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MacBook Pro
Photo by Mikaela Shannon on Unsplash

From the day I first laid eyes on the M1-based Apple’s MacBook Pro, I have been a massive fan of the machine. It is fast. It is powerful. It runs cool. And most importantly, it has excellent battery life. It will be a huge boost for desktop computing, which remains stuck in the past when it comes to applications. And one of those applications from the past I absolutely can’t live without is Adobe’s Photoshop. 

Barring minor adjustments to fix the vagaries of the lenses, I don’t use Lightroom. I was an early convert to the cloud variant of the Adobe Lightroom photo library tool. It offered easy access to all my digital negatives and edited files anywhere, anytime. It didn’t have the bells and whistles of its desktop-based big brother — and since I didn’t need them, I don’t miss them. 

I prefer Photoshop for everything. I like the layer-based approach to editing photos. It gives me much better (and granular) control over my edits. Photoshop was the solitary reason I owned an iMac Pro and a MacBook Pro. My models were packed with memory and top-of-the-line graphic processors, and as a result, I could breeze through my photo edits. 

With Apple ready to switch to its silicon, I decided it was time to sell those machines. What made my decision easier was that Adobe’s Photoshop Beta was spectacularly fast. Even the Intel-based Photoshop performed well on the 13-inch MacBook Pro with an M1 processor. Adobe promised a brand new M1-version of Photoshop in March 2021. And they delivered. The application has garnered gushing reviews across the board. Many have been gobsmacked by the software’s performance on M1 machines. I am no different. I love the performance of M1-Photoshop. 

Except for one small thing. 

The M1-Photoshop is pretty useless for those — like me — who use third-party extensions as part of their editing workflow. For instance, I use some extensions that allow me to pursue highly granular masking via luminosity masks. Other extensions for color grading (including Adobe’s own Color Themes) and additional tune-ups are also part of my flow. And none of them work with the new Photoshop. 

Extensions are not working because Adobe has shifted to a new way of writing extensions — specifically, using UXP. According to Adobe, “UXP provides modern JavaScript, a curated selection of UI components, and a more streamlined workflow for plugin developers.” In the past, Adobe used CEP (Common Extensibility Platform), which used web-based technologies like CSS to make the extensions work. The shift to UXP is visible with the M1-Mac version of Photoshop. 

In its breathless blog post and news releases around the new M1-Photoshop, Adobe (intentionally, I suspect) failed to mention that extensions weren’t working. Like many, I was forced to re-install those extensions, only to find them absent. After a few tries at rebooting the software and the computer, I was perplexed. I ended up on their support website to get the answers. Adobe wants us to get in touch with the extension developers to see if they are offering upgrades. 

They aren’t. 

For me, this has meant going back to the Intel version (via Rosetta). It is frustrating because I can switch to the M1-version and see how good Photoshop could be on the new platform. Mostly, I am disappointed in Adobe’s communications (or lack thereof). 

Of course, developers will come out with updates at some point, but exactly when is anybody’s guess. If you are like me and use extensions and external add-ons for Photoshop that you can’t live without, it might be a good idea to wait. 

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I just finished reading Mick Herron’s Slough House. It is the latest in his Slow Horses series. It didn’t disappoint, though it took me a while to finish the book. Herron is widely viewed as the new John le Carre. And in this book, you can see why. That said, I am not sure I am ready to put him in the same class. If le Carre’s books gave you a glimpse into the art of spycraft from a professional, Herron does a great job of giving a very contemporary feel to his books.

This is a special skill — we live in a society with an increasing attention deficit, and the recent past gives the book more relevance. This blurring of reality and imagination is quite a heady mix, and that is why I can’t stop reading Herron’s books. Of course, the new book has only reaffirmed my affection for his main character, Jackson Lamb, who is fast becoming a memorable fictional spy. He is a malcontent, with great one-liners and putdowns. This down on luck spymaster overseeing a brood of has-been says, while not as cerebral le’ Carre’s superstar character, George Smiley, he is worth binging on.

I am looking forward to watching Gary Oldman play Lamb in the forthcoming Apple TV series. Goldman also played Smiley in the 2011 movie Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. Kristin Scott Thomas plays the other main character. Diana Taverner.

I won’t give anything away. If you like spy novels, then you should read this book. It is wonderful and feels very ripped-from-the-pages-of now. It even has a character who is a bit of a fop, rides a bicycle, and has ambitions to lead the nation. Can you guess who?

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person holding white ceramic sink
Photo by Priscilla Du Preez on Unsplash

The EVs — electric vehicles are everywhere. More SPACs are touting their fantastic future where they sell millions of vehicles. Elon Musk is the wealthiest guy in the world. Everything is so lit, except no one wants to talk about the elephant in the room — rare earth metals and the pollution that comes with mining them. And nothing is more precious for this new EV future than Lithium — the stuff at the heart of our connected future.

It is why the US needs to figure out how to control its rare-earth destiny and become less reliant on overseas suppliers and processors — read China. And that’s why every eye has been on the Thacker Pass Mine, a Lithium mine in Nevada. The mine can generate over 66,000 tons of Lithium a year for about four decades, the company behind the mine brags. But it will come at a substantial environmental cost. And that has got a wide variety of people up-in-arms.

Maddie Stone, writing for Grist, outlines the legal, social, and climate challenges against the Thacker Pass Mine in her deeply reported story, The Battle of Thacker Pass. I hope you read it.