Good morning from Charlottesville, Virginia! ☕️
This week has been a tough one. Our country is going right down the toilet with the current administration pulling the handle.
They’re just itching for a reason to declare marshal law and the events of this week with the murder of Renee Good by ICE officer Jonathan Ross puts us one step closer to one of us killing one of them.
At some point it has to stop or we will go down that road.
Curt Devine, Thomas Bordeaux, Allison Gordon, Kyung Lah • CNN
As he approached Renee Good’s vehicle on a Minneapolis street on Wednesday, Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent Jonathan Ross held up his phone camera and recorded video.
Less than a minute later, he was still recording when he drew his weapon and fatally shot Good as she accelerated.
This whole situation is disgusting and vile. The ICEhole who killed Ms. Good should be prosecuted to the full extent possible. He committed murder in plain sight and we have him on video doing it.
I feel like if Iconfactory brought in that much or sold that many copies of any of our software in one year we’d be throwing a freakin’ party.
Sean is one of the amazing software developers behind beloved titles like Twitterrific and Tapestry. The Iconfactory is full of incredible folks; support staff, designers, and devs. At last count the company is six incredible people working their tails off to produce some of the best software on the Mac and iOS and they’re always struggling to keep the doors open.
Yes, that’s how tough modern software development shops have it.
I wish I were a really rich man. I’d give them a bunch of money, just because.
If you have design or app development needs, please, visit my friends at The Iconfactory and hire them. You will not be disappointed.
Yes, I love this shop so much I’ve tried to get a job there a couple times. 😄 They’ve never had open positions and I don’t think I have the chops to match Craig Hockenberry and Sean Heber, but I’d sure love to work with them. ❤️
I still think Apple should buy the company. Six amazing folks and an amazing catalog of apps in one nice little package. 😃
It is absolutely unconscionable that, as of this writing, X is not only still on the App Store but is ranked #1 in “News”1 and that Grok is the #3 free app. Moreover, there has been—as far as I have seen—no public statement from Apple or Cook about this situation in the days, at least, over which it has unfolded. Probably because it is indefensible. Even, if at this point, they removed X/Grok from the store—which, don’t get me wrong, they absolutely should—the question would be “what took so long”?
I reported X for child porn at the App Store yesterday and you should too. Space Karen is a disgusting human being and everything he touches turns to amoral shit.
Toss their software out of the store until they fix it, Mr. Cook. You’re one of the largest most profitable companies in the world. Get off the MAGA train. 🤬
The number one question I get from my friends, acquaintances, and mentees in the technology industry these days is, by far, variations on the basic theme of, “what the hell are we supposed to do now?”
Indeed. What are we supposed to do now? As of this writing I’m 58 years old with no hope of retirement and I’m in an industry going through a radical transformation because of LLMs. They’re damned useful today. What happens when/if they become useful enough I’m no longer needed?
As it stands that day hasn’t come. Humans still need to look over LLM work to make sure it’s correct. Use for everyday things is not trustworthy because it still makes stuff up. But, for software development is pretty darned good.
Every day I expect to be laid off. No, that’s not an exaggeration. I think about it every darned day and I hate it.
I only hope I can find a job when that happens. Being older doesn’t help.
There’s alway Starbucks. ☕️
Before social media ate the internet, and before the internet ate everything else, and before everything else ate itself, blogs occupied a wonderful and formative niche in the information ecosystem. They were personal but public, permanent but updateable, long-form but informal. A blog post could be three paragraphs or thirty pages. It could be rigorously researched or entirely speculative. It could build an argument over weeks or months, with each post serving as a chapter in an ongoing intellectual project that readers could follow, critique, and respond to.
I love Joan’s writing. She’s so thoughtful and her writing is clear and often resonates with me. This piece is no exception. It’s excellent and you should read it. She has an RSS feed, as any great writer should have. Go subscribe now. 👍🏼
Jason Poitras • IntelliCAD Technology Consortium
AutoLISP® is often used to solve practical problems in CAD workflows, with small custom commands that save time and reduce repetitive work. What has traditionally been missing in IntelliCAD is a modern, developer-friendly way to write and debug those scripts. With IntelliCAD 14.0, the new VLISPcommand introduces a Visual LISP–style debugging workflow using Visual Studio Code, powered by the IntelliCAD LISP Debugger extension.
How cool is this? This is going to prove to be extremely useful for IntelliCAD LISP developers. They’re as close to a full IDE without writing an IDE as one could get and they’re leveraging extremely popular open source tools like. VS Code.
Oh, and they have an existing, built in, IDE that’s one of the best ever built: Visual Basic for Applications, or VBA. It’s an add-on developers dream platform. 😀
Kauy Ostlien • Daily Downforce
Brad Keselowski is set to miss the 2026 NASCAR Clash at Bowman Gray Stadium, following an injury suffered during the offseason, per a new report.
This is a bummer but I hope to see Mr. Keselowski healthy and ready to roll for Daytona.
I also like that they tapped Corey LaJoie to drive the 6 for The Clash at Bowman Gray.
If Mr. Keselowski isn’t ready for Daytona I’m curious to see how Mr. LaJoie fairs given the great equipment he’ll have. He’s always wanted to race in better equipment. Now may be his chance! 🚙
Nielsen’s post on MacOS 26 Tahoe’s tragic “icons for every menu item” design edict was published a month ago, before Nikita Prokopov’s post on the same subject yesterday. Both posts are crackerjack good, and complement each other. Nielsen makes the point that the Mac stood as a counter to platforms and systems that put icons next to every menu item. Of course Google Docs has icons next to every menu item. It sucks. Google sucks at UI design. We Mac users laugh at their crappy designs.
Tahoe’s design continues to be dragged through the muck. I don’t blame all the longtime Mac experts for being pissed off. Some developers are ignoring the new guidance and I don’t blame them for doing it. When someone uses your software and finds it messy, even if it’s the recommended way, they don’t see it as an Apple problem. They see it as the developers problem.
Leaks from Apple’s supply chain have begun to strongly suggest the shape and size of the product we’ll call, for lack of a better name, the iPhone Fold. And since it’s likely going to be nine months before anyone holds one of these things in their hands, this seems like as good a time as any to consider the story Apple is likely to tell when it’s selling this device.
Whoa! While I don’t consider myself the target user for this device, I really do not like this form factor. It’s way too wide for my taste. It’s definitely more iPad than iPhone in my view.
Of course that mockup may not be anywhere close to the real design. I, for one, hope it isn’t. 🤞🏼
Happy New Year! Ready for a productive 2026? We have just the thing: we’re pleased to share that a major upgrade of OmniOutliner is ready for you today!
Omni Group is another premier Mac and iOS shop and it’s really nice to see them release updates to their incredible software.
Congratulations! 🥳
David Harbour explained how he and pretty much everyone else was caught off-guard by the popularity of season 1. “By the time we finished, we wrapped, I thought we wouldn’t get a second season,” he said. “We’d be the first Netflix show kind of ever to never get a second season. We thought no one would watch it, it was going to be a disaster.”
Wow. They thought it would be a flop and it becomes one of the most beloved shows Netflix has ever created, thanks, in part, to Mr. David Harbour.
