Ask Paul: July 31 ⭐

Happy Friday! We close out July with a delightfully short Ask Paul ahead of a weekend that can't happen quickly enough. OK, it's not that short. I have stories. Too many stories.
"OpenAI says its models now have more than 1B active users and are used by more than 2M businesses"

18 users? Incredible! Oh. I see
📖 Reading apps
wmurd118 asks:

Paul, just downloaded your recent version of The Field guide to my iPad kindle reader and Apple Books. Plus a copy on my files app on my iPad. My preference for almost all downloaded material is the kindle reader on my iPad. However, my preference reading this time is on Apple Books. I recently had surgery for a detached retina and kindle reads better and more comfortably than anything else except for your book. Anyway, that’s not my question. I periodically dabble over on a MacBook Air. Which, the download of field guide brings me to wonder is there a comparable download to read similar to the field guide for my MacBook Air?

I don't have my MacBook Air with me here in Mexico, but Apple Books is available on the Mac, so that should work normally on that computer. Or are you asking if there is a Field Guide-like book for the MacBook Air? If so, Apple produces wonderful and free series of books, basically user guides, using the "Essentials" name. If you search for "MacBook Air Essentials" in Apple Books, you should find it. (There are multiple editions.)

I mostly read on an iPad, and though Apple Books isn't my first go-to, I've found myself using it a lot lately. More on that in a moment, but if you do have the Field Guide or any of my other Leanpub-based books (which Premium members can also download directly here), each is available in PDF and EPUB downloads, and you can download either version in Safari on an iPad, and then import them in Apple Books, which will add either to your collection and make it available on any of your Apple devices. (The EPUB version is likely the better option in Apple Books.)

This hasn't happened yet, but I'm vaguely planning a tech nostalgic focus month for sometime this year and so I've been reading and re-reading a lot of industry books that deal with the events of the 1980s. Among them is Brian Bagnall's excellent three-books series about the history of Commodore, Commodore: A Company on the Edge, Commodore: The Amiga Years, and Commodore: The Final Years. I'd read each at least a few times all the way through and so I know I own each, but when I looked at my Kindle library, I noticed that I only had the first and third books there, which is confusing.

I don't know why--I feel like there may have been a Kickstarter or something--but I have the second book in that series in Apple Books and it's clearly an early version that still needs some editing. So I reread it there. And I really do like the way Apple Books works as well. But as is the case with so much media, I have content all over the place. The biggest collection by far is in Kindle, but I have...