Good morning from Charlottesville, Virginia! ☕️
Apple CEO Tim Cook is stepping down and will be succeeded by John Ternus, currently Apple’s senior vice president of hardware engineering. Ternus will take over as CEO on September 1st, 2026. Cook will become executive chairman of Apple’s board.
So I decided to see if I could build a simple bug tracking app that maybe our company can use internally. If it’s bad, then I entertained and educated myself for a few hours that night. I had nothing to lose.
Take some time to read all of Mark’s post. His BugBot bug tracker is super nice, it looks better than any bug tracking software I’ve ever seen, I mean, how can it not? This is Mark Jardine we’re talking about. Designer extrodanaire, the man behind all those bot UI’s we’ve all come to love.
I think it’s clear we can say LLMs are good for writing code and doing it faster than any human being can possibly do. Also note, this wasn’t “vibe coded.” I’ve grown to hate that word. I mean if you do something and just take what the LLM gives you without reviewing it and possibly tweaking it, you’re probably vibe coding, otherwise you’re using an LLM to produce code faster than you can.
Anyway, he built a really beautiful piece of software for his gang to use. Really nice work, Mark! 👍🏼
I think “video podcasts” is a contradiction, especially if those podcasts are just another form of TV you can only get from one exclusive producer. If that’s the case, it’s just a show. But look at Us magazine’s list of the 7 Best Podcasts on Netflix Right Now (April 2026). The audio versions of all seven are available wherever you get your podcasts. That makes them real. If they become exclusive to Netflix, or to anybody, they aren’t podcasts anymore. Find another word for them.
The emphasis above is mine. This is the crux of the argument over calling video a podcast. To be a podcast it needs to be available wherver you get your podcast. That means I can open my podcast player of choice — Castro — and subscribe to any podcast. Now, if podcast players want to start playing Videocasts I’d encourage them to. However, it’s not really going to be equivalent to a podcast because every Videocast I’ve seen is on a platform that controls the video. Not exactly open and it’s not going to be available wherever you get your podcasts. No, it’s gonna be on YouTube or Netflix exclusively. That’s lock in. 🔒
Is there anything wrong with making money on your podcast or videocast? Nope. Have at it. But, and there’s always a but, you should host that video where you choose to host. If you choose YouTube, that’s fine. Just make sure you understand your content is not controlled by you and Google is going to monetize it for their pocket books, not yours.
But, but, what about subscriptions? That’s a solved problem if you’re willing to do a little work — heaven forbid! I subscribe to a few podcasts and websites that provide me with a custom RSS feed so I can get my no ads feeds. Is it kind of ugly? Yeah, it is. But it works until folks can agree on another way to do it.
Meta is planning to layoff around 10 percent of employees in May, according to a memo from the company’s chief people officer, Janelle Gale, published by Bloomberg. That means approximately 8,000 people will see their jobs cut. Meta will also be closing around 6,000 open roles, according to Gale.
More layoffs. 😔 In this case for efficiency reasons. Uh, yeah, they’re going to leverage LLMs to replace people.
Look, I fully expect to be replaced by an LLM at some point, it’s just the way we’re headed. Like someone at work said to me “I gave this to a designer and they built the app in a day.” So, yeah, I’m headed for the scrap heap. It seem enevitable. However, I’m not going quietly. I am embracing LLMs at work and learning what I can about them so I am useful beyond being “an iOS developer.” The tooling is good and getting better. See my earlier link to Mark Jardine’s work. He’s a great designer and very capable web site builder who used an LLM to his great advantage. That’s what all developers in a corporate environment must do to survive going forward.
Does it sadden me? Yep. Sure does. Can I do anything about it? Nope. Just learn how to use it like any other tool.
I‘ve just release Acorn 8.5, which has some new features, nice SVG improvements, and some good bug fixes.
Congratulations, Gus! 🥳
If you’re looking for a great, inexpensive, highly functional, beautifully built, extended, and maintained piece of Mac software you’re in luck! Gus’ Acorn is that software. He cares deeply about his craft and it shows. Give Acorn a try!
☢️ WARNING: SUBSTACK POST ⦁ W. Kamau Bell
I don’t really want to move on and start over somewhere else, but the idea that my presence on this platform in some way validates Andrew Tate’s criminal history and helps to enrich him is a no-go for me. The idea that I bang my head against my keyboard to come up with writing that is worth five dollars a month, while Andrew just reposts his scammy MLM videos here so he can further drain the rubes dry actually makes my stomach hurt, and my stomach was already hurting from the chunky cesspool you all have put me in.
I don’t like how Substack operates. It’s a morality thing for me. Platforming Nazi’s and White Supremacists is not something I want to be a part of, yet so many great writers have chosen to use Substack and remain on Substack knowing what they’re supporting. It comes down to the all mighty dollar and it’s sickening. 🤮
At least W. Kamau Bell has the guts to admit he’s on the platform to make a few bucks. 🤑 Every other writer I’d love to see abandon Substack won’t admit to it.
Mr. Bell, please pack your bags and your content and get your own W. Kamau Bell domain, find a host, and get on with your writing. And, yes, you can make money doing it if you want. There’s no sin in that. Just get off of platforms that lock you into their little box and make money from your hard work.
it’s much easier to pick out the unique byte when it’s a different color! human brains are really good at spotting visual patterns—given the right format
What a wonderful piece of software and post breaking it down. This is design that leads to a wonderful user experience. Thanks, Alice!
The UI is an interesting blend of iOS and MacOS things, and I thought at first that it must be an Electron app. So I dug into the package to make sure and I was instantly surprised to see it’s only 23 MB. The app bundle had hardly anything in there - a couple of .js files and the executable. So it’s not Electron, or some other web based UI. But what is it?
I downloaded Tolaria to see what Gus was talking about and I have to admit, I have no idea how to use it yet. 🤣
However, I did poke around their git repo a bit and I see it’s using Tauri which is a Rust based kit for building UI based on web technologies. So, think Electron or React Native. Same idea, but smaller, much, much smaller. How, I dunno, but the binaries are definitely smaller.
I haven’t dug into Tauri but from 30,000ft it looks like it’s building UI inside a browser instance, which is kind of gross, but makes sense all at the same time. On the Mac it’s using WKWebView and it’s blazing fast! Why? Well, browsers are built to render web technologies and do it blazing fast! These engines have been optimized over years and years to embrace the web state of the art. As a result they’re actually pretty darned good at build UI’s.
Perhaps Apple should be investigating how to build UI for the desktop using WKWebView, HTML, CSS, and Swift. Yes, Swift. They can generate WebAssembly for the browser since they own the entire stack, top to bottom, and should be able to do this better than anyone.
Would it be better than native applications using AppKit, UIKit, or SwiftUI? Who knows! I certainly don’t. 🤣
Markus Schmidt ⦁ Virginia Mercury
Virginia voters on Tuesday approved a constitutional amendment allowing mid-decade congressional redistricting, a move expected to dramatically reshape the state’s political map and potentially shift its congressional delegation from a closely divided 6-5 split to a heavily Democratic-leaning 10-1 advantage.
Do I hate this? Yes, yes I do. But, given the lunatic in the White House and his merry band of nut jobs, it was a necessity. Why necessity? Well, it was done to combat Marmalade Messiah’s push to get red states to gerrymander their congressional districts.
Fight fire with fire as the saying goes. It sucks but it’s the only way we’re going to have a chance to save our democracy.
Formula 1’s team principals and championship organizers voted unanimously on numerous rule revisions during a meeting on Monday. The slate of tweaks aims to reduce closing speeds between cars during races and promote flat-out driving in qualifying. The discontent over this season’s new technical regulations reached a tipping point after Oliver Bearman’s 50G crash during last month’s Japanese Grand Prix. The powers that be in the F1 paddock promised change before the championship returned from a month-long hiatus, and change has arrived.
The new 50/50 power unit (power unit because it’s not just a gas engine) in F1 cars has proven to be quite dangerous because charging takes place when the driver lifts off the gas pedal. When that happens it’s almost as if someone has pull the rip cord on a parachute. The car slows dramatically. That is super dangerous and is what lead to Ollie Bearman’s crash. He wasn’t expecting Colapinto to lift when he did.
I’m a race fan so of course I have a hot take. 🔥 Just go back to a V6 or a V8 to power these lovely machines. I’m ok with it. Let’s just get everyone else using renewable energy first. 😃
My conclusion after being a software developer since the early days of Unix and personal computers, and at times being part of the Silicon Valley – there have to be a variety of UIs for WordPress, where all our work is compatible, regardless of what our tools look like, the approaches for users could be radically different. It’s been a monoculture, and imho that’s the problem. Break it apart, yet retain the compatibility – that’s the most powerful position possible in tech.
Dave says he’d like to see a variety of UIs for WordPress and I agree. It’s nice to be able to use your UI of choice when you’re blogging. I use Tot from The Iconfactory to write and MarsEdit from Red Sweater to publish to this blog when I’m using my Mac. On iOS I write using Tot and use the Micro.blog iOS app to publish to this blog. Of course there are others Mac client apps, like Automattic’s own Jetpack, or Ulysses. Thare are already other choices available to folks. As far as web based clients go, I’m not so sure what else is out there besides Dave’s own WordLand.
My new project — 🐔 Rooster for now — is a blogging client for the Mac. I’ve started writing support for Micropub, targeting Micro.blog for now, with the idea of adding WordPress next, followed by Tumblr. I’m doing Micropub first because I’m a Micro.blog user and it’ll get me other platform support while I’m at it, like Pika.
That does bring me to this question. Has anyone done a Micropub bridge to WordPress or Tumblr? 🤔 I really doubt Matt will see this, but if you do, can you please add Micropub support for WordPress? Thanks! 🙏🏼
The Mac Mini computer, previously a niche product, is now all but out of stock, The Wall Street Journal reported, because the no-frills, high-powered machine is the most cost-effective way to run locally hosted AI agents, such as OpenClaw.
It’s a bit ironic that Apple, the company way behind the AI curve, has the most popular hardware for running AI agents.
Marco Arment, developer of Overcast and podcaster, setup a rack of 48 Mac Minis to do podcast transcripts for Overcast. Marco is, of course, an Apple platform developer so writing his transcript creation software for the Mac makes sense, especially since Apple has a Speech recognition framework. Would Marco have chosen a different platform if Apple didn’t have support for it? I dunno. We’d have to ask him. What I do know is his setup is fascinating!
Today, that childhood dream is finally coming true. Today I can finally say the sweetest nine or 10 words in the English language: Global Tetrahedron has completed its plan to control InfoWars.com.
It looks like The Onion is finally going to get their hands on InfoWars. Good! Once they’re in they’ll make a complete mockery of the site, not that it isn’t already. Also good.
Alex Jones can suck it.
Kill Yr Substack intercepts every Substack link you click and redirects it to the web snapshotting site archive.is. The request to Substack never fires, which means that they never see your traffic, which means that their numbers go down. You still get to read the thing tho.
I don’t recommend reading anyone on Substack because their leadership has highly questionable morals. But, if there is a writer using it and you can’t live without them, give Kill Yr Substack a try. At least it’ll keep you off of the site.
🎁 Erin Griffith, Mike Isaac, and Ryan Mac ⦁ New York Times
SpaceX, Elon Musk’s rocket and satellite company, said on Tuesday that it had struck a deal with the artificial intelligence start-up Cursor that could result in its acquiring the young company for $60 billion.
What could possibly go wrong?! Space Karen is one of the best grifters the world has ever seen. I don’t know if he or Donald Trump is the master, but it’s close.
Musk isn’t a genius. Does he have interesting ideas? Yes. Is a wack job? Also yes.
