Kim made this for me in 2002.
Saturday Morning Coffee
Good morning from Charlottesville, Virginia! ☕️
It’s been super hot and humid in Virginia this week so I’ve been staying inside as much as I possibly can.
I did manage to get to Grit yesterday and work on Stream. I need to write up the changes I’ve made in the last two BETA releases.
That’s all for now. I hope you enjoy the links.
Felix Rieseberg, quite obviously, is the answer to the question why Claude is an Electron app. It’s like wondering why all the screws in a building were hammered into the walls, and then finding out that the guy who oversaw construction founded and co-owns the world’s biggest hammer manufacturer. Windows uses Philips head screws, Linux uses hex screws, and MacOS requires Torx (of course) — but a hammer works the same way with all screws. That’s Electron. That’s Rieseberg’s baby.
John’s scathing take is also quite funny. Folks tend to gravitate towards tools they’re familiar with. I’m still fond of C++ and even though I don’t use it today I’d be happy moving back to it. Swift has been a real boon to developer productivity and stable code but SwiftUI has been a bit of a slog for some. Developers have been frustrated by lack of features supported by SwiftUI equivalent features of AppKit. Basically what I think I’m trying to get at and failing is it’s easy to write a crummy app using AppKit or SwiftUI just as easily as it is to write a crummy Electron app.
If folks coding in Electron paid better attention to the platform conventions and wrote apps to fit within them, would you be able to tell the difference between an Electron app and an AppKit app? I can’t answer that because I’ve never seen an Electron app that has tried to be a good platform citizen, be it Windows, Linux, or Mac.
I take that back, 1Password’s Windows, Linux, and Mac Electron apps are quite good and I’d love to know what real dyed in the wool Mac users like John think of it? I’d love a true objective look at 1Password and a recording of its failures as a Mac-assed-Mac-app.
Embracing the platform is the ultimate goal. I know y’all are probably sick of hearing about Stream for Mac but I want it to be a Mac-assed-Mac-app. Even if it’s short on features the big boys have it needs to be a proper Mac app. It’s all native. I’m writing it in Swift using AppKit and there’s the tiniest bit of SwiftUI and Objective-C sprinkled about, but does it feel like a Mac app? That’s all that matters to me in the end.
I would love to see someone write a small Mac-assed-Mac-app in three variants; AppKit, SwiftUI, and Electron. The design needs to match across the board. Without observing the apps binary using something like nm could a user of the app tell the difference? I suspect some may be able to pick up on some differences but I’d also bet most would fail to tell the difference.
Anyway, there’s my hot take. 🔥
Yeah so um… have you noticed that all modern software is teetering on the enshitty cliff? Everything in my dock is an Electron-ified enshittybomb one update from disaster. There used to be alternatives. Now those suck too.
Emphasis is mine. In David’s case he’s just fed up with crummy apps. Electron or not. Crummy apps are harshing his mellow.
Visual Studio Code is an app that seems to be beloved by the development community. I’d say it’s because most poor developers haven’t used anything better. In a past life I lived in Microsoft’s Visual Studio and loved the experience. Now, I’m afraid, it’s probably a bloated mess, but that’s just a guess based on the very little time I’ve spent with it. Xcode is a perfectly good IDE in my opinion. It’s fast and has the features I need to do my job. I’m sure I’ve complained along the way but overall it’s been a productive experience for me.
I’ve switched to Nova for my React Native work at work. It’s an example I can hold up as an excellent Mac app. It is fully native and is a Mac-assed-Mac-app. It’s the little things that I love. Something as small as Cmd+Shift+o displaying the Quick Open dialog brings me joy. Visual Studio Code’s equivalent is a different set of keys I can’t remember off the top of my head.
There’s part two of my hot take on Electron. 🤣
For the last couple of years, I have made the point that pretty much every meaningful update to iPadOS feels like a collection of features designed to make it behave more like a Mac.
Perhaps it’s time to let the iPad be its own thing? It’s proven itself useful to a certain set of folks for writing and I suspect many others like it for consuming books and movies. That’s a fine use for it.
Burno Ferreira • Tom’s Hardware
In yet another case of the AI-driven blues, 404 Media reports that Henrico County, VA, Manager John Vithoulkas sent an email to all county employees — including those in schools and social services — asking them to conserve energy by turning off unused lights and computers, using blinds to lessen heat buildup, and curbing or stopping the usage of heavy loads like space heaters.
That plea comes as the state’s main power provider repeatedly hikes rates, and those repeated increases are linked to the rapidly increasing demands of data center buildouts. According to the report, Henrico County already has 37 data centers within its borders, and more are coming to the area.
Virginia is the home to many data centers. By that I mean more than anywhere else in the country and there are more coming, but not without pushback.
Folks are sick of these things and for some reason companies are being horrible citizens as they build them. What I mean by that is they’re not considering the human and environmental costs of their diesel powered, water chugging, AI data centers. It doesn’t help that our current administration doesn’t care about people of the environment, but I digress.
In the end new data centers need tighter restrictions and strong governance to not pollute our water and destroy natural resources and put people’s health at great risk. They need to solve the water problem in a non-toxic way and bring their own environmentally friendly power to the game.
I can hear it now “But, but, those things would be costly and take more time to build!” Yea, so, what’s your point? Suck it up buttercup and do the right thing for humanity and not shareholder value. I’m sick of the phrase shareholder value.
The full moon is here, and it’s bringing a Werwulf with it. Focus Features has released the first trailer for Robert Eggers’ highly anticipated creature feature, putting his signature grim spin on the classic monster movie as he travels back in time for his latest film.
I’ve watched the trailer and I’m all in. I’m not sure if this is a film I want to see in theaters or wait for it to hit streaming. Either way, I’m seeing it.
The device, known as the Clicks Communicator, was first introduced at January’s Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas to cater to people who do a lot of work on their phones, like texting and emailing. It’s particularly meant to appeal to those who miss the BlackBerry’s physical keyboard, which some argue is better for these types of tasks.
My wife had a Blackberry at one time and she loved her little keyboard. I sent her a link to the Clicks and she likes it. The big question is this, would she like it after being an iPhone user for years and years now? I don’t think so. I think her love of the keyboard is nostalgic and she’d become sick of it after a short period of time and want her iPhone back.
Scientists, educators, farmers and the broader public now have a new website for climate information in the United States. The site, Climate.us, launched this week and fills a void left when a government-run climate information website was shut down last year by the Trump administration.
This is very cool! If the government is going to screw up and not do its job it’s nice to see a private entity step up and fill the gap.
Now, the conservatives that loved these cuts will say “See, small government works. Private entities filled the void!”
Don’t fall for it. There are certain things the government should do for the people and this is one of many I hope we get back when a reasonable administration returns to power.
Ford says it has hired back some human engineers after AI failed to match their skills and experience.
In a bid to reap the benefits of the tech, which developers claim can cut costs and boost productivity, the US carmaker adopted it across some parts of its operations including for quality checks.
But, according to Bloomberg, its executives said the firm has rehired more than 300 “veteran” quality inspectors in recent years to make up for the pitfalls of automated systems.
This is really nice to see. I don’t think it’s a failing of LLMs, rather a failing of management at Ford believing they could replace humans with computers. We’re not there, yet. We’re at step one of many of LLMs being able to do this stuff without a human counterpart.
What I’ve come to learn is an LLM isn’t a replacement for a human. It’s just another tool in the toolbelt. I’ve had great success using Claude as a coding companion. I point it at a well defined ticket that includes behaviors, expected acceptance criteria, documentation (often), and a visual design to guide it. In response it does a darned good job of building out the feature based on other inputs. Inputs like configuration files, existing code structure, code standards, and the general coding style of the developers involved in the project. Another thing I believe is critical to its success: pairing the LLM with an experienced human developer and keeping tasks small. Building in bite sized chunks, I believe, is a super power and super charges the LLM (along with all those skills and configuration files we’ve added.)
People talk about RSS like it’s a power user’s secret trick to making the internet more usable, but the real secret is that it’s not that hard to set up and use. Here’s what you need to do:
I like to tell folks RSS is just another way to view a website. It’s the stripped down form of HTML. The meat of the subject. It can contain HTML, images, and even video. It’s just an easier way to fetch a bunch of articles for reading and, if you’re lucky, a lot of the bigger news sites provide separate feeds for different types of news.
I love RSS and what its done for the web. It’s why I created Stream.
Dear compiler developers, I’m happy to announce that from now on “mandatory” parts of the compiler can be implemented in Swift (on the main branch).
This is really cool news. I have two questions: 1) When will the etire compiler be written in Swift? 2) Will they try using an LLM to port all of the C++ code to Swift?
I like to see an experimental port using an LLM.
Three decades on, software developers still live in the terminal, now more than ever as coding agents dethrone the integrated environments that held sway for so long.
With the advent of the GUI it made it easier to have multiple terminal windows open at once. On a typical day I have at least three open; one for git, one for yarn, and one for Claude. I’ll open others if I need them. The three I mention above are all in a single tabbed window in the order listed.
When working on Stream I have a separate terminal window open for doing stuff there.
I can’t tell if Zuckerberg is dimwitted or just evil. The problem during the first era of the AI boom (circa 2023) was indeed that Meta was too slow to identify the metaverse flub. But that was no longer Meta’s problem entering the agentic coding era: The problem, rather, was that Meta had no coherent strategy.
Meta/Facebook are terrible companies, but boy are they great for shareholder value.
Random shot of my desk. It’s always a complete mess.
In the shot we have a 3D printed Apple in six colors, an AirTag engraved R💀B, a Diet Pepsi, my Visio 1.0 tombstone, a mouse cable, a little red fridge, an empty protein shake box, and some candles in the background. 🤣
Standing guard.
Random, but I haven’t posted a picture of my surgically replaced left knee in a long time. It works so well now and the scar is barely visible. For me it was an excellent decision.
Now I’m waiting for the right one to completely fall apart. 🤣
Lookie what I just got!
Time for code and coffee!
Let’s go!
Saturday Morning Coffee
Good morning from Charlottesville, Virginia! ☕️
After Apple announced their price increases for so many of their products I managed to find a new MacBook Air on Amazon at the old price so I went ahead and purchased it.
I got a 15in, M5, 24GB RAM, and a 1TB SSD in Sky Blue. I think it’ll be great for my Sunday morning Coffee and Code adventures.
Om Malik passed away on June 24, 2026, at Stanford Hospital after a long health journey with his heart. He was surrounded by family and friends.
I didn’t know Om but by all accounts he was a very kind man. My heart goes out to his family.❤️
R.I.P. Om 🪦
This month marks the Iconfactory’s 30th year pushing pixels and to celebrate we’ve partnered up with our friends at Cotton Bureau to offer a special t-shirt for the occasion. This high-quality, on-demand shirt sports the 30th anniversary logo on the front breast and a large, retro pixel-clicked design on the back.
My friends at The Iconfactory are celebrating 30 years of great design, illustration, and software development with a nifty new t-shirt! My order shipped yesterday and I expect it to arrive soon.
This new design will join my W-W-Dog-Cow, Ollie, and Iconfactory shirts.
With last year’s release of MacOS 26 (Tahoe), Apple made a mess of app icons. In the first betas of MacOS 27 (Golden Gate), however, there are signs of a turnaround. We’re urging Apple to continue making improvements, by restoring the ability for MacOS app icons to have distinct shapes.
Follow the link if only to scroll down and look at the beautiful selection of icons Paul chose for the article. All of them are masterworks.
A million-square-foot data center became a lighting rod in this rural county. Local leaders filed lawsuits, proposed laws and organized a ballot measure to challenge it.
I’m surprised when I read about the absolute greed of these companies. California has a water problem. It has for decades and decades and companies want to build water guzzling data centers all over the state.
I have a feeling most of the country doesn’t realize how bad things really are in California. Sure, they had a wet winter but it doesn’t even begin to put a dent in the drought they’re still experiencing.
It’s fire season, yeah, there’s a season for fires in California. So far there hasn’t been a big event this year. Here’s hoping they don’t have one.
Anywho, data centers are going to continue to be a problem in the country unless and until companies start thinking about more than shareholder value and think of the imact to people and the environment. You can cover the planet in data centers but if there’s no water to grow crops it doesn’t do us much good.
I suppose the computers can continue operating as long as we build them bots to service thier needs and they find a way to solve the water problem. Then they won’t need us. 🤔
The team behind Bear just released the beta of Lettera, a native Markdown editor for the Mac. It grew out of Panda, the editor they built for Bear 2, and it’s now evolved into a standalone app.
This app looks really nice and I’m looking forward to giving it a whirl. I don’t know what I’ll use it for since I use Tot for composing my blog posts, but it looks really nice nonetheless.🐻
Lotus Notes, in 1989, had encryption two years before Pretty Good Privacy brought it to normal email, had rich text formatting and attachments before MIME, had read receipts, notifications, a directory of users, and wiki-style cross-message links. It, rightly, felt like the future.
I remember when Notes was a big deal but I never understood the appeal. It makes me wonder if it could have been turned into a web server as well?
It’s also very sad when I think about all the companies that have disappeared from that era; Lotus, WordPerfect, WordStar, Borland, Ashton-Tate, Micrografx, Aldus, Nantucket, Fox Software, Peachtree, and even my beloved Visio. I know there are many, many, others.
Jennifer Ouellette • Ars Technica
Widow’s Bay, the delightfully eccentric new comedic horror series from Apple TV, is easily one of the best new series of the year. There’s a reason everyone from Guillero del Toro and Ben Stiller to Damon Lindelolf (Lost) is raving about the show. It’s an eminently binge-able, addictive series that pays tribute to all the classic horror tropes while reinventing them in surprising ways.
There are so many great television shows to choose from these days it’s extremely difficult for me to start a new one. But, this one does look compelling.
US artificial intelligence (AI) giant Anthropic has accused Chinese e-commerce and technology firm Alibaba of “brazenly” and “illicitly” extracting its Claude AI model’s capabilities.
So, let’s get this straight. You (Anthropic) pulled all you could from websites to train your LLM but you throw a fit when someone else does it to you?
Got it. Fine for Me but not Thee.
I still believe all this LLM stuff should be operated by Universities in conjunction with the federal government. No one company should benefit from it. Why? For one they built it on the backs of all of our hard work. Secondly we don’t need a bunch of hojillionaires running around controlling the LLMs used all over the US and the world.
Look, I don’t know how to make that happen, but it seems a logical choice in hindsight.
Of note: There’s no way I’d trust the management of this technology in the hands of the current, incompetent, administration.
The No. 1 priority for new Apple CEO John Ternus should be revamping the company’s design team and putting the focus back on the look and feel of products.
I think this is already happening. I can’t see them turning on a dime and declaring the whole Liquid Glass thing a complete failure and ditching it but I can see it evolve into something nice before they do a completely new design and throw everything into chaos again.🤣
We can either live with it or move on to another operating system. I can’t see doing that.
The Commodore Callback 8020 is not the first Commodore-branded phone (that would be the Pet from 2015), but it’s the first to feel unique and interesting. It might look like a dumb Nokia phone from yesteryear, but this flippy gadget has access to modern-day Android apps because it runs the Linux-based Sailfish OS from the Finnish company Jolla. The Callback’s front screen shows the date, time and battery status, but no notifications. Flip it open, and you’re greeted with a custom interface that can run apps like Uber, WhatsApp and Spotify.
This is an interesting take on the flip phone. It’s very retro in its styling but it does have an operating system that can run Android apps. It’s meant to be less distracting. I can’t blame folks for wanting that but how many are gonna spend $500 plus on a flip phone just so they can’t install email or social media apps?
AI GPU maker Nvidia just announced a “hotter than a hot tub” liquid cooling system that it says will cut water and electricity use. According to the company, this new solution will run coolant — composed of 75% water and 25% propylene glycol — at 113 degrees F (45 deg C).
The use of propylene glycol seems a logical choice in a closed system but it only accounts for 25% of the overall coolant and, unfortunately, it’s highly toxic.
At least someone is trying something I guess.
Even though he operates out of the rural community of Tulare, Brandon Contreras’ custom-designed shoes have reached across the state and beyond.
This gentleman’s shoes look extremely cool and I’m so happy a kid from the area I grew up found a way to do something he loves and do well for himself.
The Mac I priced up last week for £3,999 now costs £5,199. The one I priced at £6,978 is now £9,699. Didn’t get round to pulling the trigger, fool. 💀
Olly had a post on his blog a week or so back asking if he should buy a new computer. I think the answer should’ve been yes, yes you should’ve upgraded. Sorry Olly.
Our Magnolia is very happy. My Mom had a Magnolia and when I see one I think of her.
It’s beautiful outside today. The current temperature is 86F(30C) but it doesn’t feel that hot in the shade with a slight breeze.
I’m on our back deck enjoying a beer and our beautiful blue sky.
Using Stream Daily
Using the Beta
I’ve been using Stream for Mac in its default mode for quite a while now and I really love it. I can see things I need to tweak but the overall shape and stability of the app put a smile on my face. It’s simple, as intended. Perhaps too simple for some but I built Stream to scratch my own itch and I hope others will enjoy it as well.
The default mode is, like the iPhone and iPad versions, a timeline like Mastodon or Bluesky. There are no unread dots in the timeline so you don’t feel compelled to read everything. It’s meant to be a casual timeline. If you don’t feel interested in a certain headline, just keep scrolling.
If you’d like to remove a feed just display the blog list by doing Cmd+Ctrl+s to show the list, remove the feed, and do Cmd+Ctrl+s to hide the blog list. You can also show and hide the blog list by selecting View > Show Blog List or View > Hide Blog List. Easy.
I don’t think I’ve mentioned it but you can navigate up and down the feed items list by using the j and k keys, yes vi inspired, and you can press the space bar to do a page down in the article you’re viewing, doing a shift+space will go backwards. I still need to add code to detect when you’ve reached the top or bottom of a page so I know to jump to the next feed item for you automatically.
For a while I was pretty happy with the overall UI look and feel. That feeling has now disappeared and I think it looks kind of meh. I’m gonna work on that. It needs to be better.
Sync
Folks are going to hate, hate, hate, the lack of syncing between your devices. It just doesn’t exist yet. When I originally started Stream I wasn’t happy with the performance of CloudKit. I don’t know if it’s any better today but I have to support it. It’s on the list of things to do once I complete the initial Mac release. I kid of have to gut my data persistence layer and make it work with CloudKit, which I haven’t invested any time in, yet.
I’m ready to get the ★☆☆☆☆ reviews with the “This app sucks, it doesn’t even sync your data!” That’s fine.
There are great alternatives
There are many great choices out there for feed readers. Apps like Unread, NetNewsWire, Tapestry, and Reeder are great choices for more advanced feed readers. I will certainly support some things they support and hope to give you something different. We’ll see. 😄
Thank you
As always I’d like to express my gratitude for everyone who’s ever downloaded the iOS version of Stream for their phone or iPad. And I can’t thank everyone who’s supported me by giving feedback or helping me with a code problem. You’re the best. Thank you. ❤️
I haven’t had a beer in quite a while. Flying Dog’s Double Dog really hits the spot. Big flavor.
Cheers! 🍻
Work Note: Stream for Mac
I was able to work on Stream for Mac Friday and I finally fixed up some UI stuff I’ve been meaning to get to for a very long time.
I’d asked a friend from some honest to goodness, unvarnished, feedback and part of what he recommended, I took care of Friday.
When you Refresh your feeds either directly — Cmd+r or clicking the Refresh button or selecting File > Refresh — or indirectly at startup, there was no indication of what was happening. Now there is.
Up in the title where it says Stream I’ve added a subtitle that reads “Updating x/x” or “Importing x/x” depending on what action you’re taking.
- For Refresh it displays “Updating x/x”
- For Import OPML it displays “Importing x/x”
Where x/x would be something like 10/100 if you have 100 items being refreshed or imported.
When importing OPML the UI is “kicked” every 10th feed so the UI refreshes its lists. My method of refreshing has always been very lazy and brute force. It’s something I intend to cleanup at some point, maybe not by the time it ships, but I really need to get this thing out the door.
Thanks for the feedback, Josh. It’s always appreciated.
Oh, one other thing I did was register default settings so the app behaves properly the first time you launch it.
By default the Blog List will be hidden and Read/Unread Dots will be displayed.
Once again, thank you, Josh. 🙏🏼
Here’s a screenshot of what the app looks like as of Friday afternoon. If you look closely at the titlebar you’ll see that it’s actively importing OPML.
Blogging Platform Thoughts
I’d really like to create a web service that implements Micropub as a front end to many different blogging systems.
With that you could connect it to your WordPress, Micro.blog, Tumblr, or your favorite blogging platform with an API and use a single front end client or web site to publish to it.
Yes, it would require writing multiple different connectors to those other systems and require overcoming technical limitations of some of them, but overall, it could be something pretty special.
Another thing I’ve considered is supporting a subset of the WordPress REST API in a similar manner. It would be the central point for publishing to many different backends.
Mainly what I want from an API is authentication, create, update and delete of posts. Categories would be on my list as well, oh, and you’d write is pure Markdown as the format.
That’s the 30,000 foot view and I’m certain there would be lots and lots of details to work through but it could be amazing!
I know. So random. It’s the kind of stuff I think about while mowing the lawn.
Can you use ActivityPub to build a blogging system backend like I’m describing?
Saturday Morning Coffee
Good morning from Charlottesville, Virginia! ☕️
I had the first two days of the week off and didn’t realize until we got back from our camping trip that we had Friday off for Juneteenth, so I had a two day work week mainly filled with getting caught up. Also, I desperately need a vacation to recover from my vacation. As recorded here we spent June 1st through 7th with our grandkids at Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, camping at the State Beach. It is a lot of fun to hang out with them and see the ocean but it’s also exhausting. 🤣
We’re all happy to be home. Getting a proper shower and getting to sleep in my own bed was amazing. I’m still tired. 😃
I was able to spend some time on Stream yesterday and sorted out some UI stuff that was bugging me and sorely missing. When the app opens and refreshes feeds or the user presses Cmd+R or presses the Refresh button it now displays a progress indicator. The same method is used for importing OPML files. I hope it looks and feels OK to folks? I still need to post my Work Note.
Thirty years ago this month, three friends working at a small multimedia company in Greensboro, NC, decided to post a few fun sets of Mac desktop icons on an AOL webpage. Little did we know what we were getting ourselves into back then, but here we are, incredibly, thirty years later.
I’m so happy for my friends at The Iconfactory. Ged and the gang are such amazing people, designers, and developers.
For a little while now I’ve gotten the feeling they’re struggling a bit, which is unfathomable to me. They’re so good at what they do! Their design work, iOS, and Mac app development are world class, who wouldn’t want Craig Hockenberry or Sean Heber on their team, not to mention Ged Maheux and Anthony Piraino’s design and illustration mastery and that’s not every employee at the company. I’m sure the other folks involved are just as incredible.
I’m surprised they haven’t been acquihired. Seriously great people and a great, small, company.
Apple or another BigCo should buy them for lots of money, they’ve earned a big pay day with everything they’ve done for the Apple Community. Yes, I’m a fanboi. ❤️
My hope for retirement was to get a lot of work done on NetNewsWire.
A year ago it was in sore need of modernization, tech debt pay-off, and bug fixes. People were asking for features, but the foundation needed a ton of work before I could get on to adding new rooms.
Brent has been working very dilligentally on NetNewsWire and the list of changes he outlines shows in the product. An alltime great application from a Mac Development hero.
Thanks for everything you’ve done over the years, Brent. It’s nice to see you’re keeping busy and staying out of trouble. 😃
I’ve been updating the Pagecord home page today with a new headline, refreshed hero text, and a new section called The Pagecord Principles.
The idea is to encapsulate why Pagecord exists and what it stands for. I’m hoping this resonates with bloggers visiting for the first time, encouraging them to sign up to Pagecord rather than (or as well as) one of the many, many alternatives.
I’ve been following Pagecord’s progress for a little while now and just started following Olly on Mastodon and subscribed to his blog.
Pagecord is a very simplified blogging platform, as they should be. The 800lb. gorilla in the space — WordPress — has grown into a full featured Enterprise CMS capable of running the worlds largest web sites and your tiny blog, but something like Pagecord is a great choice instead of using WordPress for your personal blog because it’s tiny, has a great UI and editor, and comes at a really great price of only $39/year!
I signed up to support their efforts and I’m thinking about moving my Hayseed Blog over to Pagecord.
Thanks for the great software, Olly!
Robert B Shpiner • The Guardian
I’m a critical care doctor. I’ve never seen the US harm its children this deliberately
Ah, yes, the incompetence of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. continues to destroy our country’s health and human services infrastructure and put us at great risk.
I don’t know if it was the brain worms or something else that twisted this mans brain but he doesn’t belong in a leadership position in our country.
I hope beyond hope we have future elections and can get competent people back in office to start turning the mess our country is in around. 🤞🏼
Apple this week confirmed that Notion is migrating its user interface to SwiftUI, citing the app’s desire for greater performance and UI consistency than its existing web-based stack can deliver.
This is both interesting and welcome. It’s also going to be very expensive but it’s nice to see such a highly regarded company and software move toward a native solution when so many are moving to Electron and React Native to deliver their products across platforms.
That brings up some questions: Is the Mac their primary desktop platform? Do they have a big Windows user base? Will the core Swift code be shared between Mac and Windows or will they be using shared C, C++, or Rust as the core? Are they using an LLM to do the initial port to Swift and SwiftUI using their TypeScript/JavaScript code as a map?
I’ll be watching their progress. This kind of stuff really interests me.
If treated as a country, data centers could rank sixth globally for electricity consumption by 2030. They would also require an amount of water equivalent to the annual needs of 1.3 billion people.
Data centers are going to be a huge controversy for years to come. I wish I had the intelligence to help solve these problems because I really have no clue how we fix this. Someone has to have the knowledge to do it? Right? 😳
A “full-feature-parity version of Notepad” has been written in x86 assembly and it weighs in at just 2,749 bytes. Windows legend Dave W. Plummer is (inevitably) the coder behind this efficiency tour de force, and he’s made RetroPad available (code and exe) on his GitHub under the Apache 2.0 license.
Ahhh, old greybeards know what they’re doing when it comes to understanding how the machine really works. At a time when we see developers moving higher and higher up the stack to solutions that abstract away so much of the computer it’s nice to see someone get down in the muck and mire of the chip and build something.
As a Swift developer I’m ready to see Swift as a language slow its pace of new feature adoption. I’d like to see it stable for a long time. It’s been a very useful language since the start but it’s become such a dumping ground over the last few years I can’t keep up with it. I’d imagine that’s just a me problem, but it’s still something I’d like to see.
Mr. Plummer was able to take something that’s been stable for 30+ years and build a highly useful, fast, small app with “old” tooling. I’m looking forward to his video on the matter and I hope he dives into his entire working environment as well as code details.
Forever the optimist, I think that the next several years will be an era in which opinionated, competent developers are able to run circles around projects that are overly-invested in AI. Dip into AI, maybe even let it be your first mate, but never let it be the captain.
I’ve always liked Daniel Jalkut. I’ve never had the honor of meeting the man personally but I listened to him and Manton Reece on CoreInt for years (long live CoreInt!) He is a true punkass and optimist and seems like a genuinely kind and thoughtful person. He’s also a hell of a software engineer, especially when it comes to debugging Mac software.
Hey, fellas, if either of you happens to read this, please, do an episode of CoreInt so we can get caught up! 🙏🏼
Dear Apple: please move on from your focus on ‘style’ and return to substance. Your operating systems are verging on unusable and totally ignore the accessibility needs of millions.
Also: please ensure your new CEO doesn’t publicly reward a fascist dictator with gaudy awards.
I think Mr. MacPsych should be pretty happy with this years WWDC. It really sounds like they’ve worked on hardening the operating system and shoring up Apple Intelligence instead of adding a bunch of new features to the OS’es. That’s great news for users and developers alike!
As for the CEO and his kissing the ass of a fascist dictator. That job seems like it’ll become the job of the Chairman of the Board instead of the CEO’s job moving forward. Yes, still Tim Cook doing the ass kissing, but I hope it frees up incoming CEO John Ternus to get Apple back to what it does best; amazing hardware and software that delights.
A software update to some Amazon delivery vehicles is automatically turning off the air conditioning after a few seconds if the driver is not in their seat, according to multiple Amazon delivery drivers who are complaining about the update online.
Talk about not taking your target audiences day-to-day use of something into account! Amazon workers are notoriously overworked and monitored for efficiency. It’s a bit extreme and this unfortunate bug certainly doesn’t help driver morale.
Elon Musk’s SpaceX IPO will probably make him the richest person to ever walk the planet. And while his mountain of horrible personal conduct could fill multiple books, one fact in particular stands out: A year ago, Musk’s actions directly led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people. He did it knowingly. And, worse — gleefully.
I’ll keep saying it: Space Karen is a horrible human being and deserves a trip to Mars, him personally, alone. 🤬
Why care about every frame? It builds trust. Users can’t see the code, so UI is the only way for them to judge the quality of the app. If UI looks good, that means developers had time to polish it, which means that they probably spent a comparable amount of time to iron out the code. It’s a heuristic, but a reasonable one.
Polishing code is fun, especially when, as the developer, you see a performance or stability improvement. When you’re able to polish up the UI of your application and someone notices it, it’s an even bigger joy than noticing the internal improvements you’ve made, unless, of course, someone using your app notices performance or stability improvements. 😄
Ah, heck, polishing is rewarding no matter what type you’re able to do but polishing the UI is no doubt the most visible type.
The US government, citing national security authorities, has issued an export control directive to suspend all access to Fable 5 and Mythos 5 by any foreign national, whether inside or outside the United States, including foreign national Anthropic employees. The net effect of this order is that we must abruptly disable Fable 5 and Mythos 5 for all our customers to ensure compliance. Access to all other Anthropic models will not be affected.
I’ve been thinking about LLMs a lot lately. Mostly about where they belong in society. The more I watch this race to deliver AGI the more I’m starting to believe this technology shouldn’t be used to make a small group of people billionaires or trillionaries. I think the original goal of Open AI was right. It should be open to everyone. For the good of mankind.
Yep, I said it, “for the good of mankind.” Loaded words, I know, but I don’t know how else to say it. All of these AI researchers and developers should work for universities who are government funded all working to deliver their unified work for all to use. It should be socially responsible software with strict regulation behind it. Do no harm.
LLMs should be a social benefit for all Americans. Run by its own agency within the United States Government in partnership with the best universities. Pay the researchers and developers well and give them the best tools and working conditions necessary to advance LLMs while making sure we don’t drive humanity to extinction.
Social issues related to LLMs also need dealing with. If humans are going to be put out of good paying jobs we, as a society, need to make sure people can survive without jobs. Of course folks will scream socialism! If LLMs put us out of work eventually how do we survive if not by a basic income provided by our government? Yes, it’s something I’m curious about. Something we may need in the future — hell, something we need now?
Anyway, that’s a deep discussion for someone like me with a shallow mind. I’d love to hear how folks would solve problems like this.
Guillermo del Toro’s wild, cinematic imagination has led to him being attached to many unrealized projects over the years. It’s a miracle on par with creating life that he finally got to make his dream “Frankenstein” movie. Of all the Del Toro projects that never happened, though — aside from maybe his canceled H.P. Lovecraft adaptation – the one unfulfilled del Toro movie that’s left the biggest hole in fans' hearts is “Hellboy III.”
I love the Guillermo del Toro Hellboy movies and I wish Ron Perlman had a chance to make that final installment but I guess it’s not to be. 😔
Today, the UK government announced plans to ban social media for under-16s. Prime Minister Keir Starmer said the restrictions are needed to protect children’s wellbeing and mental health. Slightly to my own surprise, I think they are right.
I love that we have free speech in America (well, the kind we had before Marmalade Messiah took office.) Yes, I’m well aware that free speech, part of our First Amendment rights, only apply to the suppression of speech by the Government. Which is where this stuff gets sticky, and yes, I know it’s the UK government in this case. 😁
Anywho, since BigCo’s won’t govern their own platforms to protect children someone has to. We have enough studies now to know it’s not good for kids mental health and definitely doesn’t help them learn. So, I guess, it’s time for governments to step in and propose regulations to stop social networks from harming children. Now, how do we do that without compromising privacy? There’s the rub.
Fox has announced that it’s acquiring Roku outright, in a deal that values the streaming company at $22 billion.
Roku is built into our TCL TVs. We use them and the only issue I have with them is not really knowing what they’re collecting from us. 🤔 You can bet Fox is going to collect every little tidbit they can and more.
I’m hoping I can convince my wife it’s time to upgrade to Apple TV and disconnect the TCL from the network. 😁 It’s a longshot, but I’m gonna try. Wish me luck! ☘️
But credit where credit is due. The upcoming version 27 of Safari is looking very good.
That’s not because it’s at the cutting edge of the latest web standards. Quite the opposite. Most of the changes listed for this release are bug fixes. That’s what I want to acknowledge and applaud.
It seems the hardening that’s happening with all Apple 27 OS’es also applies to apps. I use Safari everyday as my main daily driver — I’ve also been using Orion — and every little fix they make to Safari is perfectly fine with me. Do I want them to support all web standards? Yes, I do, but I also want them to continue to make a solid, easy to use, and privacy preserving browser.
Yes, I want it all! 😆
Chris Koseluk • Hollywood Reporter
Gene Shalit, the fun-loving film critic on the Today show known for his oversized mustache, out-of-control mop of black hair and lively use of puns in his movie reviews, died Friday. He was 100.
Godspeed Mr. Shalit. I always loved watching your reviews delivered with a big smile and gigantor mustache. RIP. 🪦
This weekend NASCAR is racing at Naval Base Coronado in San Diego on the Coronado Street Course. The track is 3.4 miles long and goes over various different track materials like concrete, old concrete, black top, and old black top not to mention lots and lots of bumps! It also includes a transition into a downhill just before a left turn. All that said just to say it’s kind of cool seeing these cars getting a little air when they hit that downhill transition. 😄 Should make for some very interesting racing. Based on the truck race yesterday I suspect there will be lots and lots of damaged and crashed race cars before the day is over.
Checks out
Work Note: Stream
I’d really hoped I’d have shipped Stream for Mac by now. I’m just having so much trouble polishing off the final bits. It doesn’t feel quite right yet.
This is the point in Stream for iOS where I punted and made some views as Web Views just to get it out the door.
I need to finish off OPML Import and Export so they show a progress indicator and some bugs and I’m calling it good enough. I’ll ship it as version 1.7 along with an updated iOS version 1.7 and hope to keep them in sync from then on. All new UI features across Mac and iOS will be SwiftUI
moving forward.
I want to add syncing for the iOS and Mac versions but that will come after shipping the Mac version because I have to replace FMDB with CloudKit. Which will be a pain in the keister.
So many features to do; YouTube, Podcasts, Mastodon, Reddit, etc… a metric crap ton of work. 🤣
Doing yard work was not exactly how I wanted to spend my final day of vacation, but here we are, doing yard work.
I want to retire so bad. A week and a couple days off did nothing for my burnout except make me want more time off. 😃
I’m buying a Power Ball ticket next time I’m at the store. 🤣
Kim’s hydrangea is pretty happy.
No Saturday Morning Coffee today. We’re still at the beach!
Here’s a picture of my Perfect Coffee.
Myrtle Beach Day Four
Day four at the beach is in the books. The kids are tired, Kim and I are tired, everybody’s tired.
We’re having lunch at the trailer then I bet everyone takes a nap. 🤣
No beach tomorrow. Tomorrow we go inland a bit to a boardwalk of sorts and have a chill day. Some food, ice cream, whatever. Then we’ll pack up a bit and have a quiet evening.
Sunday we travel home. 🏡
Our grandson has started building his kingdom.
Love these kiddos and the ocean.
Kolby Jack
(Yes, that’s his name)
Saturday Morning Coffee
Good morning from Charlottesville, Virginia! ☕️
Welp, I’m on PTO! 🥳 The sad thing is I don’t feel like I’m on vacation, yet. Today I need to vacuum Kim’s car and my truck so they’re nice and clean because Monday morning we’re off to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, for a week of camping at the beach with our daughter, grandkids, and the dogs. We enjoy it down there. The folks are nice, the campgrounds are well maintained, and the beach is, well… it’s the beach. Everything is better at the beach!⛱️
My only fear is Ms. Gracie will misbehave. She barks at everything and I’m afraid she’ll have a lot of trouble at night because campgrounds can be a little noisy at times.
I will, of course, need a vacation when we get back from our vacation, so I took Monday and Tuesday of the following week off to recover a bit before going back to work. 😁
CBS News has fired veteran “60 Minutes” correspondent Scott Pelley a day after he confronted the show’s new executive producer at a heated staff meeting.
Bravo Scott Pelley! Let ‘em have it! Watching CBS slide into fascism hasn’t been fun to watch but seeing someone on the inside push back, in such a public manner, has been refreshing.
Sure, CBS is now a fascist hellscape of a broadcast and news company but the fine news people they have don’t have to be a part of it.
The web is the place for great news to happen. I hope Mr. Pelley creates his own news blog — NOT ON SUBSTACK — and publishes his own brand of investigative reports.
Yesterday on Pivot Scott Galloway suggested Netflix should pick up the 60-minutes crew and let it operate on its own as “Hour News” or some such. I like the idea. 😃
Apple is expected to launch its first foldable iPhone later this year. Rumors suggest the “iPhone Ultra” will come in two color options, and a leaker shared an image today that allegedly shows one of them.
If the picture in that article is the new phone I can confidently say I don’t like the form factor. I haven’t held it in my hand of course but it looks huge.
Hopefully we’ll see this new phone in September or October of this year. Even though I doubt it’s something I’d like to use I will, of course, do what I can to support it in Stream. 😄
A digital detox was on my list to accomplish. I’ve read blog posts about this regarding deleting apps on your phone and deleting accounts from services. I reviewed how I was using my time through the day and reading rss feeds of blogs and tech articles. Many tech posts I didn’t even read past the headlines since I’m not interested any longer in tech. These were the first to go from my rss reader.
I have a feeling this happens more than we realize and I’d also imagine it’s accelerating with the advent of LLMs.
I know he’s abandoned RSS but I’d like to point out that part of why I made Stream was so I wouldn’t feel that need to be a completionists with my feeds. Of course I eventually caved and added read/unread markers on every feed item, it was heavily requested.
For the Mac version I’ve made displaying those read/unread dots optional, by request of course.
Sorry, I don’t know Jon’s last name or I’d have use it! 😂
I haven’t seen anything as stupid as the WeWork IPO document in a very long time — that is, until Elon Musk filed to take SpaceX public. WeWork was a joke. SpaceX is a threat. And if Musk and his bankers have their way, you are going to be their bagholder.
I’m not so sure Elon Musk is at all interested in saving humanity, as he was once fond of saying. He’s interested in power and stuffing his already fat pockets with even more money at the expense of everything and everyone around him.
SpaceX may be a good company, doing interesting things, but Musk is a real garbage human and he leaves a stench on whatever he touches, SpaceX included.
He’s bound and determined to destroy Tesla and his social media platform has become a right wing troll farm.
We can’t get a ultra wealth tax in place fast enough. Everything over 10-billion should be taxed somewhere between 80-100% with zero loopholes afforded for borrowing against it. These wealthy suckers use every trick in the book to get around paying taxes and even benefit on their taxes by taking out loans against their wealth. Yes, yet another way to absolutely screw the average and the poor.
Screw you, Space Karen.
Get on a rocket and get your ass to Mars already. 🚀
It’s time for me to learn what standard.site is and how it compares to the things I know and work with. This is the result of the conversation I had this morning with ChatGPT.
This is a neat summary comparing standard.site and RSS provided by ChatGPT. It’s definitely worth a read.
And, I still don’t understand AT Protocol. 😂
I’ve updated Micro.blog with initial support for Standard.site, a set of lexicons for long-form blogging on the atmosphere. I’m a little late to the party. Thanks to Leaflet, Pckt, and others for leading the way here.
I love how Manton keeps Micro.blog at the forefront of blogging and the social web. This site will benefit from his work adding standard.site support and I won’t have to lift a finger.
Thank you, Manton! ❤️
PHP is foundational to the modern web, and ensuring its security is essential for a significant portion of the web’s functionality and integrity.
I know a lot of language purists love to pick on PHP but to me it’s the C of the web. It’s been around for so long and is beloved by so many for it’s ease of use. Heck, until fairly recently you could write PHP code on your Mac without installing a single package. Just write some PHP and browse to it. Simple. We need more of that because modern software development is a mess of packages upon packages upon packages. Half the time you spend on your project is keeping packages and your fragile environment working. Unless you’re me, then you decide to use C++ to write a backend service so you can stay away from as much external stuff as possible. Don’t worry, I’m gonna let an LLM help me with it. 🤣
The anthology movie is a distinct art form, one whose strengths and drawbacks are well known and almost entirely foundational to the general understanding of how the genre works.
Creep Show and Trick-r-Treat are easily my favorite horror anthologies.
tl;dr AI took the last of the wind out of my Open Source sails. I wish you all the best!
I like the way Chad exited tech. He typed his reasons, on real paper, then hand edited mistakes and left notes in the margin with a pen.
Good luck, Chad! I hope you’re able to stay away from the draw of tech! 😄
Hackers say that they used Meta’s AI support chatbot to break into a host of high-profile Instagram profiles by asking the support bot to change the email address associated with the target account.
This is a heckuva thing. Please, for all that pure in this world, don’t connect these things to dangerous systems of any kind. Please, keep us fallable — thinking, empathetic — humans in charge of those. Pachinko machines have no place near dangerous systems.
In April, Apple rejected an update to my Mac dictation app, WhisperPad, under Guideline 2.4.5. Their position was that I was using the accessibility API in a way that wasn’t an accessibility use. The app exists because I have a hand injury. Apple had approved earlier versions doing the same thing. This time they did not.
This was really quite sad to read. Rene creates something to help with their pain issue and decides to share it with the world, because hey, someone else may need it, but Apple rejects it.
I’ve actually experienced something similar. In 2013-2014 my left hand pinky and ring finger became very painful when I’d type for too long. Turns out my ulnar nerve was pinched and required surgery to repair. This app would’ve been very handy at the time.
Winners and finalists in this category provide memorable, engaging, and satisfying experiences enhanced by Apple technologies.
WWDC 2026 is next week so I thought I’d share the finalists and give them a big “Congratulations!” on their nominations!
I see, yet again, Stream isn’t in the list. 🤣
Much like Google, Microsoft is launching its own version of OpenClaw. Microsoft Scout is an always-on assistant that integrates into Microsoft 365 apps like Outlook, OneDrive, and Microsoft Teams, allowing businesses to assign a virtual assistant to employees to help with organizing calendars, expense reporting, email drafts, and much more.
This app looks pretty nice to me. I haven’t seen it front and center but it looks pretty nice at first glance.
The first thing I thought was “Did they do this in Electron or React Native like they’ve been doing in other areas?”
It would be nice to discover it’s native C++ or C#, but I’m not holding my breath. For some reason they love writing stuff in TypeScript now.
As I’ve said before, the web is now the desktop. I can’t really wrap my brain around the attraction to React Native and TypeScript and I’ve been working with it for over a year now. It’s super popular with developers of all ages and, of course, I’m going with the flow, but I still prefer using the native tools, frameworks, and languages of the platform.
Maybe it’s just time for all platforms to give in and embrace TypeScript and React Native as their preferred platform. At least then they could create really great tooling around it. The arcane, backwards, tooling is part of what I really dislike about using TypeScript and React Native.
Enough complaining.🤣 The app looks pretty nice. I hope it’s extremely useful.
Andrew Cunningham ⦁ Ars Technica
On the hardware front, we didn’t get any updates for existing Surface devices (not counting yesterday’s Surface Laptop Ultra announcement), but we did get something new: the Surface RTX Spark Dev Box is “a compact developer PC” built around Nvidia’s new RTX Spark chip with up to 128GB of built-in memory.
The RTX Spark is getting a lot of ink these days and I’d love to see one in action. Makes me wonder if Apple has any of these running in a lab somewhere in Cupertino?
I’ll bet these things are going to be crazy expensive.🤑
Microsoft CEO says new AI data centers use as little water annually as a restaurant — closed-loop cooling system aims to slash consumption from millions of gallons as AI infrastructure faces mounting environmental scrutiny
I hope this is a real thing because it would certainly go a long way toward fixing one of the real problems created by Data Centers. Now, provide your own clean, silent running, power and you’ve really got something.
Regard for the natural world and the comfort of people around these places should be the highest priority of any Data Center build. All these folks see is money at any cost.
There won’t be money to make if we’re all dead.😵
This isn’t a Rust-is-faster story. It’s a story about how std::unordered_map, std::map, and std::list — the containers every C++ textbook teaches, the ones the committee has shipped since 1998 — are so catastrophically bad for modern hardware that a Rust beginner using default containers demolishes a C++ solution without trying. And how we proved it by systematically replacing each C++ container until parity was reached.
To me this is a Rust is faster than C++ story. This is shameful in my eyes as someone who has written a ton of C++ code. At the time I was writing C and C++ code it was as popular as JavaScript and TypeScript are today. It was ubiquitous. The compilers were top notch and constantly improving. Today we have so many great choices, like Rust and Swift. I’d love to see Swift in a head-to-head with Rust using these same tests.
If you want to use an alternative to the standard library (std::) checkout Google’s Abseil. It’s way faster and battle tested.💨
Under the terms of the deal, Google will pay SpaceX $920 million per month from October 2026 through June 2029 for access to “approximately 110,000 NVIDIA GPUs, CPUs, memory, and other related components.”
What’s the deal with these companies going to SpaceX — xAI really — to get compute? I guess all that money spent on getting data centers setup before the pushback was a good idea, but at huge cost to nature and people.
People see Musk as a genius. He’s not. He’s a sociopath who does whatever he wants. You can take that to the bank.
<img src=“https://cdn.uploads.micro.blog/5176/2026/cc538cc8f9.png” width=“600” height=“892” alt=“MAGA Cult”>
