Rob Fahrni

Julian Chokkattu • Wired

“It’s proof that it can be done—if companies wanted to make eminently fixable modular products, they could,” Proctor says. “There’s no technological reason why they can’t do it; it really is what they’ve decided to produce. It does raise the question: Why isn’t more of our technology easy to fix? … People are going to start thinking about smartphones as longer-term investments, especially as prices have gone up for these phones.”

This Wired piece is about a repairable phone from a Dutch company called Fairphone.

It looks like a really nice device with 12 replaceable, inexpensive, parts. The only downside I see is, it doesn’t run iOS, and there’s the rub.

Apple owns me. I’m locked into their beautiful hardware because I want the OS and the experience it brings.

It would be lovely if Apple could find a way to give us a low end iPhone that is fully repairable, like the Fairphone, for a price comparable to Fairphone. Of course they won’t but it would be lovely.

If it wasn’t too dumbed down, like missing OS features, I’d buy a low end repairable iPhone, for sure! Even if it had only a single low end camera and a battery with a lower overall lifespan, that’s fine, if I could buy one for $90 and install it myself.

You say “Yeah, but it’s not as water resistant!” True. I’ll accept the risk since I can, more than likely, replace enough parts to fix it.

It’s a pipe dream. Apple is a “premium brand” and premium brands don’t do products you can repair yourself.

Too bad I can’t buy iOS separate of their hardware.😃 Of course I don’t think they should do that. Their stuff works so well because they have full control over the hardware and software and I wouldn’t want to break that.

I wouldn’t be surprised if someone inside Apple has put together a prototype phone like the Fairphone and I’d love to see it. 😃

Some Hayseed, LLC, behind the scenes. 🤣

I operate my app empire under the name Hayseed and I have two products; RxCalc and Stream.

RxCalc

RxCalc is a Pharmacokinetics Calculator. It’s used to calculate how long drugs interact with the body. Go read about it. It is interesting.

My brother, Jerry, has a PharmD — Doctor of Pharmacy — and loves the more technical side of his profession, he’s a total geek and Chemistry undergrad so of course he loves stuff like that.

We collaborated on it in 2009 because he needed it for work. I did the app and he did the math. We paired to get it coded up and we were approved for the store on July 4, 2009.

It hasn’t changed in years and could use an update to add a new way of doing calculations.

Stream

Stream is an RSS or Feed Reader.

I built Stream because I love blogging and use a feed reader to consume others blogs and news sites. One of these days I’ll ship Stream for Mac! 🤣

I wanted Stream to be slightly different and I loved my Twitter app, Twitterrific from the Iconfactory, so I decided I’d like to have a feed reader that worked in timeline form. So, Stream was born. It presents your feeds in reverse chronological order as you’d see in Twitterrific. Posts from multiple sources are folded together so you can read casually. The initial release didn’t have a read/unread status but it was a highly requested feature so I added it.

Stream is FREE to use but if you like it you’re free to leave a tip. I appreciate every tip I receive. I have a feeling when I do get a tip it’s from a friend, love y’all. ❤️

I am grateful for any support I receive for my apps. Thank you. 🙏🏼

The feed reader app market is very crowded and you can find excellent readers from multiple companies. Here are a couple I use.

Unread

Unread is a beautifully designed and darned useful app from Golden Hill Software. The iOS App sports a swipe driven user interface, beautiful type, a stellar reader, and my favorite feature, a read later view. It’s labeled as Favorites but you can save random articles to it to read later. I use it multiple times a day. I use the list I build to inform my Saturday Morning Coffee post.

Oh, it also has its own syncing system that is really good! Highly recommended.

Tapestry

Tapestry comes from the amazing folks at Iconfactory. It’s more than a feed reader and is highly customizable.

You can add your everyday RSS feeds but you can also add Mastodon, Bluesky, or Reddit feeds to name a few.

As ever, the UI is beautiful and thoughtful. I use it on occasion just to admire their work. Iconfactory is a shop that embodies what it means to design beautiful, usable, highly performant, and stable software for Mac and iOS.

It is updated at a rapid pace and is evolving to allow you to reply to posts from other services. Like I said, powerful!

Also, highly recommended.

Apple Newsroom

Available in three elegant colors with a premium matte finish — black, white, and a beautiful new soft pink — iPhone 17e will be available for pre-order beginning Wednesday, March 4, with availability starting Wednesday, March 11. iPhone 17e will start at 256GB of storage for $599 — 2x the entry storage from the previous generation at the same starting price, and 4x more than iPhone 12 — giving users more space for high-resolution photos, 4K videos, apps, games, and more.

If you configure one with the maximum amount of storage at 512GB, no trade-in, select Buy, select Connect to any carrier, and get the Annual coverage the price is $799.

Not bad for $800. This looks to be a great entry level phone and is actually something I could fit into. I have a 512GB iPhone 16 and it’s a wonderful device that, I believe, cost over double that $800 price tag.

Sure the camera isn’t as good but I think I could live with that.

It comes in three colors; Soft Pink, White, and Black. That works. I hope this thing sells like hot cakes. 🥞

UPDATE: The price of my iPhone 16 was $1,407.84 when I was all said and done. That included shipping. So, definitely not over double the price. 😁

Hat tip: K Longoso on Mastodon. 🎩

Switched up the good old springboard again. I’m diggin’ the new neon theme in McClockface.

The new Lock Screen. Diggin’ it.

I’ve never purchased an Apple iPhone case because they’re just too darned expensive for what you get. I have a couple of custom cases from Syd Cases and a couple Unicorn Beetle cases.

They do the job I intended for them to do, they protect my $1,000+ investment.

If I decide to get an iPhone 15 I’m totally buying a FineWoven case just so I can enjoy all the ugly marks it gets. I don’t mind them and I miss the olden days of aluminum iPhone bodies that scratched and wore over time. My iPhone 7 is a perfect example and I love the way it looks.

Maybe we can convince Apple to abandon Xi charging on the low end models and go to 100% USB C charging with a change back to an aluminum body? 🤣

I’d welcome it.

NetNewsWire Blog: “Our mission is to make the best RSS reader that we like making. We value stability, high performance, clarity, and lots of figurative air and space rather than a mélange of features.”

I love how Brent and the NNW team hold true to what they believe – and what they want – a feed reader to be.

If you haven’t checked out NNW you really should, it’s a great product.

MacRumors: ‘because it “opens the door for ‘Pro’ applications to come to ‌iPad‌."’

I picked that bit of a sentence from the article because it’s complete B.S. If folks want to bring Pro apps to the iPad they have the means to do it today on their Mac. Having Xcode on an iPad won’t magically make that any better. The Mac is the perfect tool for building Professional Mac and iOS apps.

Xcode on iPad would be fine. I can’t personally see using an iPad as my primary development machine. Mainly because I like using a bigger display for development. My 15in MacBook Pro display is about as small as I’d like to use.

If I could set the iPad on a stand of some sort, hook it up to my full size keyboard, mouse, and 24in display? That is something that may work.

We’re getting closer to that day, we’re just not quite there.

Do all Apple related podcasters believe every nerd carries around the latest greatest iPhone?

I’m a professional iOS software developer. Have been since 2009. Prior to that I made my living writing Windows and Linux based video viewing workstations. Prior to that I worked on a an extremely popular Windows desktop drawing and diagramming software. I’m approaching 30-years as a pro.

I carry an iPhone 7.