as an early mentor to Steve Jobs, the young Apple co-founder who sometimes seemed out of his depth in 1979. “When I first got to know him, he was lost,” Yocam told Cult of Mac. “He was no longer involved in the Apple II and no one wanted him around, especially management. He didn’t care about money at that time. He was like an orphan, living away from home.” In many ways, Yocam was the proto-Tim Cook, a manufacturing and operations specialist who helped transform a dysfunctional startup into a massive, moneymaking leader of the early PC industry. He also helped take the rapidly growing company international.

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Behind Episode 205 of Servant With M. Night Shyamalan

Charlotte Henry ·

The latest Servant ‘Behind the Episode’ video is now on the Apple TV+ YouTube channel. In it, creator M. Night Shyamalan begins to reveal Leanne’s childhood and looks at how the relationship with her mother also affects her relationship with Dorothy. Episode five of the second series of Servant is now available to Apple TV+ subscribers, with episode six set to land Friday.

‘Clean Text’ From ApiMac is the Closest Tool to TextEdit for iOS
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‘Clean Text’ From ApiMac is the Closest Tool to TextEdit for iOS

Andrew Orr ·

I believe Clean Text is the purest expression of plain text editing for iPhones and iPads, like TextEdit on Mac. I’ve been gradually transitioning my notes into plain text. I still use Apple Notes for its rich text and support for images. But plain text is a great backup solution. Clean Text doesn’t try to force you into its own note-taking paradigm; in fact it’s not a traditional note-taking app at all. Unlike other note-takers I’ve used, Clean Text, as the name suggests, cleans your text. It has tools to fix line breaks, join paragraphs, remove empty lines, replace tabs with spaces, and lots more. When you’re done you can copy the text to another app or export it to Files. One note at a time without a subscription or in-app purchase. One up front purchase of US$0.99. I created a shortcut that copies text from the input (share a plain text file to it) and opens Clean Text where you can paste it. Good for quickly editing a text file from Files.

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Chrome OS Passes macOS to Become Second Most Popular Desktop OS

Andrew Orr ·

New data shows that Chrome OS has overtaken macOS to become the second most popular desktop OS. Chrome OS rose from 6.4% in 2019 to 10.8% in 2020.

Despite the fact that macOS landed in third, viewing this as an example of Google beating out Apple directly might not be accurate. Rather, it’s likely that Chrome OS has been primarily pulling sales and market share away from Windows at the low end of the market. Mac market share actually grew from 6.7 percent in 2019 to 7.5 percent in 2020.

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Email Spy Pixels are a Widespread Problem, Says BBC

Andrew Orr ·

At the BBC’s request, email service “Hey” analyzed its traffic and found two-thirds of emails sent to users contained a spy pixel.

Defenders of the trackers say they are a commonplace marketing tactic. This information can then be used to determine the impact of a specific email campaign, as well as to feed into more detailed customer profiles. Hey’s co-founder David Heinemeier Hansson says they amount to a “grotesque invasion of privacy”. And other experts have also questioned whether companies are being as transparent as required under law about their use.

These pixels are tiny 1×1 images embedded in photos that can track a variety of data points. You could turn off “Load Remote Images” automatically in Settings > Mail, but then of course they would load along with other photos when you want to see them.