Starlink, Starship, and a tiny house roof
Same company about to become my internet flies the biggest object ever made on May 19. Still processing that.
Pause Point: Google ships the feature Apple won’t
Google's new Pause Point adds a 10-second friction moment before you open a distracting app. It's clever. Apple has the reach to do the same — and hasn't.
GitHub if it was made by everyone but GitHub
A meme keeps showing up on my X timeline: developers asking AI image models to redesign GitHub in the style of Apple, Microsoft, Craigslist, Geocities. I tried one. I have thoughts.
Windows Update is becoming polite. About time.
Microsoft is loosening Windows Update: a 35-day pause, a calmer shutdown menu, bundled monthly restarts. Welcome — and overdue. The deeper philosophy hasn't moved.
Apple at 50: still admiring, still waiting
Apple turns 50 today. I have been writing about them since 2009 and using their products daily since the iPhone SE. The admiration is still there. The patience is wearing thin.
What if Apple ran your AI agent?
I tried an open-source AI agent that sends me a morning briefing without being asked. It works. But it took terminal skills to set up. Apple has everything it needs to build this into iCloud+.
Windows Live Messenger: 13 years gone
March 15, 2013: Microsoft pulled the plug on Windows Live Messenger. Thirteen years later, nothing has replaced what it was — not the chat, but the culture around it.
An iPhone chip in a Mac: what Apple got right and where 8 gigs hurt
Apple put an iPhone 16 Pro chip in a $599 MacBook and it actually works. The bold part is the architecture. The catch is 8GB of RAM with no way out.
Ghostty: a terminal that’s just a terminal
After a year on Warp, I switched to Ghostty — a fast, focused terminal with no AI, no account, and no distractions. Here are the shortcuts worth knowing.
Four years is a long time to wait for a slider
My MacBook hit 79% battery health after four years of unchecked charging. Here's what I did about it — and why Apple is only now getting around to fixing this.
Finicky: the right browser, every time
Every link opened in the wrong browser. Finicky fixed that — a free Mac app that routes URLs to different browsers based on simple JavaScript rules.
Siri, are you still there?
Siri launched the same year Steve Jobs died. Fourteen years later, she still can’t hold a conversation. Apple says 2026 is the year. We’ll see.
Starlink: still waiting
I paid $9 for a Starlink reservation in January 2025. Thirteen months and one revealing email later, I'm still waiting.
Power outages and unsaved work: my backup strategy
Power cuts happen twice a week where I live. Here's how I set things up so I never lose work — no UPS required.
Welcome back
It's been a while. The last time mynetx.net was regularly updated, I was a Microsoft MVP writing about Windows and Mac from Germany. A lot has changed since then. I now live in...
My Internet setup: Making 4Mbps work
When people hear I work remotely as a developer on a constrained connection, the first question is usually about the internet. Fair enough — it's the thing that makes or breaks remote work...
How to Install macOS Monterey on your Mac
macOS Monterey is the latest macOS operating system from Apple. It's a public beta and it enables you to get access to all of macOS features before they are released. In this...
Set default font for adding text to PDFs
PDF files are an easy way to distribute print content over the web. Sometimes, printing and viewing PDF docs isn’t enough though. With Acrobat, I can add text to existing PDFs...
Help me, I deleted the Internet!
Imagine you starting your computer one day to open a website—but it just won’t work. There is no network connection. Drivers? Cable? Internet provider? Might be the culprits, but...
Use social media on the Apple Watch
Yes, I am testing it, the Apple Watch. But there’s no browser, and also no official Watch apps for Twitter, Instagram nor WhatsApp. So, how can you Tweet, stare at kitten pics and...