The Mayron Cole piano method is pretty comprehensive. And now it’s free.

If you ever wanted to learn to play piano, these guides and some sort of keyboard are all you need. The guides are available as PDFs, perfect for displaying on an iPad.

If you are stuck at home for some reason, consider learning to play the piano. Definitely satisfying to master a new skill.

Big Sur brings a frustrating interface change to notifications. This post documents the change in great detail. It’s all about the process of dismissing a notification, which is much harder than it used to be, both in terms of fine motor control requirements and low discoverability.

Read the post, see if you agree.

Glen Weldon, NPR:

Wolfwalkers, from Cartoon Saloon, the production company behind 2009’s The Secret of Kells and 2014’s Song of the Sea, isn’t made for kids. Or at least, not just for kids.

Because there are a lot of other thematic elements jostling for elbow room in this tale of young English girl Robyn (voiced by Honor Kneafsey) and her father (voiced by Sean Bean) trying to make a go of it in the pre-colonial Irish town of Kilkenny.

And:

Layered over the anti-authoritarian theme is an ecological one: The town is growing, and Robyn’s father has been hired by the Lord Protector Oliver Cromwell (voiced by Simon McBurney) to clear the wolves out of the rapidly vanishing forest nearby. There’s a healthy dose of feminism in the mix, as well: Robyn only wants to help her father hunt, but her status as a young woman gets her consigned to menial scullery duties. You don’t have to scratch the film’s surface terribly hard to find a queer reading, either: Robyn and her father are desperately trying to blend in, but Robyn’s need for freedom (and her drive to point out to her father that his white-knuckle grip on their assigned hierarchical roles is wrong) endangers them both.

The upshot here is that all this is really well handled, a mix that’s compelling, rather than muddled.

Because of the film’s densely packed themes, you can pick and choose which particular “message” you’ll take away from Wolfwalkers. But whichever you pick, the feel of this hauntingly rich visual feast will stay with you much longer.

This seems a perfect movie to watch with the family over the holidays. On Apple TV+ now.

Unbound for Mac blog:

With the announcement of the App Store Small Business Program, I’ve stopped selling Unbound directly via the web site. I thought it would be worth explaining how I came to that decision.

This is an interesting read, mostly for developers, but also for folks interested in Apple’s business practices.

If you sell a Mac app, you likely either sell it on the Mac App Store or via an eCommerce engine like Paddle. The economics are a big part of the “how to sell” decision.

Paddle takes a much smaller cut than Apple, but requires a time and coding investment. Apple’s move to cut their end for small (under $1M) sellers from 30% to 15% definitely has an impact on the overall math.

Paddle gives you the freedom to update your app when you like, no approval necessary. Apple, obviously, has hoops to jump through, including a notarization process, and restrictions on content.

Paddle makes it easy to do demos, offer coupon codes, etc.

If Apple highlights your App, the exposure can bring a huge spike in sales.

If Paddle suffered a data breach, suddenly I would be on the hook for exposing people’s emails or (God forbid) credit card data. While this has not happened, and I have no reason whatsoever to think Paddle is anything but competent, I’m still much happier trusting Apple’s security practices than any third party. (And if Apple has a security breach, I feel like I’m unlikely to take the blame from customers—the vast majority of them have done business with Apple directly in the past, whether for their computers, phones, or even just iTunes purchases.)

Even apart from a data breach, removing all third parties from the equation is a privacy win for customers—I can proudly tell people the app collects no data whatsoever, whereas Paddle had to “phone home” to validate product keys.

This last bit is something I never considered.

Worthwhile, provocative read.