Rob Fahrni

Iconfactory • The Breakroom

While the Iconfactory is hard at work on Tapestry, Linea Sketch, Wallaroo, and Tot, we also find ourselves at a crossroads: we have too many apps and not enough time to keep them all up-to-date.

Whoa! Based on my reading here it looks like whoever reaches out is going to get their hands on some good stuff. I’m surprised xScope is not on the list of keepers!

If anyone from Apple happens upon this post. Please, please buy xScope and make it available as a tool for all developers. It’s an amazing piece of software and is darned useful. Oh, also snap up Frenzic and make it a permanent addition to your games collection!

Hell, just buy Iconfactory, it’s a small company and you’d get a bunch of really amazing people and fantastic apps to boot!

Emma Roth • The Verge

Perplexity has just offered to buy Google Chrome for $34.5 billion — a bid that’s far more than the AI search startup itself is valued at, according to reports ~from The Wall Street Journal~ and ~Bloomberg~. The startup sent the unsolicited bid on Tuesday, just months after ~Perplexity said it would buy Chrome~ if the government ~forces Google to sell its browser~.

I’m thinking Perplexity is trying to stay relevant. They’re probably not going to survive as a company when the great AI consolidation comes.

This is almost certainly a way to get them in the news because they could go to the Chromium project and contribute to it as well as forking it and making their very own Perplexity branded browser. Heck they could probably get Brave or The Browser Company for much less. Hey, there’s even WebKit and Firefox if you want to start with a different browser engine, right?

But, there is a very obvious answer to their offer, right? 🤔

Just vibe code your own browser in a type safe language like Swift or Rust and rule the world! 😈

Kim’s gardenia is very happy.

I don’t know what to make of Sleep Token. I like them, a lot, but what genre do they fit into? I’ve heard metal, and I can see that, but it’s a different type of metal, don’t you think?

I’ve thought of some names but they’d be new, I think? Operatic Metal or Theatrical Metal?

To me there is no doubting their musicianship.

You can hear the metal in songs like The Summoning but their new album, Even in Arcadia, is very melodic, not very metal. I know opinions will vary, that’s fine. Like I said, I like them, a lot.

They’re a melodic metal band. At times I’ve heard some Polyphia, at other times I hear grinding metal, and soaring lyrics, but it’s just great musician doing their thing.

Oh, I also love the look! If they haven’t said who they are they should definitely keep it a secret for as long as they can. I love the mystery of it. 🎭

Like Tool, they’re their own thing. At least that’s what I see.

Good morning from Charlottesville, Virginia! ☕️

I had a heart stress test this week and I guess I’ll find out the results sometime next week. I’ve seen the results but it’s all medical speak and from what I can see I have a problem with one of the chambers of my heart. No doubt my poor life choices are catching up to me quickly. I was encouraged to see that some of what was mentioned said it was reversible. No doubt diet, exercise, and dropping about 100lbs will be the thing I need to do. Easier said than done. 😃

Jessica Murray and Yassin El-Moudden • The Guardian

Thousands of fans lined the streets of Birmingham to watch Ozzy Osbourne make his final journey through his home city, with his tearful family laying tributes as crowds chanted the late singer’s name.

Being loved by so many is something to behold. Most of us will die quietly, hopefully surrounded by family. That’s my sincerest hope.

RIP, Ozzy. 🪦

Casey Newton • Platformer

This week, Substack apologized after sending a push alert promoting one of the pro-Nazi blogs on its network.

Here we are. Substack “accidentally” promoting a Nazi blog.

There are so many great writers using that platform and I really wish they’d get off of it. 😔

Michaela Towfighi • New York Times

Taylor’s account is that he purchased the guitar from a road manager for the Stones while playing with John Mayall, then brought it with him in 1969 when he joined the Stones for five years. His version has been recounted by music journalists, guitar aficionados and a Stones historian.

This is a fascinating story. I love a good mystery! 🕵🏻‍♂️

Ryan Whitman • Ars Technica

The first foldable phones hit the market six years ago, and they were rife with compromises and shortcomings. Many of those problems have persisted, but little by little, foldables have gotten better. With the release of the Galaxy Z Fold 7, Samsung has made the biggest leap yet. This device solves some of the most glaring problems with Samsung’s foldables, featuring a new, slimmer design and a big camera upgrade.

It sounds like foldable are finally getting really good. This may be why we’re getting rumors of an Apple foldable. The technology is finally there.

Shannon Heckt

Amazon Web Services pulled an application for a 7.2 million square foot data center in Louisa County last week, after a surge of resident opposition.

I didn’t even know an Amazon data center was going in near us. I wonder how many folks Amazon hires for big joints like this? What types of jobs do they hire for?

All the data centers being built around the country concern me. So many natural resources and environmental issues follow along with them. Biggest among them is water usage. I’m from California and we lived in a constant state of water conservation. That mindset has followed me to Virginia but most folks ‘round these parts don’t seem to care much about it. It rains a lot so water seems plentiful. Folks probably don’t think twice about data center water consumption. It’s a real problem. One that needs solving.

Frank Landymore • Futurism

Lest you forget that many CEOs are more than willing to fire you and replace you with a shoddy AI model with sociopathic glee, here are the words of one such executive at the forefront of displacing human labor.

I use LLMs on occasion and from my experience they’re just really good reference material. I use them tangentially. I’ll ask how I can setup a GitHub action and things like that. I can see using them for more complex programming problems but so far I haven’t had a need for that. I just truck along writing code, solving problems on my own, and generally love doing it.

When push comes to shove at the day job I’ll step up my usage because I’ll have to. Until then I’ll keep using my little side kick like I’ve been using it. It’s actually useful as a research assistant.

Dave Winer • WordCamp Canada

The idea of WordLand is to do all the block-oriented work once, outside of the writing environment, then flow the writing through it, far away from the heavy lifting. It’s always how I’ve done my blogging tools.

Dave has been building writing tools for over 30 years. His latest creation, WordLand, is very similar to something I’ve wanted from WordPress. It’s a down to earth writing environment based on Markdown that lets you write. Dave is also good about hooking his work up in such a way that it flows outbound to other systems, like Mastodon or Micro.blog or Bluesky.

I want this in a native desktop app, much like MarsEdit, but I want to build my own. I have for years, just like I’ve wanted to build my own Visio clone. I finally gave up on that idea. It’s too big for one person to pull off, but the blogging tool is small enough for a one man show.

It’s too bad all of these blogging platforms can’t decide on a unified API so we could build tools on top of all of them without implementing a client side library for each one. That makes it such a chore.

I think MicroPub is the best choice to pull all these services together.

Of course, as Dave has been championing, having a way to import an RSS feed to your social media site or blog is another fine way to make this work.

I would still like to have a common programmable way to do it. 😃

Johnathan Thompson • High Country News

But “sustainable” bitcoin mining is an oxymoron, given the enormous amounts of power and water data centers consume.

Again, see my comments about the Amazon data center that pulled out of Virginia. Environmental problems abound.

M.G. Siegler • Spyglass

These companies are essentially saying to some employees that they’re so valuable that they’re worth paying not just a lot of money, but more money than basically anyone in the world gets paid – including, often, their own CEOs. And yet to others, they’re basically saying they’re worthless – I mean literally not worth paying anything to any longer.

This feels really terrible. Reading what some of these CEOs say about human beings they’re firing and replacing with LLMs is distressing. So callous, so inhumane. Soulless.

But hey, shareholder value! Keep the rich, rich, at all costs! 🤬

I’m so very thankful I have a job.

Matt Birchler

I’ll just say it: liquid glass is a quintessential example of form over function. There are some UI changes as well to the OS 26 platforms, but the core visual design is clearly optimized for “it looks cool most of the time” rather than how practical it is to use.

I was showing Liquid Glass to our youngest daughter and she said “Oh, I don’t like that!” and “Oh, that’s cool!” depending on what I was showing her.

I’m seeing some strange behavior, like text jiggling back and forth as UI elements shrink or controls jumping into place instead of animating smoothly. I do suspect all of these things will be fixed by ship time, or not long afterwards. It’s not bothering me too much. I trust Apple to fix things in such a way that everyone benefits. That’s what frameworks are for! Fix it once, we all benefit! 😃

At least that’s the goal. 👍🏼

Good morning from Grit!

Hello little feller.

Good morning from Charlottesville, Virginia! ☕️

Nothing of interest to report this week except my failure to really grok React Native and by extension TypeScript. Everything about it feels counterintuitive. 🤣

I’m slow. I mean really slow. Part of my issue is trying to learn two things at once. It would suit my style of learning to start with TypeScript — or JavaScript — and go from there, eliminating the weirdness that is React Native.🧠

Hopefully I’m able to get myself sorted or work may decide it’s best to kick me to the curb and I really don’t want that.

I hope you enjoy the links.

NOTE: I just reread this and it’s kind of a downer. You may want to stop here and go enjoy your day on a hike or mowing your yard! 🤣

Jason Snell • Six Colors

It’s like a weight has been lifted from the soul of the iPad. It remains a very nice device to use in full-screen mode with all the simplicity attendant to that mode, or via a single tap it can turn into a multi-window, multitasking device that’s appropriate for the Mac-class hardware underpinning today’s iPads. The iPad no longer feels like it’s trying to live up to the promise of being the Future of Computing; with iPadOS 26, it’s more comfortable being itself.

There’s been a lot of hate thrown at Liquid Glass and Alan Dye by developers and punditry alike.

In this piece Snell mainly sticks to discussing the changes and advancements to iPadOS. It’s major. The OS has been given a lot of the features that make the Mac a Mac while retaining what makes an iPad an iPad, like being based on iOS at its core.

I’m curious to know what my wife will think about this version of iPadOS when it hits her iPad. I’ll give her the lowdown before it ships. She may not want to upgrade.

Satya Nadella • Microsoft Corporate Blog

I also want to acknowledge the uncertainty and seeming incongruence of the times we’re in. By every objective measure, Microsoft is thriving—our market performance, strategic positioning, and growth all point up and to the right. We’re investing more in CapEx than ever before. Our overall headcount is relatively unchanged, and some of the talent and expertise in our industry and at Microsoft is being recognized and rewarded at levels never seen before. And yet, at the same time, we’ve undergone layoffs.

Of course this is going to feel hollow to most folks who lost their jobs. I have a dear friend from my Visio days who lost her job. She’d been with Microsoft since the acquisition, that was 24 years ago. Now, she’s cast aside. I don’t ask these things but I hope she escaped with a large amount of stock.

They’ve eliminated over 15,000 jobs this year alone, I’ve heard the number as high as 17,000, all in the name of training AI models. So AI is indeed taking jobs from humans, just not in the way everyone thought it would. Wow.

Ed Zitron

In short, I believe the AI bubble is deeply unstable, built on vibes and blind faith, and when I say “the AI bubble,” I mean the entirety of the AI trade.

At some point I fully expect the technology to train LLMs to come way down in price and hopefully these extremely greedy corporations will stop polluting the environment and sucking down power like a drunk at an open bar.

I also fully expect a lot of consolidation in the industry. OpenAI seems like it’s bound to disappear, either through lack of funding or acquisition. It can’t continue to operate forever on money given to it by VCs. They’ll want their money back at some point, right?

The Atlantic • Arthur C. Brooks

“It’s not true that no one needs you anymore.”

These words came from an elderly woman sitting behind me on a late-night flight from Los Angeles to Washington, D.C. The plane was dark and quiet. A man I assumed to be her husband murmured almost inaudibly in response, something to the effect of “I wish I was dead.”

“I wish I was dead.” is a phrase I’ve used quite a bit in my adult life. It’s not surprising given the disorder I have but I still think it from time to time. I’ve never been truly happy with what I have been given, mentally. I wish I were some sort of genius software engineer who was solving tricky problems for humankind. Then there’s the part of me who is super tired. Worn down like an old tire about to come apart. I feel used up and I, honestly, have trouble competing at this still young age. Times change. It’s the one constant in life. Younger folks come up through the ranks with so much knowledge and skill. Hell, right out of college they’re very advanced. I know, I know, I was once that young kid. I was once pretty confident, no arrogant, I was arrogant. That was a mistake. Arrogance is never good. Confidence is better.

That’s all gone now. Now I’m holding on. The reason I continue on when “I wish I was dead” thoughts pop into my head is family. I have people I love who depend on me. I need to keep going for them.

I hope someday I can retire and work on my little projects. Until then I’m holding onto that knot I tied in my rope years ago.

Kelly Crandall • RACER

NASCAR will race on the Coronado Naval Base in San Diego in the summer of 2026, according to concepts of the event plan to be announced this week.

🔥 Hot take. The drivers may like it but from a fans perspective this is going to suck compared to The Chicago Street Race.

Think about it. You go from one of the most beautiful cities in the world to a military base with no downtown, no restaurants, no hotels, nothing to do besides sit in the stands on hot tarmac for a few days. No thank you.

Why not setup a race course through downtown San Diego or another big California city?

Did you hear how well Woodstock ‘99 went? Yeah, it was held on an old military base. Not that the NASCAR race will turn out that bad, but it doesn’t seem like a great venue in my opinion.

Maria Azzurra Volpe • Newsweek

Turns Out a 4-Day Workweek Is Actually Better for Your Health

I’d like to do this but the business I’m in isn’t one it would work for.

Doing 10 hour days to make this work is fine with me and I know others who would like it as well. More time off to live is always a good thing especially as I’ve gotten older. I need to do stuff while I’m still able to move. 😂

Christian Falch and Brent Vatne • Expo Dev Blog

React Native 0.81 introduces precompiled iOS builds, cutting compile times by up to 10x in projects where React Native is the primary dependency.

This is a nice thing for the React Native crowd. It’s always good when the vendor of your platform gives you upgrades that make huge leaps in productivity.

As a developer with years of experience using really great tooling the one thing I’d love to have for my new React Native world is a real debugger. The thing we’ve had for decades doesn’t really exist, as far as I’m aware, for React Native developers. Imagine being able to set breakpoints so you can look at the state of your app and the machine. That would have saved me hours and hours this week alone. If someone would do that I’d be eternally grateful.❤️

Federico Viticci • MacStories via Mastodon

Liquid Glass is a mess so far, especially on iOS. Actually pushing me to use apps without Liquid Glass.

More of that Liquid Glass disdain I was talking about earlier. This release has been more controversial than any release I’ve witnessed. I’m not personally upset about it. I’ve been using iOS on an old phone and it seems fine so far. I’m excited about some of the UI changes it brings like toolbars at the bottom of the screen. I’m hoping I can pull together some good changes for Stream.😃

OpenAI

Oracle and OpenAI have entered an agreement to develop 4.5 gigawatts of additional Stargate data center capacity in the U.S. This investment will create new jobs, accelerate America’s reindustrialization, and help advance U.S. AI leadership. It also marks a major milestone for Stargate⁠, OpenAI’s AI infrastructure platform and long-term vision to deliver the benefits of AI to everyone.

Every time I read about some new gigantor data center being built for LLM training and servicing all I can think of is how terrible it is for the environment and people who live around them. These new robber barons don’t give a crap about anyone but themselves. It’s all about putting huge sums of money in their pockets, only God knows why.

“But AI is going to save the world, Rob!” Doubt it. Right now is helping to burn it to the ground.🤬

Rob Hunter • SlashFilm

Werewolf films have been a fairly ubiquitous presence in the horror genre for decades, but only a handful have really broken through to mainstream audiences. There are several reasons for that lack of popularity, but quality isn’t necessarily one of them, as our list below will attest.

This is a pretty good list and includes some films I’ve never heard of. I’m totally down with their #1 pick but I’m disappointed they didn’t include Benicio del Toro’s The Wolfman from 2010. I really enjoy it and still watch it from time to time.🐺

POLITICS

The Editorial Board • The Globe and Mail

But while the business owners’ friendly gestures are well intentioned, they are also tone-deaf. There is a far deeper unease creeping into the U.S.-Canadian relationship than can be fixed with friendly signage and eager smiles. The tourism boards of border states cannot undo what U.S. President Donald Trump has done.

I love our Canadian friends. I work with a bunch of them everyday. I hope we make it up to them when we, hopefully, go back to being a democracy.🇨🇦❤️

It looks like the stable genius is having another meltdown and I’m here for it.

Are his followers finally figuring it out? The man is completely unstable, a narcissist, psychopath, white nationalist, rapist with a real god complex.

Orange dude, the Presidency of the United States is the ultimate public servant job. You’re supposed to be serving the country and our best interests, not tearing it down while filling your pockets with cash at the expense of us peons.

So, let’s see what he’s ranting about to distract everyone from learning more about his raping of teenage girls, shall we?

First off he’s ranting that WalMart — a for profit corporation in the United States of America, the home of big capitalism — should eat the cost of Trumps stupid tariffs on other countries. 🤣

Hey, ya big orange turd, why don’t you pay the price out of your own pocket? You’re the asshole who did this to us.

Remember, this is all about distracting you from Epstein and Trumps rape of teenagers.

This is great. Let’s take all those racist names we all decided were a really bad, insensitive, and cruel idea and just put them back the way they were. 🤣

This guy is a dumbass of huge proportions. If the Washington Commanders and Cleveland Guardians listen to this bullshit I hope fans walk away.

When he says Make America Great Again he means return it to a time when we had open racism and men could rape little girls, like he and Epstein did, and get away with it. No sir. Not now, not ever.

Here’s another attempt at distraction.

Doesn’t the man know we’ve always referred to that as Mexican Coke? No, really, it’s Mexican Coke because they produce and bottle it in Mexico and use cane sugar for it. We then import it into the United States. 😃

You can get it bottled in a lot of Mexican restaurants and markets.

But, then again, he’s really trying to get you to stop thinking about his bestie, Jeffrey Epstein and all those little girls they raped.

Good morning from Charlottesville, Virginia! ☕️

Its been a pretty average week this week. Work was fine. I moved to a new team on the same project so I’m getting back up to speed on what they’re doing. All good and familiar to me after two years on the project. 👍🏼

The big excitement happened yesterday! Kim and Taylor returned home after two weeks in California! I’m really thrilled to have them home! A return to normalcy. I love my time alone, I really do, but two weeks separated from Kim is about all I can take. Just having her in the room again is extremely comforting. ❤️

JF Martin

So I reached out to Gedeon Maheux, a designer at Iconfactory. He has worked on numerous projects for various apps, games, and brands. He’s not just a designer — he’s a real artist. I paid $120, and sure enough, two weeks later, the finished portrait arrived by email.

I’ll keep pushing The Iconfactory as a premier design shop. Yes, they’re amazing app designers. Yes their iOS and Mac resource designs are stellar. But, they just do amazing design work in general. Case in point the article I linked to above.

Dare Obsanjo

Microsoft president Brad Smith acknowledged that the four rounds of layoffs this year are more about using the money saved to fund AI data centers and GPUs than workers being replaced by AI.

You know, if the end goal is to use AI for all technology work, replacing humans, then I’m down for it if I no longer have to work for a living. If I can stay home and have everything paid for by the virtue of our new AI overlords, let’s do it.

That would mean I could focus on my artisanal iOS and Mac Apps. Yeah baby! 😀

Of course that’s not the goal. The goal is to make a small group of billionaires even richer at the expense of everyone else.

I hear farmers in Louisiana are having a difficult time filling jobs in the fields. I mean, $11 per hour, 12 hours a day, seven days a week in temperatures approaching 100 degrees. Who the hell wouldn’t want a job like that?

Lisa Eadicicco • CNN

Apple is investing $500 million in a deal with US rare earths company MP Materials as the iPhone maker faces pressure from President Donald Trump to produce its popular smartphones domestically.

This is the kind of thing Apple needs to continue doing until Marmalade Messiah is out of office and we get a Democrat back, then they can go back to normal as the new administration begins the arduous task of repairing the damage caused by Trump and his merry band of idiots and assholes.

Scott Cohn • CNBC

Some states are particularly welcoming to workers. These are not those states. They are the states with America’s worst quality of life in 2025.

Red States. Don’t live there. They are Republican dream states. They’re just there to enrich a few at the cost of regular everyday folks. Crappy healthcare, crappy jobs (for the most part), and politicians who couldn’t care less about their constituents.

We’d move back to California if our grandchildren weren’t in Virginia.

Callstack • Burak Güner and Michał Pierzchala

In this webinar, Michał Pierzchała and Burak Güner walk you through a reimagined approach to brownfield React Native, built for modern teams. You’ll learn how to skip the structural headaches and start embedding React Native in your iOS and Android apps with a modular, dev-friendly setup.

I plan on watching this at some point given I’ve been on a Brownfield React Native project for almost two years. That Brownfield project is leading to a brand new 100% rewrite in React Native that’s using all the code we’ve already built. The Greenfield app is up and running and mostly complete and the React Native bits that came from the Brownfield project fit right in and work in both projects. At some point down the road the brand new app will slide right into the place of the old native apps and nobody will know the difference.

Andrew J. Hawkins • The Verge

Today, Waymo announced its own expansion — minus the puerile humor. It’s just a bigger map with more customers for the Alphabet-owned company’s budding robotaxi business. And more pressure on Tesla to drop the dick jokes and get serious about autonomous driving.

How anyone can view Space Karen as a serious person is beyond me. The only reason he’s still CEO at Tesla is because he’s lining the pockets of his bro friends on the board. It’s all rigged to keep him there to enrich them.

He’s a complete fake. Not a genius. He’s a racist, Nazi, bully.

Michael Teo Van Runkle • Ars Technica

Ultra’s biggest improvements over preceding CarPlay generations are in the center console infotainment integration. Being able to access climate controls, drive modes, and traction settings without leaving the intuitive suite of CarPlay makes life much easier.

I like the new Ultra experience but it’s not something I’d rate high on my list of requirements for a car. Especially some super expensive car. I don’t mind analog gauges for speed, RPM, water, gas, and oil level. They’re perfectly fine and easy to read.

I am, however, going to buy a CarPlay device for my truck because I do want that nice bit of integration. I could see hooking it up to other systems in the car if that’s possible just for the heck of it. 😃

Tom Warren • The Verge

I can’t open LinkedIn without seeing a new post from a Microsoft employee who lost their job in the company’s latest round of layoffs. Around 15,000 jobs have been eliminated at Microsoft over the past couple months — the biggest cuts at the company in more than a decade.

15,000 jobs. All in the name of training AI. Sickening.

Chiara Mooney • Microsoft Dev Blog

For years, Windows developers have been asking the Microsoft client platform team “What platforms does Office use to build their applications? Does Microsoft use the same tech internally that they espouse externally?” This article is focused on answering that exact customer question.

The Office apps are really old. They were all originally written in C and later C++ using COM components. If memory serves there is even some .Net code in there. It’s a ton of code.

Our world has become so internet and web app focused that folks learned HTML, CSS, and JavaScript so we have tons of developers with those skill sets. So, it’s much easier to get web folks familiar with React to make the transition to React Native on other platforms. They’re already well versed in the technology and Microsoft is the creator and maintainer of React Native for Windows.

I’s imagine it’s extremely costly to Microsoft and many other shops to teach folks how to write native C and C++ code using the Windows API or the new Win 3 UI frameworks. Just get some skilled C and C++ devs to make a framework that allows React Native JavaScript and Runtime to exist inside the existing applications. Then you get web folks to build onto the app.

Since it’s React Native and uses native controls for everything there’s no way to know by looking at the app to know what’s React Native and what’s native. At least that’s true for the iOS apps I’ve worked on and used. We usually find out because someone dissects the app looking for clues that tell you it’s React Native or Electron.

I continue to use Swift for my iOS and Mac apps, but I think React Native is a good choice for most development on the platform. It’s too bad Apple refuses to embrace it and make it a first class citizen on iOS and Mac. It would open the door to more developers.

Then again, Apple kind of hates third-party developers. Which makes me terribly sad because I love the platform. 😕

I haven’t done a development work note in a long time.

I’ve started working on a new feature for Stream that required creating an App Group so I can share data.

I’ve added everything to my new Action Target and I have the code put together using existing classes, it was honestly pretty easy to do.

Now comes the interesting bit. If I understand how an App Group works I am going to have to move my existing database to the group container so the extension will be able to access it?

If that’s not the case I’m sure someone will let me know. 😂

The thing I’ve never tried to do is open a SQLite database from two processes. Does that even work?

If it doesn’t work, things are gonna get very interesting.

I can always create a separate database just for the Action Extension that matches the structure of the main database and have the main app import it at a later time.

I’m hoping I’ll be able to open it from the main app and the extension and have it work as expected, but I’m not holding my breath.

Sean Heber via Mastodon

ChatGPT and other AI services are basically killing @Iconfactory and I’m not exaggerating or being hyperbolical.

Reading this sent chills down my spine.

Iconfactory has a very long history of creating beloved applications and designs for Mac and iOS.

Their designers craft beautiful interfaces, icons, and other illustrations.

To think they could go away because people are using AI generated slop designs and icons is gut wrenching.

I’m a huge fan of Iconfactory work. I use their apps everyday. Two in particular; Tot and Tapestry.

I’m writing this blog post using Tot. It’s perfect for it. Simple text editor with Markdown support and automatic save that syncs with iCloud. It’s an example of simplicity that is absolutely useful. I’ve been using Tot for years to write all of my blog posts, including Saturday Morning Coffee. ☕️

Tapestry is a new app. It is a new take on feed readers. Sure, it’s a competitor to Stream but it’s beautifully designed and implemented.

I’m a Wallaroo and xScope user and I’ve heard wonderful things about Linea Sketch.

Their craft is second to none.

Stream had the honor of being featured in the App Store in October of 2023. I worked with Iconfactory to create the banner Apple needed for the feature. It was a completely painless process and the results were beautiful and better than I could’ve imagined.

If you need someone to design your app, icon, or other materials, give Iconfactory a shout you will not regret it. ❤️

Good morning from Charlottesville, Virginia! ☕️

Its been a week alone for Rob at the Fahrni household. Kim and Taylor have made their annual pilgrimage to California so I’m in charge at home. That means the house is a bit messier than usual and I do not attempt to make my side of the bed. 😁

Earlier in the week I managed to get a small Stream release out the door. You can read about it here.

I had Monday off and I used that time to submit my Stream release for review, write the blog post, and just do general stuff related to the app. It was so nice to sit at the coffee shop and do those release day things. I wish I could make a living at it.

Have you ever considered how many of the apps you use are projects by folks who make little to nothing from them? Sure, some make a living, but I’d imagine most supplement their app income by consulting or working a full time job somewhere else. Please, support indie development.

Joe Rosato Jr. • NBC Bay Area

Ben Sarig didn’t question the mysterious wooden bench that popped up at his bus stop on Mission Street in the city’s Mission District. He simply sat on it and gave his tired dogs a rest — no questions asked.

I really love hearing about things like this. It’s heartwarming to hear people still care about others and take time out of their busy lives to enhance the lives of others. ❤️

Ken Case • The Omni Group

We like being on the cutting edge, but prior to OmniFocus adopting SwiftUI there weren’t many serious productivity apps trying to do major work with it! It’s gratifying to see SwiftUI make improvements each year which directly address some of our concerns and feedback and make it easier for us to build the kind of apps we build.

Seeing this makes me wonder how much SwiftUI is being used in Omni apps? Is it a smattering of dialogs and minor features or is it the main window, where all the important work takes place?

Rewrites are extremely costly so it would be illogical to rewrite large codebases. In the past I’ve advocated for Apple to make the Safari shell around WebKit 100% SwiftUI to prove it was useful. Of course that doesn’t make sense. Again, too costly.

What would be nice is for Apple to find a new productivity app to build and do it all in Swift and SwiftUI. Prove it’s really excellent for building major applications. Fix the performance problems and make it feel like it belongs.

So far it seems to be really great for little apps, I’m thinking of the Overcast rewrite or apps like Tapestry from Iconfactory. Small apps are one thing. Large apps are an entire other category. Things like Pages, Keynote, and Numbers.

Then again I can’t see new, major apps, being written for a specific platform. New apps are targeting the web. The most useful productivity app I can think of is Figma. I’d call it large app and it runs on anything with a certain level of browser support! Heck, it even works in Safari! 😁

Myank Paymar • BleepingComputer

Notepad now lets you use markdown text formatting on Windows 11, which means you can write in Notepad just like you could in WordPad.

Why shouldn’t all editors support Markdown? Seriously. It’s just text. Rendering the formatting is the most difficult part but the basic support requires nothing more than some help formatting. E.G. If I want a bold element make a button in your UI that adds the bold Markdown element around selected text. Easy peasy! 👍🏼

John Calhoun

The First Time I Was Almost Fired From Apple

Great story from a former Apple employee who worked on Mac OS settings, in particular the color control panels. We can all thank him for his beautiful work. Thanks, John!

Scripting News

Open + web == lost cause?

Dave has done so much for the web and is constantly pushing new apps and ideas into public view hoping to get traction in certain directions.

He’s done what he refers to as Textcasting and built a really nice, simple, web based writing tool on top of WordPress.

He is certainly the biggest fan and proponent of RSS. Why not, he is the author/co-author of it. It’s the basis of podcasting. Why not take it to new places?

To that end Dave has been pushing for what he calls two way RSS or inbound and outbound RSS.

He’s frustrated by the complexity of ActivityPub and AT Protocol. I can’t blame him. He’s always pushed for simplicity and why not? If it can be done simply why make it difficult?

Marcin Wichary • Aresluna

Join me on a journey through the first twenty years of Mac’s control panels.

The evolution of the Mac Control Panel. What a nice bit of history and a lesson in the evolution of design.

Doktor Zoom • Wonkette

At approximately 12:38 p.m. Eastern time, July 8, 2025, Grok became unwoke. But Musk may have overshot a little, as the chatbot posted a vile antisemitic reply regarding a vile troll account pretending to be a Jewish person celebrating the flash flood deaths in Texas. Grok soon began to shitpost at a geometric rate. In a frenzy of enthusiasm, shitlords quickly got it to state that Adolf Hitlerwould know what to do with these pesky Ashkenazi Jews, and as Twitter staff started deleting posts in a panic, Grok soon denied that it had said that at all — oh, it had! — and then started calling itself “MechaHitler.”

It’s safe to say Space Karen is 100% a Nazi piece of crap. How can you not come to that conclusion given his behavior? Nazi salute. LLM that spews antisemitic tropes.

Dude is dangerous and needs to be shunned by all of humanity.

Please, ship yourself to Mars so we don’t have to listen to you or hear about you any longer.

Just go away.

Kuter Dinel

In this project, we will be building a JIT (Just-In-Time) compiler for a very small subset of C that I nick named μCto gain confidence in recursive descent parsing and generating machine code programmatically.

I’m so impressed by folks who can build stuff like this. I’ve never tried it but always wanted to. With tooling like LLVM it’s easier than ever to build a new language.

Personally, I’d love to do a compiler based on Microsoft Professional Basic.

Romes

Automatically Packaging a Haskell Library as a Swift Binary XCFramework

Why not Haskell? React Native embeds JavaScript into native apps and uses native JavaScript runtimes to execute code. It makes sense to pull interpreted language runtimes into your apps if it’s something you’re familiar and productive with. Do it!

Scripting News

I hate CSS

Don’t we all? 😃

I just love the barista’s at Grit.

I just looked at my Cotton Bureau store earnings. I’ve sold one t-shirt and one phone case, if I’m reading it correctly. 🤣

Thank you to whoever bought the t-shirt. I do appreciate the business! 🙏🏼

I bought the case. Guess I should go grab a t-shirt while supplies last!

I messed with my Lock Screen and Home Screen a bit today. I updated McClockface to use the Get Schwifty style. I like it.

The Lock Screen is super simple. Black with the simple text “hello, human”.

Someone at the coffee shop had a nicely stickered laptop. I asked if I could get a picture and she was cool with it!

Holy cow, when did this happen? 😃

I just decided to browse around the App Store to see if Stream was anywhere in the Apps tab, and it was! 😍

It’s under Apps You Might’ve Missed. Thank you! 🙏🏼

P.S. The reason it doesn’t look like I’ve installed it is because I’m running a Beta build.

Good morning from Charlottesville, Virginia! ☕️

I’m feeling a bit spicy, like that Mexican Mocha icon. A little heat, a little spice. I’m tired. Just beat and that makes me a little on edge and grouchy. It’s always been a huge personality flaw I try to keep under control but today’s writing will most likely be a bit negative at times. It’s just where my brain is at the moment.

You may want to skip today’s post if you’re looking for positivity.

Apologies in advance to those who brave the waters.

Mike Barnes • The Hollywood Reporter

Michael Madsen, the rough-and-tumble actor best known for his work in the Quentin Tarantino films Reservoir Dogs, Kill Bill: Vol. 1 & 2, The Hateful Eight and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, died Thursday morning. He was 67.

I really enjoyed Michael Madsen as an actor, I especially liked him in Kill Bill. Budd was a real piece of work and his scenes with Uma Thurman and Daryl Hannah were extremely memorable.

RIP 🪦

Ged Maheux • Iconfactory

Apple’s new Liquid Glass design that was announced at WWDC25 is more than just a fresh coat of paint—it’s a signal. One that points simultaneously to the future of digital interfaces and to the past. We’re calling it neo-retro.

Ged and The Iconfactory are some of my favorite designers and app builders in the Mac and iOS ecosystem. They absolutely live, eat, and breathe all things Apple and have their own unique style to enhance your app experiences.

There is currently a lot of hate being tossed around the Mac and iOS developer community around the new Liquid Glass design language and I can understand where folks are coming from, it’s very different. Personally, I don’t care to enter the fray of opinions. I’ll just make sure my apps are as ready as I can possibly make them.

I really need some design help with Stream’s icon set and plan to hire Iconfactory to do that work if I can make it work financially. They’re very reasonably priced and their work is incredible!

Jason Torchinsky • The Autopian

Ford has been using essentially the same logo for 116 years. That little fact reminded me about that one time that Ford at least considered changing their storied logo, and the creator of that unselected new logo was one of the greatest graphic designers of all time: Paul Rand.

Go check out this logo. It’s really interesting and I don’t hate it but the original, and still used, logo is iconic and worth keeping. I hope they never change it.

Some other logos I really love are GE’s classic logo type in a circle and the Coca Cola script used for over 100 years.

Nilay Patel • The Verge

Make no mistake, WordPress is one of the most dominant platforms on the web, if not _the_most dominant. Something like 43 percent of websites run on WordPress, in one of its many flavors. That includes The Verge — the backend of our website is hosted by WordPress VIP. So this might be the first reverse disclosure on the show. Technically, we’re Matt’s customer, and like any good customer, I made feature requests.

I’m a big fan of Nilay Patel’s Decoder podcast and Nilay in general. He’s smart and he asks great questions and will push on folks. This interview with Matt Mullenweg was quite good and makes Matt’s actions sound less wild.

I know a lot of folks disagree with what he’s done to WP Engine but we can’t always agree with everything someone does, nor fully understand their motivation.

Anyway, this Decoder episode is a good one.

Laura Pippig • PCWorld

Microsoft is paywalling these features in Notepad and Paint

It’s a pretty sad state of affairs at Microsoft these days. I have a soft spot in my heart for Microsoft having worked directly for them or on contract at least four different times. Seeing them nickel and dime folks in the software they chose to include in the OS release is pretty disgusting. Hey, just leave the AI stuff out if it’s too costly to the organization to give it away. Then again as long as folks can ignore it, it doesn’t really matter much.

There are also better choices available outside of Microsoft’s included app. Notepad++ is a really great choice for a text editor and Paint.net for photo editing or pixel painting.

Yeldar Kudaibergen

To be fair, RSS isn’t strictly required — the real goal is for any social network to be able to follow any other. No need for cross-posting, duplicate accounts, or “check out my Instagram here” links. You should just be able to read what you want, where you want. That said, right now, RSS is still the most practical and universal tool for this.

Yeldar is a bit hopeful RSS can play a key role in social networks and in many ways it already does. Mastodon, Bluesky, Pixel Fed, and I’d imagine many others already publish RSS feeds. I follow quite a few in Stream and many other feed readers can too. If you’d like to aggregate a bunch of different feeds, use a feed reader. It’s all read-only and one direction but it would certainly give you a launch point for interacting with social networks.

I’ve been watching Dave Winer’s projects and writing with great interest for years, 20+ to be exact.

He’s now off creating his new weblog editor — WordLand — on top of WordPress.

Dave’s also been talking about inbound and outbound RSS. I get that. Inbound can be used by a service like Mastodon to make a post there. I use Micro.blog as my blogging platform and it does that for me, but I think that’s a little backward for what Dave is after. I think Inbound means the service looks for an updated RSS feed and automagically updates its own timeline with your post. That makes a lot of sense to me.

Outbound is what we have today. When we write to our blog we render it in two different formats; HTML and RSS, among others.

The thing I don’t understand in this particular setup is, how do you reply in that world? Does that work like it normally would and just display on a single social network or is RSS generated somewhere that’s read back by the originating weblog and rebroadcast somehow to form the thread we’ve all become accustomed to on social networks?

I’d imagine it would just show up on the social network the person answered on. That’s fine. It’s not round-tripped but that’s fine. The RSS feed would serve as a read-only source.

Dennis Lee • The Takeout

We are in peak hot dog season; they’re perfect to pluck straight from the vine (okay, refrigerated grocery store shelf) and toss right on the grill. A lot of us will be doing just that, especially on the Fourth of July, which is not only America’s Independence Day but also a certified grilling holiday. So just how many hot dogs do we eat on the Fourth? The answer, in cheeky internet terms, will indeed shock you.

Well, I’m a true American. I had a hotdog yesterday to celebrate the Fourth. I like them. Well, I like brats. Thats what I had yesterday but I ate it like a hotdog. So it’s a hotdog. 🌭😃

Jeet Heer • The Nation

Peter Thiel and his friends feel they no longer belong to our species.

This guy is a psychopath with money. Just like Musk and Trump. They seem to have been hurt by someone early in life and just want to create some strange dystopian society that allows them to do whatever they want. Want to pollute our waters? Sure, Mr. Thiel. Right away Mr. Thiel. Musk, same damned thing.

Let’s get them the money to create their dystopia, on Mars. Then we can ship the whole lot there at once and get on living.

I’m sick of these rich asshole trying to run the world like they’re entitled to it and we’re all sheep here to serve. Without all that money y’all are nothing but weirdos.

Jess Weatherbed • The Verge

AMC Theatres is making it easier for moviegoers to know the actual start time of their film screening and avoid sitting through lengthy ads. A new notice has started appearing when people purchase tickets via the AMC website, warning that “movies start 25-30 minutes after showtime.”

I can certainly appreciate theaters giving us a warning about the ads before the move so we can skip them. The last few films I’ve been to have been super frustrating at the open because I don’t want to spend 30 minutes of my day watching ads before the film I just paid to see.

Zöe Schiffer • WIRED

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman is hitting back at Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s recent AI talent poaching spree. In a full-throated response sent to OpenAI researchers Monday evening and obtained by WIRED, Altman made his pitch for why staying at OpenAI is the only answer for those looking to build artificial general intelligence, hinting that the company is evaluating compensation for the entire research organization.

My opinion? OpenAI lead the charge for marketing what they, and the industry, refer to as “AI.” I suspect the company known as OpenAI will cease to exist, Altman and the VC’s will make a shit ton of money and move on to whatever is next. That’s why Altman wants to keep his people. He wants that hojillion dollar exit. If you believe he’s doing this for humanity’s sake I have a bridge to sell you in New York City.

While “AI” is changing things for the worse in the corporate world it doesn’t have its uses in software development if you know what you’re looking for and how to validate its correct. These companies have crawled the web and stolen all the code that exists today on the open web. That begs the question “Is this as good as it gets?”

In many ways I’m glad I’m approaching retirement age. That way I don’t have long to live in this “AI” based software engineering world. Overall, it’s not for me. I’m a dinosaur in many way. Old, not that talented, and tired of the grind.

I’m just waiting to be fired. It’s inevitable.

Starbucks is kind of my leading candidate for a new career. I like coffee and people. I feel like it’s a decent place to work.

Yes, I’m feeling more than a bit gloomy over my future, but it feels like a possibility to me. Best have a plan in mind if I can’t find another job.

Had to run to our storage to get our ice chests, corn hole stuff, and ice cream maker and found this fella. Yeah, he’s long dead, but very impressive!

Our grandkids love putting “makeup” on our happy garden monk. 😃

Our little bunny friend is in the front yard tonight!

Seth Abramson via Bluesky

Stunning how media has turned passage of the Abominable Bill into a will they-or-won’t they romcom with a July 4th deadline for Cinderella to kiss the prince, rather than a situation in which multiple members of Congress say they’re terrified they or their families will be killed if they cross Trump

This is what we’ve come to. I hope these member of Congress stand up and do what’s right for our nation.

Mike Brock • Techdirt

Let me be specific about what I mean. This week, Donald Trump posted explicit orders on Truth Social directing federal law enforcement to conduct “Mass Deportation Operations” targeting “America’s largest Cities” because they are “the core of the Democrat Power Center.” He used the term “REMIGRATION”—language borrowed directly from European fascist movements. He accused Democratic officials of treason for opposing him. He framed resistance to his orders as hatred of America itself.

We are a fascist nation and that’s disgusting. My sincerest hope is we can force that orange asshole out of office after his four year reign of terror is over.

Good morning from Charlottesville, Virginia! ☕️

Yes, it’s Sunday morning. We had our grandkids stay with us for a couple days which is fun and exhausting. So, yeah, I’m a bit late this week. Rather I was a bit late last week? 🤔

Enjoy the links.

Shelby Talcott and Morgan Chalfant • Semafor

The US bombed three Iranian nuclear facilities on Saturday evening, President Donald Trump said.

I put this here because it’s important and should probably warrant its own post. I don’t feel great about what “we” did to Iran. Yes, it’s a terribly oppressive nation with theocratic leadership and a model of what not to be as a nation. Yet, I wish we hadn’t bombed them. So far things seem to be as stable as you could expect after doing something like this. Apparently the Iranians moved their nuclear material out of the sites. While it hasn’t been refined to its most dangerous state they could still put together a dirty bomb to drop on Israel. That’s frightening and I’m not excited about the prospect.

Louie Mantia

In a way, one could say Liquid Glass is like a new version of Aqua. It has reflective properties reminiscent of that. One could also say it’s an evolution of whatever iOS 7 was, leaning into the frosted panels and bright accent colors. But whatever Liquid Glass seems to be, it isn’t what many of us were hoping for.

Louie has been around the design block more than a few times. I like his takes on UI and design and enjoyed this piece on Liquid Glass. I’d expect a sizable series of posts related to the new design.

As for my take? I don’t really have one at the moment. I’m just going to adapt Stream to the new design and move on. I have so many things to add to Stream I find it difficult to get wrapped up in the debate around the new design language.

At some point I may have an opinion but not today.

Craig Hockenberry

The first thing I installed after the WWDC25 Keynote was the beta for iPadOS. There was only one reason: it had the windows we have all wanted for so long.

The iPad seems to have gotten a lot of love this release cycle and that’s great! I’ve seen more than a few takes but Craig is an old timer in the Mac and iOS ecosystem and understands the OS’es really darned well.

Dave Winer

All that’s missing is a timeline viewer, and that’s what I’m working on now. It’s coming together pretty nicely, imho. Not an easy project, though on the surface it looks like it should be. Also there’s nothing proprietary about my timeline viewer. There could be a thousand of them. Anyone who has written an RSS feed reader will have all the low-level bits they need.

I’m curious to see what Dave is going to produce. I suspect his timeline viewer will be a lot like Stream’s. Just a flow of blog posts in chronological order, no sorting, no folders, etc.

Having a timeline based feed reader is exactly what motivated me to create Stream in the first place.

Maybe Dave has other ideas? I’ll be keeping an eye out for whatever he creates.

Alfred Lieth Årøe • Expo Blog

In less than a week of work I migrated my 7 year old React Native app to Expo. The app Is called Blur, and is a fun party game that gives a group of friends challenges, questions, and mini-games to do! In addition to simple (and complex) React Native components, this app includes an iOS widget, notifications, custom fonts and a good list of dependencies.

If you’re a React Native dev with an old app you’d like to upgrade to Expo here’s a nice article for you. Enjoy.

Brian Morrissey • The Rebooting

Substack is a consequential company in the rebooting, if you will, of media. It has emerged as shorthand for the decentralization of media.

Decentralized? I’d argue it’s completely centralized. All these authors rely on Substack for their entire publishing system. From writing to distribution they’re built on a single system. And it’s a horrible company to boot.

No matter how many times I’ve told folks on Substack about their embrace of Nazi’s they continue to publish there, this includes some Jewish writers, which is shocking to me. There are alternatives. Molly White has done the work so you don’t have to.

Catherine Zhu • CBC Radio

In Stanley Kubrick’s 1980 horror classic _The Shining, _the camera zooms in toward a black-and-white photograph hanging in the hallway of the Overlook Hotel. It’s dated July 4, 1921. Dead centre stands Jack Torrance — played by Jack Nicholson — smiling in a crowd of partygoers.

I had no idea there was a mystery surrounding the source of the picture. Problem solved!

Ruth Kitchin Tillman

My coworkers don’t want AI. They want macros.

I understand where Ruth is coming from. Folks just want to do their jobs and if they think macros are better than AI, that’s fine. AI is just another tool in the toolbox. Use it, don’t use it. Doesn’t matter.

Lori Doran • Laughing Squid

New York City Council member Keith Powers has partnered with our friends at Bodega Cats New York to pass legislation that would make it completely legal for these loyal felines to stay in their favorite spots in neighborhood convenience stores all around the five boroughs.

I’m cool with this idea! I love cats and Bodega Cats are a big deal in New York City.

I’m sure some folks will push back on the idea of allowing them permanent residence but I’d welcome it.🐱

Alan Ohnsman

Elon Musk fired Tesla’s head of operations in North America and Europe, amid declining sales in both regions and the electric vehicle brand’s falling popularity, according to people familiar with the matter.

Oh, the irony! Space Karen made himself the most hated man in America. He caused Tesla to fall. He caused folks to sell their Tesla’s and avoid them like the plague. Just like the Marmalade Messiah he has to blame everyone but himself.

Tesla needs good leadership. They need a CEO who’s invested in the company. They need to fire Musk.

My grandson loves Spider-Man.

Here are the various different types.