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macOS Big Sur is now available

macOS Big Sur is now available

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3 years ago

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The day has finally arrived. The latest version of macOS is here, after a seemingly endless wait. That wasn’t just your imagination, either. Sure time is basically meaningless now, but this one did take a while to arrive, with nearly five months between its announcement at WWDC and today’s public release.

There are, no doubt, plenty of reasons for this. Among other things, this has been an usual year, to put it as benignly as possible. This also marks a pretty big annual update for the desktop operating system. And then, of course, there’s the fact that this is the first version of macOS expressly built for the company’s new Arm-based Macs — the single largest change to Apple hardware in roughly 14 years.

macOS 11.0 Big Sur preview

I’ve been running a beta of the operating system on one of my machines since June, along with developers and a smattering of brave souls. I’m not saying we’re heroes — but I’m also not not saying that. At the end of the day, it’s not for me to say.

The update brings a slew of design updates — many of which continue the longstanding trend of blurring the line between macOS and iOS. It’s a trend that may well intensify as Apple silicon ushers in the next era of Macs. At the very least, it makes sense from the standpoint of iOS having long ago taken the pole position in Apple’s software design. The mobile operating system has been the first to introduce many features that have eventually found their way onto the desktop.

Image Credits: Brian Heater

Many of the changes are subtle. The menu bar is taller and more translucent, changing with different backgrounds and as the system toggles between light and dark mode. The Finder dock now floats a touch above the bottom of the screen and menus have a little more space to breathe. Windows offer a bit more space, as well, along with a smattering of new symbols scattered throughout first-party apps like Mail and Calendar.

Image Credits: Brian Heater

The shapes of the icons have changed to a more iOS-like squircle design, with subtle touches throughout — the Mail icon, for instant, sports the address of Apple’s HQ in barely visible text: “Apple Park, California 95014.” Like many of the other touches, the key is offering up a kind of stylistic consistency, both throughout Big Sur and across the Apple ecosystem.

Image Credits: Brian Heater

The most immediate and obvious change to the finder, however, is the addition of the Control Center. The feature is borrowed directly from iOS/iPadOS, bringing a simple, clean and translucent pane down to the right side of the screen. You can drag and drop the panels directly into the menu bar. It brings to mind the sort of control center functionality the company introduced with the Touch Bar, but more than anything the big buttons and sliders beckon you to reach out and touch the screen. It’s really hard to shake the feeling that the company is starting to lay the groundwork for future touchscreen Macs running Apple silicon.

Image Credits: Brian Heater

I won’t lie: I’ve never been a big Notification Center user. I understand why Apple thought to bring the center to the desktop several updates ago, but it’s just not as centralized as it is on mobile. Nor does it fit into my existing workflow. Apple has continued tweaking the feature — and it gets a pretty sizable overhaul here. Like much of the rest of the updates, it’s about how Apple uses space.

Now accessible by clicking the date and time in the menu bar (versus a devoted button), the two most appealing changes here are grouped notifications and widgets. Again borrowing from iOS, notifications are now stacked by group. Tapping the top of the pile will expand them down. You can “X” them out on the side to make them go away — but again, a swipe would be more satisfying. Also notable is the ability to interact with notifications. You can reply to messages or listen to podcasts straight from the river. It’s a nice addition for those who already use the feature as part of their workflow.

Image Credits: Brian Heater

The system also joins the latest version of iOS with the addition of new widgets into the Notification column. Currently the list includes first-party apps like Calendar, Weather and Podcasts, along with additional widgets available via the App Store. You can add and remove widgets and resize them. On a screen with enough real estate, it might be nice to pin them to the top, so they can stay open and anchored in place, while you’re working in other applications.

Sounds, too, have been updated throughout. The changes are mostly subtle, as in the case of the newly recorded startup chime. More pronounced are changes like moving a file, which has a nice humming sound — more pleasant that the old cold spring noise. Here’s a much better rundown of all of the sounds than I currently have time to put together:

A number of first-party apps get some key updates here. Safari is probably the biggest of the bunch, starting with the welcome page. You can set the background image, using something from your own library — or a pre-picked photo from Apple. It might be nice to have something a bit more dynamic, cycling through a series of handpicked images or using AI to choose the best from a library, but otherwise the implementation is good — and it’s nice to see something familiar when you open a new tab (in my very specific case, a rabbit who also lives rent-free in my apartment).

Image Credits: Brian Heater

Beyond that, home-page customizations include toggling between favorites, frequently visited sites, your reading list and even security reports, which tell you things like the number of trackers Safari has blocked. Clicking into that last bit offers up a more detailed profile of the specific trackers it blocked and which sites are doing the tracking. Apparently 80% of the sites I’ve visited with Safari on this computer use them — which, yikes.

Built-in translation in Safari is a nice step toward taking on Chrome — Google has been a longtime leader in translation services. Apple’s browser has great market share on mobile (thanks in no small part to being the default browser on iOS), but studies tend to put it at somewhere around eight to 10% of the desktop market share. Currently, however, the system is still in beta and the translation options are still limited, including: English, Spanish, Simplified Chinese, French, German, Russian and Brazilian Portuguese. Apple will no doubt continue to update that list.

Image Credits: Brian Heater

One piece that I do dig are website previews, which can be accessed by hovering over a tab. That’s a nice addition for those of us who tend to go overboard with tabs — which I have to imagine is many or most people, these days. Apple has also added site favicons to tabs, which should also help you identify them quicker.

Image Credits: Brian Heater

Things have been improved in the backend as well, with quicker site rendering and better power efficiency. The company says you should be able to get up to three extra hours of battery streaming video on Safari versus Firefox and Chrome. Seems like a pretty big discrepancy, though there are, no doubt, advantages to using first-party software. Even if the company still has a steep hill to climb with regards to desktop market share. Maps is another place where Apple’s got some pretty stiff competition from Google. At last measure, Google Maps has something like 67% market share. Apple’s offering got off to an admittedly slow start out of the gate, but the company’s been pushing pretty hard to catch up to — and in a few spot surpass — Google.

Image Credits: Brian Heater

Of course, many of these updates are the sort of things that will be easier to check out when there isn’t a pandemic happening. Meantime, things like the 360-degree Look Around (Apple’s Street View competitor) is a nice way to live vicariously. Indoor Maps, too, though the feature is still relatively limited. You can check it out in select spots like airports and indoor shopping malls. Other key additions include electric vehicle routing to plan trips around charging stages, cycling directions and mapped congestion zones for traffic in major cities.

Image Credits: Brian Heater

A handful of updates to Messages warrant mention here — many of which were also introduced with the latest version of iOS (a rare bit of cross-OS parity that could, perhaps, become more common going forward). In this case, it’s clear why the company would want to roll some of this stuff out all at once.

Here’s everything Apple announced at the ‘One More Thing’ event today

Messages is just more robust across the board on the desktop with this update. The list includes a Memoji editor and stickers, message effects like confetti and lasers and an improved photo chooser. Conversations can be pinned to the top of the app and group chats have been improved to include group photos, inline replies to specific messages and the ability to alert users with the @ symbol. It’s not quite a Slack replacement, nor is it trying to be one.

After months of beta, Big Sur is finally here. It boasts some key upgrades to apps and the system at large, but more importantly from Apple’s perspective, it lays the groundwork for the first round of Arm-powered Macs and continues its march toward a uniformity between the company’s two primary operating systems.

Apple will release macOS Big Sur on November 12

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Wendy’s teases new $3 offer for upcoming holiday

The Daylight Savings Time promotion slashes prices on breakfast.

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35 mins ago

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March 8, 2024

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Daylight Savings Time, or the practice of advancing clocks an hour in the spring to maximize natural daylight, is a controversial practice because of the way it leaves many feeling off-sync and tired on the second Sunday in March when the change is made and one has one less hour to sleep in.

Despite annual "Abolish Daylight Savings Time" think pieces and online arguments that crop up with unwavering regularity, Daylight Savings in North America begins on March 10 this year.

Related: Coca-Cola has a new soda for Diet Coke fans

Tapping into some people's very vocal dislike of Daylight Savings Time, fast-food chain Wendy's  (WEN)  is launching a daylight savings promotion that is jokingly designed to make losing an hour of sleep less painful and encourage fans to order breakfast anyway.

Wendy's has recently made a big push to expand its breakfast menu.

Image source: Wendy's.

Promotion wants you to compensate for lost sleep with cheaper breakfast

As it is also meant to drive traffic to the Wendy's app, the promotion allows anyone who makes a purchase of $3 or more through the platform to get a free hot coffee, cold coffee or Frosty Cream Cold Brew.

More Food + Dining:

Available during the Wendy's breakfast hours of 6 a.m. and 10:30 a.m. (which, naturally, will feel even earlier due to Daylight Savings), the deal also allows customers to buy any of its breakfast sandwiches for $3. Items like the Sausage, Egg and Cheese Biscuit, Breakfast Baconator and Maple Bacon Chicken Croissant normally range in price between $4.50 and $7.

The choice of the latter is quite wide since, in the years following the pandemic, Wendy's has made a concerted effort to expand its breakfast menu with a range of new sandwiches with egg in them and sweet items such as the French Toast Sticks. The goal was both to stand out from competitors with a wider breakfast menu and increase traffic to its stores during early-morning hours.

Wendy's deal comes after controversy over 'dynamic pricing'

But last month, the chain known for the square shape of its burger patties ignited controversy after saying that it wanted to introduce "dynamic pricing" in which the cost of many of the items on its menu will vary depending on the time of day. In an earnings call, chief executive Kirk Tanner said that electronic billboards would allow restaurants to display various deals and promotions during slower times in the early morning and late at night.

Outcry was swift and Wendy's ended up walking back its plans with words that they were "misconstrued" as an intent to surge prices during its most popular periods.

While the company issued a statement saying that any changes were meant as "discounts and value offers" during quiet periods rather than raised prices during busy ones, the reputational damage was already done since many saw the clarification as another way to obfuscate its pricing model.

"We said these menuboards would give us more flexibility to change the display of featured items," Wendy's said in its statement. "This was misconstrued in some media reports as an intent to raise prices when demand is highest at our restaurants."

The Daylight Savings Time promotion, in turn, is also a way to demonstrate the kinds of deals Wendy's wants to promote in its stores without putting up full-sized advertising or posters for what is only relevant for a few days.

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Inside The Most Ridiculous Jobs Report In Recent History: Record 1.2 Million Immigrant Jobs Added In One Month

Inside The Most Ridiculous Jobs Report In Recent History: Record 1.2 Million Immigrant Jobs Added In One Month

Last month we though that the…

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1 hour ago

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March 8, 2024

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Inside The Most Ridiculous Jobs Report In Recent History: Record 1.2 Million Immigrant Jobs Added In One Month

Last month we though that the January jobs report was the "most ridiculous in recent history" but, boy, were we wrong because this morning the Biden department of goalseeked propaganda (aka BLS) published the February jobs report, and holy crap was that something else. Even Goebbels would blush. 

What happened? Let's take a closer look.

On the surface, it was (almost) another blockbuster jobs report, certainly one which nobody expected, or rather just one bank out of 76 expected. Starting at the top, the BLS reported that in February the US unexpectedly added 275K jobs, with just one research analyst (from Dai-Ichi Research) expecting a higher number.

Some context: after last month's record 4-sigma beat, today's print was "only" 3 sigma higher than estimates. Needless to say, two multiple sigma beats in a row used to only happen in the USSR... and now in the US, apparently.

Before we go any further, a quick note on what last month we said was "the most ridiculous jobs report in recent history": it appears the BLS read our comments and decided to stop beclowing itself. It did that by slashing last month's ridiculous print by over a third, and revising what was originally reported as a massive 353K beat to just 229K,  a 124K revision, which was the biggest one-month negative revision in two years!

Of course, that does not mean that this month's jobs print won't be revised lower: it will be, and not just that month but every other month until the November election because that's the only tool left in the Biden admin's box: pretend the economic and jobs are strong, then revise them sharply lower the next month, something we pointed out first last summer and which has not failed to disappoint once.

To be fair, not every aspect of the jobs report was stellar (after all, the BLS had to give it some vague credibility). Take the unemployment rate, after flatlining between 3.4% and 3.8% for two years - and thus denying expectations from Sahm's Rule that a recession may have already started - in February the unemployment rate unexpectedly jumped to 3.9%, the highest since February 2022 (with Black unemployment spiking by 0.3% to 5.6%, an indicator which the Biden admin will quickly slam as widespread economic racism or something).

And then there were average hourly earnings, which after surging 0.6% MoM in January (since revised to 0.5%) and spooking markets that wage growth is so hot, the Fed will have no choice but to delay cuts, in February the number tumbled to just 0.1%, the lowest in two years...

... for one simple reason: last month's average wage surge had nothing to do with actual wages, and everything to do with the BLS estimate of hours worked (which is the denominator in the average wage calculation) which last month tumbled to just 34.1 (we were led to believe) the lowest since the covid pandemic...

... but has since been revised higher while the February print rose even more, to 34.3, hence why the latest average wage data was once again a product not of wages going up, but of how long Americans worked in any weekly period, in this case higher from 34.1 to 34.3, an increase which has a major impact on the average calculation.

While the above data points were examples of some latent weakness in the latest report, perhaps meant to give it a sheen of veracity, it was everything else in the report that was a problem starting with the BLS's latest choice of seasonal adjustments (after last month's wholesale revision), which have gone from merely laughable to full clownshow, as the following comparison between the monthly change in BLS and ADP payrolls shows. The trend is clear: the Biden admin numbers are now clearly rising even as the impartial ADP (which directly logs employment numbers at the company level and is far more accurate), shows an accelerating slowdown.

But it's more than just the Biden admin hanging its "success" on seasonal adjustments: when one digs deeper inside the jobs report, all sorts of ugly things emerge... such as the growing unprecedented divergence between the Establishment (payrolls) survey and much more accurate Household (actual employment) survey. To wit, while in January the BLS claims 275K payrolls were added, the Household survey found that the number of actually employed workers dropped for the third straight month (and 4 in the past 5), this time by 184K (from 161.152K to 160.968K).

This means that while the Payrolls series hits new all time highs every month since December 2020 (when according to the BLS the US had its last month of payrolls losses), the level of Employment has not budged in the past year. Worse, as shown in the chart below, such a gaping divergence has opened between the two series in the past 4 years, that the number of Employed workers would need to soar by 9 million (!) to catch up to what Payrolls claims is the employment situation.

There's more: shifting from a quantitative to a qualitative assessment, reveals just how ugly the composition of "new jobs" has been. Consider this: the BLS reports that in February 2024, the US had 132.9 million full-time jobs and 27.9 million part-time jobs. Well, that's great... until you look back one year and find that in February 2023 the US had 133.2 million full-time jobs, or more than it does one year later! And yes, all the job growth since then has been in part-time jobs, which have increased by 921K since February 2023 (from 27.020 million to 27.941 million).

Here is a summary of the labor composition in the past year: all the new jobs have been part-time jobs!

But wait there's even more, because now that the primary season is over and we enter the heart of election season and political talking points will be thrown around left and right, especially in the context of the immigration crisis created intentionally by the Biden administration which is hoping to import millions of new Democratic voters (maybe the US can hold the presidential election in Honduras or Guatemala, after all it is their citizens that will be illegally casting the key votes in November), what we find is that in February, the number of native-born workers tumbled again, sliding by a massive 560K to just 129.807 million. Add to this the December data, and we get a near-record 2.4 million plunge in native-born workers in just the past 3 months (only the covid crash was worse)!

The offset? A record 1.2 million foreign-born (read immigrants, both legal and illegal but mostly illegal) workers added in February!

Said otherwise, not only has all job creation in the past 6 years has been exclusively for foreign-born workers...

Source: St Louis Fed FRED Native Born and Foreign Born

... but there has been zero job-creation for native born workers since June 2018!

This is a huge issue - especially at a time of an illegal alien flood at the southwest border...

... and is about to become a huge political scandal, because once the inevitable recession finally hits, there will be millions of furious unemployed Americans demanding a more accurate explanation for what happened - i.e., the illegal immigration floodgates that were opened by the Biden admin.

Which is also why Biden's handlers will do everything in their power to insure there is no official recession before November... and why after the election is over, all economic hell will finally break loose. Until then, however, expect the jobs numbers to get even more ridiculous.

Tyler Durden Fri, 03/08/2024 - 13:30

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Shipping company files surprise Chapter 7 bankruptcy, liquidation

While demand for trucking has increased, so have costs and competition, which have forced a number of players to close.

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3 hours ago

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March 8, 2024

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The U.S. economy is built on trucks.

As a nation we have relatively limited train assets, and while in recent years planes have played an expanded role in moving goods, trucks still represent the backbone of how everything — food, gasoline, commodities, and pretty much anything else — moves around the country.

Related: Fast-food chain closes more stores after Chapter 11 bankruptcy

"Trucks moved 61.1% of the tonnage and 64.9% of the value of these shipments. The average shipment by truck was 63 miles compared to an average of 640 miles by rail," according to the U.S. Bureau of Transportation Statistics 2023 numbers.

But running a trucking company has been tricky because the largest players have economies of scale that smaller operators don't. That puts any trucking company that's not a massive player very sensitive to increases in gas prices or drops in freight rates.

And that in turn has led a number of trucking companies, including Yellow Freight, the third-largest less-than-truckload operator; J.J. & Sons Logistics, Meadow Lark, and Boateng Logistics, to close while freight brokerage Convoy shut down in October.

Aside from Convoy, none of these brands are household names. but with the demand for trucking increasing, every company that goes out of business puts more pressure on those that remain, which contributes to increased prices.

Demand for trucking has continued to increase.

Image source: Shutterstock

Another freight company closes and plans to liquidate

Not every bankruptcy filing explains why a company has gone out of business. In the trucking industry, multiple recent Chapter 7 bankruptcies have been tied to lawsuits that pushed otherwise successful companies into insolvency.

In the case of TBL Logistics, a Virginia-based national freight company, its Feb. 29 bankruptcy filing in U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Western District of Virginia appears to be death by too much debt.

"In its filing, TBL Logistics listed its assets and liabilities as between $1 million and $10 million. The company stated that it has up to 49 creditors and maintains that no funds will be available for unsecured creditors once it pays administrative fees," Freightwaves reported.

The company's owners, Christopher and Melinda Bradner, did not respond to the website's request for comment.

Before it closed, TBL Logistics specialized in refrigerated and oversized loads. The company described its business on its website.

"TBL Logistics is a non-asset-based third-party logistics freight broker company providing reliable and efficient transportation solutions, management, and storage for businesses of all sizes. With our extensive network of carriers and industry expertise, we streamline the shipping process, ensuring your goods reach their destination safely and on time."

The world has a truck-driver shortage

The covid pandemic forced companies to consider their supply chain in ways they never had to before. Increased demand showed the weakness in the trucking industry and drew attention to how difficult life for truck drivers can be.

That was an issue HBO's John Oliver highlighted on his "Last Week Tonight" show in October 2022. In the episode, the host suggested that the U.S. would basically start to starve if the trucking industry shut down for three days.

"Sorry, three days, every produce department in America would go from a fully stocked market to an all-you-can-eat raccoon buffet," he said. "So it’s no wonder trucking’s a huge industry, with more than 3.5 million people in America working as drivers, from port truckers who bring goods off ships to railyards and warehouses, to long-haul truckers who move them across the country, to 'last-mile' drivers, who take care of local delivery." 

The show highlighted how many truck drivers face low pay, difficult working conditions and, in many cases, crushing debt.

"Hundreds of thousands of people become truck drivers every year. But hundreds of thousands also quit. Job turnover for truckers averages over 100%, and at some companies it’s as high as 300%, meaning they’re hiring three people for a single job over the course of a year. And when a field this important has a level of job satisfaction that low, it sure seems like there’s a huge problem," Oliver shared.

The truck-driver shortage is not just a U.S. problem; it's a global issue, according to IRU.org.

"IRU’s 2023 driver shortage report has found that over three million truck driver jobs are unfilled, or 7% of total positions, in 36 countries studied," the global transportation trade association reported. 

"With the huge gap between young and old drivers growing, it will get much worse over the next five years without significant action."

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