Reading List

The most recent articles from a list of feeds I subscribe to.

Moft’s MagSafe-Compatible Snap-On iPhone Stand and Wallet

Here’s a product recommendation long in the making. Four years ago this month, Matthew Panzarino was my guest on The Talk Show and at one point he recommended Moft’s Snap-On iPhone Stand/Wallet. It uses a very clever origami-style folding design. Folded flat it kind of just looks like a leather MagSafe wallet. But folded open it works as a stand — and as a stand, it works both horizontally and vertically. Borrowing images from Moft’s website:

A blue Moft Snap-On iPhone Stand, propping an iPhone vertically.

A blue Moft Snap-On iPhone Stand, propping an iPhone vertically.

You can also use it with the stand oriented vertically but the phone horizontally.

I bought one of these right after that episode of the show, and I’ve been using it ever since. And every so often when I use it, I think to myself that I should write a post recommending it. I’ve waited so long that Panzarino has been back on The Talk Show five times since the episode in which he recommended it, but here we are. The thing is, I use it both in my kitchen and while travelling, and so I’ll often find myself in the kitchen, rooting around the drawer in which I keep it stashed, only to realize it’s downstairs in my office in my laptop bag. Or, worse, I’ll find myself looking for it in my laptop bag while I’m sitting on an airplane 35,000 feet in the air, only to realize it’s back home in my kitchen. So I ordered a second one today — which I should have done like 3.5 years ago.

I own a few similar/competing products, like these PopSocket-y rings from Anker and Belkin. I have no idea why I own both of those rings when I don’t like either of them as much as the Moft foldable stand. The problem with these rings is that they’re only able to prop the phone horizontally. Watching video is almost certainly the most common use case for these stands, but I do often use my iPhone propped up vertically, like for FaceTime calls and when I’m writing on it using a Bluetooth keyboard. I’m going to give both of these rings away — there’s nothing they do better than the Moft stand. The Moft stand even works better as a hand-holding grip.

I’ve never used the Moft stand as a wallet, but if you want to, it holds two cards. Prime “Day” lasts a week and it’s still running until midnight Pacific tonight, but the Moft stand doesn’t have a Prime Day discount: it’s the same price at Amazon as it is from Moft’s website: $30. Well worth it. I love this thing. (Buy yours wherever you want, of course, but the Amazon link a few sentences back will throw some filthy affiliate lucre my way.)

Apple vs. the Law

James Heppell (via Hacker News): A week ago today I had the pleasure of attending both the Apple and Google DMA compliance workshops in Brussels. More detailed articles on the questions and answers, technical and legal analysis etc will be published over at the OWA blog, where we’ve just done the first write-up on the […]

Using “tmutil associatedisk” With APFS Destinations

I recently got a new SSD on Prime Day to replace one of my main hard drives. As this drive was included in Time Machine, I wanted the SSD to “adopt” the hard drive’s backup history. This way I could avoid recopying lots of data that was already backed up, which would also require pruning […]

macOS Tahoe’s Folder Icon Customization

William Gallagher: It’s not like it’s going to take you long, since there are just two elements to this: Changing a folder’s colorAdding either an icon or an emoji to the folderIn this case, icons and emoji don’t sound all that different — whichever you choose, you end up with a symbol appearing on the […]

Apple Wins Dismissal in Payments Conspiracy Lawsuit

Hartley Charlton: Apple has successfully secured the dismissal of a federal lawsuit accusing it of conspiring with Visa and Mastercard to suppress competition in the payments network industry and inflate merchant transaction fees (via Reuters).[…]The plaintiffs claimed that Visa and Mastercard made ongoing payments to Apple, described as “a very large and ongoing cash bribe,” […]