Handbrake’s H.265 ‘Preset’ setting affects ‘constant’ quality

I always consternate over what the ‘Preset’ setting should be when doing H.264 encodes with Handbrake.  It’s always tempting to slide right on over to ‘placebo’ to, in theory, ensure you’ve got the best possible encoding.  And in my experience that at least roughly works – file size decreases (marginally) as you use more time-consuming… Read more

Lightroom “Classic” doesn’t play well with others

So far the new “Classic” Lightroom looks & feels mostly identical to the prior version(s), which isn’t really a compliment, but could be worse.  There’s no apparent performance improvements, that’s for sure, so as expected Adobe’s promises to suddenly learn how to write efficient & performant software, well… at least their marketing department gave it… Read more

Adobe Photoshop Lightroom doesn’t support Adobe Photoshop files

I need a ‘facepalm’ category apparently.  There’s been a lot of that lately. You cannot import, let-alone work on, Photoshop files (“PSB” file extension) in Lightroom.  It flat-out doesn’t support them.  That’s such a weird limitation & oversight, for a program that Adobe now officially names ‘Adobe Photoshop Lightroom’. See also this six year old… Read more

Your system has run out of application memory HUR HUR HUR

Screenshot of the macOS dialog saying "Your system has run out of application memory"

I hate this dialog with the fire of a thousand suns. When this appears, it basically means one (or both) of two things: Quitting any of the listed applications is rarely the correct move.  It’s often enough the case that none of them are the root cause, and you can kill all of them if you… Read more

Apple Maps actually follows up on corrections

I was highly surprised to find the Apple Maps actually does fix errors that are reported by users – at least sometimes. I was even more surprised to see that there’s actually a predesigned interface within Apple Maps, on iOS, for notifying reporters that the issue they reported has been fixed.  First on the lock… Read more

iOS Family Sharing users cannot mix authentication schemes

Apple supports two styles of two-factor authentication, that they call (and distinguish as) “two-step” vs “two-factor”.  “Two-step” is their older method, though functionally they’re basically equivalent. If you have multiple accounts on a Family Sharing arrangement, and some use “two-factor” while others use “two-step”, you’re in for a bag of hurt. For example, any time you change… Read more