Posts in Ios (18 found)
HeyDingus 1 months ago

7 Things This Week [#181]

A weekly-ish list of interesting things I found on the internet. Sometimes themed, often not. 1️⃣ Greg Morris points out some minor oddities in the recent Apple Event. I noticed a few of them myself, but not all. [ 🔗 gregmorris.co.uk ] 2️⃣ Dr. Drang points out how the fitness trend suggestions in Apple’s fitness app aren’t so smart. I agree, they’re either too vague or too specific and I hardly look at them anymore. Needs a rethink. [ 🔗 leancrew.com ] 3️⃣ Matt Birchler’s got some good thoughts on LLM costs regarding token usage and cutting edge models. I think he’s spot on. [ 🔗 birchtree.me ] 4️⃣ The visual and production work in this iPhone review is absolutely incredible. I can’t imagine how it was made in just a few days. ( Via Matt Birchler ) [ ▶️ youtube.com ] 5️⃣ If you’ve ever used the CARROT Weather, you’ll be used to getting the unexpected out of this app. But I admit, I was surprised by an impressive musical number featuring its developer, Brian Mueller. [ ▶️ youtube.com ] 6️⃣ Stephen Hackett was right, this blog post evaluating macOS versions, but in reverse, is required reading. [ 🔗 rakhim.exotext.com ] 7️⃣ “ AI art might eventually have the right number of fingers, but it’ll never have a heart.” The Oatmeal gets you right in the feels. [ 🔗 theoatmeal.com ] Thanks for reading 7 Things . If you enjoyed these links or have something neat to share, please let me know . And remember that you can get more links to internet nuggets that I’m finding every day by following me @jarrod on the social web. HeyDingus is a blog by Jarrod Blundy about technology, the great outdoors, and other musings. If you like what you see — the blog posts , shortcuts , wallpapers , scripts , or anything — please consider leaving a tip , checking out my store , or just sharing my work. Your support is much appreciated! I’m always happy to hear from you on social , or by good ol' email .

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HeyDingus 2 months ago

Live Thoughts on Apple’s September Event

Always good when the keynote stream starts with me doing a spit take. “Design is how it works. That’s why we made half the interface illegible” why does the apple keynote keep cutting to some old white trump stan Apple loves to talk about how many ears they’ve looked at An illegible new watch face is an appropriate way to “ celebrate” Liquid Glass. If your blood pressure spikes while listening to the US president speak, let Tim know Can’t wait for my Apple Watch to tell me how shitty my sleep is. I’ve never seen my timeline so negative during an # AppleEvent and honestly I’m so proud. Fuck Tim Cook for ruining what used to be such an exciting day for us Apple nerds idk 42 hours of battery life definitely sounds bigger than the 10 hours my apple watch ultra 1 now lasts It’s 90% faster at gaming but checking Slack is still slow. looks the iphone started working with my trainer Going to start referring to my forehead as an iconic plateau “All-day battery life” proceeds to present a battery pack accessory # AppleEvent THE BUMPER IS BACK BABY What if Jony Ive voice but female Only British people can talk about materials. ORANGE ORANGE ORANGE ORANGE ORANGE ORANGE ORANGE ORANGE ORANGE ORANGE ORANGE ORANGE ORANGE ORANGE ORANGE ORANGE ORANGE ORANGE ORANGE ORANGE ORANGE ORANGE ORANGE ORANGE ORANGE ORANGE ORANGE ORANGE ORANGE ORANGE ORANGE ORANGE ORANGE ORANGE ORANGE ORANGE ORANGE ORANGE ORANGE ORANGE ORANGE ORANGE ORANGE ORANGE ORANGE ORANGE ORANGE ORANGE ORANGE ORANGE ORANGE ORANGE ORANGE ORANGE We also drink every time they say “ vapor chamber”. Cheers! I’d be pretty thin too if you ignore the bulky bits that stick out of me “Fuck it, we’re doing seven layers”. Nothing says Pro like “ We offer ProRes RAW video support, but you cannot adjust the gain level on an external mic.” Is there really no black Pro phone? Somebody check on @ gruber HeyDingus is a blog by Jarrod Blundy about technology, the great outdoors, and other musings. If you like what you see — the blog posts , shortcuts , wallpapers , scripts , or anything — please consider leaving a tip , checking out my store , or just sharing my work. Your support is much appreciated! I’m always happy to hear from you on social , or by good ol' email . Did they say foam tips for the new AirPods? Moving away from silicone tips? In-person live translation looks amazing. But you’ll need a newer iPhone for it to work, I’m sure. “ Best-fitting AirPods ever” huh? Maybe they’re worth another shot . Finally, you can start workouts with just your iPhone! I wonder if it’ll work with other heart-rate monitors, or just Apple’s headphones. Looks like a great update! Here comes the tear-jerker video… No more Jeff Williams to head off Apple Watch, and we’ll see if Jay Blahnik ’ s a no-show as well. Update: Was not seen. Yay, 5G ! No snark, I was fighting the watch’s cellular connection just this morning. Hopefully this will help. Whoa, they’re going after high blood pressure! Didn’t think we’d see anything about this for a few more years. That’s (potentially) huge. Sleep Score is nice, I guess. I’ve used third-party apps in the past, but never found the data very actionable. I’ll try it out. Damn, 24-hours of battery life on the Series 11. They’ve hit the full-day milestore. Huh, Space Gray is back! Welcome back, old buddy. “ The most powerful watch chip, S10 .” That doesn’t bode well for a faster watch chip coming today. But maybe it’ll come in the Ultra. JK , the S10 is a new chip! Double turns out, the S10 chip debuted last year in the Series 10 Watch. Which I guess makes sense. So now the whole lineup has caught up and has the S10 , but they didn’t make a new watch chip this year. 😕 Lots of great improvements for the SE — it’s much easier to recommend now, particiularly with the always-on display. Stephen Hackett will be happy, even though it didn’t get the price drop it deserves. Awesome, bigger display without a bigger case size. Also getting 5G , unsurprisingly. Woot woot! Sattellite connectivity not just for SOS , but the full messaging and location experience that’s on iPhone 42 hours of battery life. Yay! The case is 3D-printed. Wild! No mention of GPS improvements. I’m really hoping that perhaps the issue is just with my particular watch and that this new one will be better anyway. No mention of any on-device Apple Intelligence, like for workout buddy. That’s a miss in my books, I won’t run with my iPhone. Probably needs a new chip, which it also didn’t get. Oof, I’d forgotten the Ultra is $800. But available to order today! That’ll be happening here at HeyDingus central momentarily… Four new models, as expected… Probably the device I’m least interested in today. Hmm… wit that reveal video, it doesn’t look like anything is different than the 16. It was all software features they were showing off. Ahh, it does have a slightly bigger display. And with ProMotion — the first in a non-Pro device. Better scratch resistance on that new screen — but they always say that. Will it actually be any better? 50% charge in 20 minutes sounds quite good. 500 billion selfies last year. Wow. Anything they can do to improve selfies is good in my book. Ooh, a square sensor with easy switching of framing options. That’s nice! I’ll be glad to not feel like I’m going to fumble my phone trying to get a landscape selfie. Starts at 256GB storage! That bump would have been nice last year. I wonder if that comes with a similar bump in price… Keeps the titanium. And glass on both sides. Didn’t see that coming. “ Iconic Plateau” “ With the power of Pro inside”. This is gonna be pricy. The edges look a little more rounded, giving it an even thinner look. Ahh… they’ve packed way more of the guts into that camera bar, including the silicon. Cool. Will probably keep the hottest parts away from your hand. Tim Millet got out of the lab. AI accelleration via the GPU . Interesting… they usually refer the AI talk to their neural cores. I wonder what they’ll do with that extra power. N1 (for Networking) and C1X (for Cellular) chips. They sound great! I wonder if C1X will have the faster version of 5G (the C1 didn’t). Not a big deal either way. Single camera. This may be it’s downfall for me. I’ll have to wait for reviews to know if it can hang. Dual-capture video is going to be huge for content creators. They’re talking about eSIM. Interesting. They’ve had it forever, so what’s new here? Ah, it’s eSIM-only worldwide. Some countries still had physical SIM version. “ All-day battery life.” But they didn’t quote time or compare to other iPhones. 40 hours of battery life for video playback with the new MagSafe battery. Hmm. That’s not super convincing. This is pretty tempting. Starting from scratch, huh? Ah, they’re justifying the move away from titanium to alumium (first in a Pro phone) with a sexy industrial manufacturing video. Biggest battery. Looks pretty thick. Hopefully lighter though? And there’s the orange! Like the color, wish it came to the Air. Lots of presenters in Apple Stores around the world. I like it. They have beautiful architecture. They’re talking a lot about thermal management today. They must have gotten the feedback that their last few phones were too warm to the touch too often. Seems like the Pro ate the Air’s extra battery with how much they keep mentioning it. 39 hours of video playback without a battery pack. 48 MP cameras across the board on the back is pretty awesome. Fusion cameras across the board too. I like that the zoom levels are .5x, 1x, 2x, 4x, 8x. They double at every jump, which makes my brain happy. Really pretty photos taken by professional photographers. But that’s always been the case. It’d be more fun if they put it in the hands of camera normies like me and let them try their best. Joz says, “ How cool is that?” It’s really cool how much pro video stuff they pack into these iPhones. It’s way over my head, but I love that it puts so much power in creatives’ hands. TechWoven cases that offer great “ scratch and stain resistance”. That’s some FineWoven trauma right there. You can bet people will be putting that claim to the test. The Apple logo placement looks good in the center of the two-tone “ glass” panel on the white and orange, but looks goofily low on the blue where the contrast is less. iPhone Air takes the Pro’s old spot at $999, which the Pros get a $100 bump up starting at $1099. They try to spin away that bump by saying its the same price as last year’s 256GB model. I think maybe they just discontinued the iPhone 16 and previous models altogether? Usually they show the whole lineup, but now it’s all iPhones that were introduced this year. 16e, 17, Air, and 17 Pro/Max. That’s a curious break from a longheld tradition in Tim Cook’s Apple. (But which actually started back during Steve Jobs’ time.) Nope, the 16 and 16 Plus are still in the lineup.

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HeyDingus 2 months ago

Rapid-Fire Pre-iPhone Event Thoughts

Can I publish this in the 4 minutes before the keynote starts?? 1 Apple Watch Alright, here comes Tim Cook “ on stage”. Let’s go. It turns out no, I couldn’t. Published at 1:02pm. ↩︎ HeyDingus is a blog by Jarrod Blundy about technology, the great outdoors, and other musings. If you like what you see — the blog posts , shortcuts , wallpapers , scripts , or anything — please consider leaving a tip , checking out my store , or just sharing my work. Your support is much appreciated! I’m always happy to hear from you on social , or by good ol' email . I went way too low on device storage space last year, so I’m definitely buying a new phone this year I’m using my camera for work more than ever, so I’m probably going to go with an iPhone Pro, but I’m not psyched about a bigger screen or heavier device. Hopefully, they’ve gone back to aluminum, as rumored. We’ll see what it actually looks like, but the iPhone Pro’s rumored camera bar that retains the tripod of camera lenses on one side looks goofy to me. I expect it’s retaining that design so it can continue to do Spatial Videos. I’ll be tempted by the iPhone Air, I’m sure, but battery life and camera performance are huge deals for me. And I’m more interested in a thin folding phone — next year? Come on, Orange!! Please be a new Ultra 3! My Ultra 1’s battery life is not so good, and I’m also hoping for improvements in GPS sensitivity and cellular connection. A better chip would be great too — the Ultra 1 is a little sluggish these days. Could we see more happening with Double Tap? The more I can operate my watch without using the other hand would be great. AirPods Pro 3 are due, but they’re not for me. I can’t do the soft tips. Still really happy with my AirPods 4 with ANC . It turns out no, I couldn’t. Published at 1:02pm. ↩︎

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Peter Steinberger 4 months ago

Logging Privacy Shenanigans

Apple's logs redact your debugging data as . Here's what actually gets hidden, why old tricks don't work anymore, and the only reliable way to see your logs again.

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HeyDingus 4 months ago

Upgraded Introduces an iPad Pro Upgrade Program That Beats Apple’s Own Prices

Fans of Apple’s iPhone Upgrade Program — the one where you pay monthly for an iPhone and have the opportunity to upgrade to a new model after a given number of payments — rejoice! You can now get a similar deal for an iPad Pro. And when I say “ deal”, I really mean it. More on that in a bit. You might remember the folks at Upgraded have offered a MacBook Upgrade Program for a while now. I used it to purchase this very M4 MacBook Air that I’m typing to you on, and have been super happy with the experience. Their website is crazy-easy to use, setting up the loan very quick, and AppleCare+ is included. People who like to be on the cutting edge have been asking for Apple to offer this kind of program for products other than the iPhone for years. Upgraded beat them to it for the Mac. And now they have expanded their lineup to include the iPad Pro, lapping Apple in their own game! Here’s how it works, according to their emailed announcement: Right now, it’s just the iPad Pro models — but the experience works just like our MacBook program. Seamless, flexible, and future-ready. […] Buying an iPad Pro with us is just like buying a MacBook: I mentioned that the program is great for folks who want the latest and greatest, but I think it’s equally appealing to anyone who wants or needs to pay off their gadgets over time. If you’re happy with your iPad after two years, just hang onto it, pay it off, and it’s yours to keep! Yep! Crazy, right? But here is is in black and white: iPad Pro, 11-inch, Wi-Fi, 256GB , Space Black As you can see, Upgraded has Apple beat by about $150. How? I’m not sure. But I think it’s because they lined all of this up before Apple’s recent reshuffle of AppleCare+ . I heard that Apple’s monthly and annual pricing went up as they eliminated any AppleCare without Theft & Loss Protection. And I think you used to be able to buy AppleCare for iPads with a one-time payment for a set period (two years?). But that’s no longer an option. It’s now monthly, yearly, or bust. Even if Upgraded’s AppleCare coverage is only for two years — when you can swap to a new model — instead of three, they’ve still got Apple beat by $50. Now, for my MacBook Air purchased through Upgraded, I make monthly payments with 0% interest. That interest rate depends on how Affirm, which manages the loan, judges your credit, so I can’t guarantee that you’ll get that same rate. It may not be as worthwhile if you’re paying a higher interest rate. I don’t link raising my personal debt ceiling, so I probably wouldn’t have sprung for the deal if I was paying extra in interest. But it is absolutely possible to not pay any extra, and in fact pay less than what Apple charges, and have the opportunity to easily upgrade to a newer model in a couple of years. I expect Upgraded will have their hands full for a while expanding to include Mac desktops and other iPad models. But I think they’ve started with the right products. But what do I want them to offer next? First of all, the iPhone. I’m not on one of the major cellular carriers, which means I can’t get a phone through Apple’s iPhone Upgrade Program. So, personally, I’d be geeked if Upgraded could offer iPhones on their upgrade program. I kind of doubt it since they’re not a carrier, but maybe! Next on my list would be the Apple Watch. It’s the only other bit of tech that I feel compelled to upgrade every few years, if just for the battery life improvements and additional sensors they keep packing into newer models. My original Apple Watch Ultra is showing its age, and I’m excited to upgrade it this year. If I could do so at a flat, monthly rate and know that I could easily swap it out for a new one again in a few years if I wanted to, I’d definitely jump on board. Fingers crossed. I don’t have any sort of official affiliation with Upgraded, but they did offer me a one-time discount on my MacBook Air purchase earlier this year. It was unprompted, and basically done as a thank you for all the customers I had sent their way after I first wrote about them last year. I probably would have purchased my MacBook through Upgraded even without the discount just so I could pay it off over time. And now that I’ve actually tried their service, I can wholeheartedly recommend it. HeyDingus is a blog by Jarrod Blundy about technology, the great outdoors, and other musings. If you like what you see — the blog posts , shortcuts , wallpapers , scripts , or anything — please consider leaving a tip , checking out my store , or just sharing my work. Your support is much appreciated! I’m always happy to hear from you on social , or by good ol' email . Pay monthly over 36 months. Plans start at $31.89/month for the 11-inch, or $40.78/month for the 13-inch. After 24 payments, you can upgrade to a new model or finish the last 12 payments to pay it off. If you upgrade, we’ll send a prepaid return box. Just transfer your data, send the old iPad back, and we’ll refurbish it for its next life. Upgraded : $999 for the iPad + $149 one-time payment for AppleCare+ = $1148 Apple : $999 for the iPad + $99.99/year for AppleCare+ (3 years for $299.97) = $1298.97

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HeyDingus 4 months ago

7 Things This Week [#177]

A weekly list of interesting things I found on the internet, posted on Sundays. Sometimes themed, often not. 1️⃣ Got a move streak mix up on your Apple Watch where the gadget thinks you missed a day, but you haven’t? There is a fix! (Related: my stand goal cheater shortcut .) [ 🔗 sixcolors.com ] 2️⃣ New CGP Grey video! I know feel so much smarter about zip codes, and also sad that we don’t use Ireland’s system. [ ▶️ youtube.com ] 3️⃣ Stephen Robles wrote about his journey as a creator, which culminated recently in being invited to WWDC . It’s quite touching. [ 🔗 beard.fm ] 4️⃣ There are so many cool new things and improvements in visionOS 26! This newsletter/blog is the best aggregation of all things Vision Pro (though it’s a little disappointing that almost all the sources are from X). [ 🔗 lastweekinavp.substack.com ] 5️⃣ TIL that there are things such as Nest Rafts to provide a place for loons to nest. [ 🔗 adirondackexplorer.org ] 6️⃣ Rafa retrofit an Opal webcam’s guts into an old Apple iSight camera body and it looks awesome!! Ship it! [ 🦣 mastodon.design ] 7️⃣ Matt Birchler did a little digging into ChatGPT’s alleged gender bias and came away with some optimism. [ 🔗 birchtree.me ] Thanks for reading 7 Things . If you enjoyed these links or have something neat to share, please let me know . And remember that you can get more links to internet nuggets that I’m finding every day by following me @jarrod on the social web. HeyDingus is a blog by Jarrod Blundy about technology, the great outdoors, and other musings. If you like what you see — the blog posts , shortcuts , wallpapers , scripts , or anything — please consider leaving a tip , checking out my store , or just sharing my work. Your support is much appreciated! I’m always happy to hear from you on social , or by good ol' email .

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The Jolly Teapot 4 months ago

Could I use the internet without a proper web browser?

After questioning my usage of Safari and wanting to stop using it , it remained my main browser, despite its flaws, including the lack of options when it comes to default search engines. 1 Before accepting my fate as a Safari user, I had tried other browsers. Because I still refuse to consider a Chromium-based browser, even if their legacy as battery hogs on the Mac may not be a thing anymore, my only real options were Firefox (or Firefox-based browsers like Zen Browser ) and Kagi’s Orion , which is the only browser based on WebKit that is not Safari (I think). These attempts at switching from Safari, while encouraging at first ( uBlock Origin in particular is a great content blocker), didn’t work out for various reasons that I may get into in a future post. On the iPhone, Quiche Browser was very close to succeeding, but as long as it’s not also available on the Mac , I stick with Safari. 2 At first, I believed that my main frustration with these browsers was due to a lack of habits, that I needed to be a little bit more patient and, more importantly, indulgent, before being able to adopt them and replace Safari. Why expect perfection from other browsers when fewer flaws would still be an improvement? But I was wrong. The issue with these alternative browsers was not that I’m too used to Safari; the issue was that they are just web browsers, all frustrating by essence. To quote Laura June from back in the golden days of Twitter, “ Tip @Techmeme every browser is a piece of shit. ” (this tweet is now long gone) This is when I realised that the best web browser I could use, the one that would annoy me the least, would actually be the one I barely touch. The web browser is my most-used app, whether it’s on my laptop or my phone, so how could I “barely touch” the web browser? How would this all work in this alternate dimension? Well, I’m glad you asked. Let’s fall into the rabbit hole of how I would use a computer without a main browser, and consider the current use cases: Favourite sites : Visiting homepages daily Default link opener : Opening links from other apps (default browser) Bookmark management / reader : Reading, watching, and organising URLs Search engines : Helping me find answers RSS is great for many things, and I use it for something like 150 websites, but for daily news, it can be a bit noisy. For instance, the Guardian’s RSS feed would completely submerge all my other feeds, and I think that chronological news only makes sense in some contexts. A curated and well-organised homepage is a great way to solve this problem: the most important news of the day is near the top of the page, other news is organised by category, etc. Therefore, some bookmarks live on my new tab page for quick and frequent access to some of these homepages. That use case alone would make the web browser a central app, right? Well, it turns out that for these websites that publish a lot of daily articles, there is a pretty great alternative to their website homepage, one that even has the word “news” in its name: the newsletter. If I replace my news homepages with curated newsletters from the same publishers, I could, in theory, not need to use a browser to access curated, hierarchical news. 3 On top of these daily or weekly newsletters, I guess I could also use dedicated mobile apps or Safari’s web app, where I can add the site to the dock and forget that there is an actual browser behind the site. I could also subscribe to some of these newsletters via RSS, which would make my RSS reader my main and most-used app to use the web. Both solutions would be easy to adopt, but I would miss having easy and fast access to the URL bar by pressing or Command + L or T. Emails, web apps, and RSS feeds are all very good, but what happens when I click a link from a message, an email, or an RSS item? What happens when I need to type a URL? I thought about this, and for this use case, I guess MacOS’s useful LookUp feature — the little “web view” that can be activated by tapping a link with three fingers — could work; too bad it can’t be more easily customised and the window size seems doomed to be too small. I can always use a minimal browser specially set up exclusively for these use cases and define it as the default browser of the system. This browser would maybe have some sort of reader mode activated by default, or JavaScript disabled . In fact, it would be more like a “web reader” or “web player” than a web browser . To keep this minimal browser out of view (no icon kept on the dock), typing and opening URLs would be done via apps like Alfred or Raycast , or the upcoming version of Spotlight . For managing bookmarks and even reading some articles directly, an app like GoodLinks would be my obvious solution: I can add a link to it from basically anywhere there is a share menu. For articles I know I will want to read later, I wouldn’t even need to open the default browser before saving it to GoodLinks: I could do it right from an email or truncated RSS item. For saved links that wouldn’t display well in GoodLinks’ reader view, the minimal default browser would come in handy, or even better, I could switch to a more powerful app like EagleFiler and save links in the Web Archive format. For things like video streaming, I still wish some of the platforms would at least offer an app like Apple TV, but I guess the Safari web app solution could be good for sites like Netflix, Crunchyroll, or YouTube (which would make it interesting privacy-wise too, as Safari web apps have a separate set of cookies). Searching outside the web browser would, for example, mean using the ChatGPT Mac app, which is pretty decent as a Mac app, or an app Sindre Sorhus’ QuickGPT . And just like that, an “answering machine” would replace the traditional web browser for most, if not all, search requests. I know an increasingly large number of people around me add an A.I. app to their homescreen, which wasn’t really the case just a few months ago. 4 And it works great, at least for the users. Still, I don’t want to do that just yet and let go of going to traditional search engine result pages, mostly because this is how I have experimented and loved the web for… check notes … decades. Also, there is an ethical aspect that is increasingly hard to ignore with A.I., especially for web search. Mathew Ingram recently published a great and well-documented recap of the current situation. On one side, A.I. companies are raising unprecedented amounts of funding to build their products. On the other, they charge users monthly subscriptions to use these products. Yet no one is paying for the source materials used to build these products, let alone asking where they come from or whether the extraction process might harm the source of said materials. To me, it feels more or less like a colonisation of the web. An A.I. company arrives in a place it doesn’t own and where it wasn’t invited (scraping the web without asking if it’s OK to do so). They exercise total disdain for the local population and culture (stealing copyrighted works of art, putting pressure on third-party servers , with no financial compensation whatsoever, let alone offering a convenient way to opt out). They exploit available resources thanks to their wealth and power (building LLMs with huge data centres and resources). In the case of the web specifically, they do so without caring about the impact. They may very well leave ruins behind, and they know it, whether they are ruins of business models or culture, but they just care about growth and revenue. Never mind that, in doing so, they make producing the original building material worthless, or at least far less valuable. 5 They justify their actions by saying they are improving the quality of life and basically stating that this is somehow the march of civilisation (so maybe instead of complaining and sounding the alarm we should help building an AGI, worship, and applaud). Obviously, in this exaggerated view, things are looking quite bad: we can argue that this is how capitalism is supposed to work, which certainly doesn’t mean that everything is right and fair. While I agree that copyright can’t really work in the case of A.I. training, there must be some kind of compensation for authors or a better way to credit the source. But despite the limitless amounts of money at their disposal, none of these companies have found a solution to this serious problem, nor even see this as a problem. This is why, for now, as long as this view lives rent-free in my mind, I’m not very keen on embracing A.I. search for the web. Proofreading, outlining, brainstorming: these activities are not really threatening the already sick and tired link economy and business models of most publishers. But search? It doesn’t feel right, not only in the deprivation of traffic this generates, but even as a web enthusiast, I don’t find this use of A.I. particularly appealing. It feels like using a service like ChatGPT or Mistral’s Le Chat for web searches would be like travelling the world and only eating food from the hotel because it’s more convenient. The same goes for A.I. results inside Google. I’m obviously even less interested in using or even considering A.I.-focused web browsers like Comet or Dia , arguably the most up-yours move an A.I. company could make to the web it took so much away from. It is also true that as long as Safari forces me to use either Google or Bing-based shitty search engines (sorry DuckDuckGo ), I am more and more reluctant to engage in traditional search, and using a dedicated A.I. shortcut or app to start these searches instead of my web browser has never been so tempting. 6 Why am I getting so worked up about A.I. and search? After all, the web won’t disappear, just like print didn’t disappear when radio or TV arrived. It did take a big hit though, and changed forever. I guess the web too will evolve and morph into something new. Maybe for the better. Maybe for the worse. Because A.I. search is increasingly replacing traditional search, most of the web we know today will disappear faster than previously expected. Good riddance I might say for a lot of it. If these A.I. “portals” and new “search answers” end up killing the mafia-like SEO industry, I’ll raise my glass to that. A lot of websites are awful and already doomed anyway, so why care so much about how the web could change? Because a lot of the good websites risk disappearing too, or never getting started in the first place. Even if many publishers succeed at monetising without any search traffic, as they should, I think this will impact everyone indirectly. Behaviours change and internet users will end up spending less time browsing the web than they previously did, replacing some of that time with consuming its essence without actually visiting websites or subscribing to a new publication. Manu published this beautiful quote this week, which reminded me why the web is so fun: The internet is not kinda shit right now. Not even in the slightest. The internet was and still is a fucking awesome and magical place. It’s a place where you can browse thousands of blogs. It’s a place where you can press the button and get a useless website. It’s the place where you can admire rotating sandwiches or stare at a random park for a minute. A.I. answers may very well feel magical on their own, but they won’t be able to provide this experience. This is why this “colonisation of the web” is worrying, because there is so much to enjoy and so much to lose. The upcoming lack of visibility and discoverability plague that will eventually kill a lot of publications and ideas, sadly, won’t differentiate between good or bad websites. 7 Right, where was I? Ah yes, could I use the internet without a proper web browser? Imagining a hypothetical computer behaviour without the traditional use of the web browser raises a lot of questions in my head, as you can see. In theory, my plan of circumventing its central position could work, even if it would require some effort, some of which I will probably never consider. So yes, I could, but no, I won’t. I already enjoy a good chunk of the web without needing Safari, with my RSS reader, my email app, and my read-later app, all providing a fantastic experience for what they do. I can’t say the same about Safari, or any other web browser. But I still need it, and, in many ways, I somehow still like it. Will we soon access the web like we currently access email, meaning mainly not via a dedicated app but via an app that does other things? Like using an A.I. first app to search the web, just like we use the web browser for accessing email. Or starting the default system app that we don’t use that much, but works fine for that one time we have to do something specific, like using Apple Mail to send a non-professional email. Or was it the plan all along? This would certainly explain the neglect Safari has had to endure in recent years . Using a dedicated A.I. app to search the web, or the Google app for instance, if search results don’t point to actual web pages (or barely so), could mean that browsers as we know them are doomed to change, and living their final years. I think that Safari’s UI on iOS 26 will be added to the flaw list, and the Liquid Glass look isn’t helping. ↩︎ Sidenote: I find the JavaScript block/unblock options from Quiche Browser and Orion Browser very counter-intuitive when used next to content blockers: You have to enable content blockers but disable JavaScript to have a webpage with more things “blocked.” I wish the setting for JavaScript was called “JavaScript blocker” so it would share the same logic as regular content blockers. Jeff Johnson’s StopTheScript works like that, but the fact that JS can’t be reactivated via the toolbar extension button makes it harder to use on a daily basis. ↩︎ Turns out emails are pretty good “webpages”: no JavaScript, no annoying modal ads, just plain HTML and a little CSS; can the ideal web now only be accessed with email apps? ↩︎ This is not a drastic shift: before this A.I. era, many people used the Google app for search on their phone and not a web browser. A surprisingly large number of them would even answer “Google” when asked what browser they use, and would never access a URL directly via the address bar, typing the domain name of the site in Google instead. ↩︎ That’s why we can ask ourselves: If the websites they scrape can’t pay their bills anymore because A.I. is eating up most of their traffic and therefore their advertising money, what will they end up scraping? ↩︎ Kagi is by far the best of the traditional search engines, but I find that the price is too high, so I keep on cancelling and resubscribing a few weeks later. ↩︎ I also hope that other companies will copy the recently announced Cloudflare feature . This feature leaves a lot of unanswered questions, but I think it could help a few publishers. It shouldn’t become another way for Cloudflare to concentrate even more power over the internet, and this kind of feature hopefully won’t create a new class of gatekeepers. Maybe this feature will solve a lot of problems, maybe it is already too late. Perhaps a few publications can last a little longer thanks to this technology, namely those too small to negotiate directly with A.I. companies (which I also find to be pretty dumb, like “peeing in your pants for warmth in winter” ). By the way, all these upcoming negotiations, prices, and transactions around this technology should already be a concern for institutions like the European Commission, so hopefully they won't pass a new law four or five years from now when it’s far too little too late. ↩︎ Favourite sites : Visiting homepages daily Default link opener : Opening links from other apps (default browser) Bookmark management / reader : Reading, watching, and organising URLs Search engines : Helping me find answers An A.I. company arrives in a place it doesn’t own and where it wasn’t invited (scraping the web without asking if it’s OK to do so). They exercise total disdain for the local population and culture (stealing copyrighted works of art, putting pressure on third-party servers , with no financial compensation whatsoever, let alone offering a convenient way to opt out). They exploit available resources thanks to their wealth and power (building LLMs with huge data centres and resources). In the case of the web specifically, they do so without caring about the impact. They may very well leave ruins behind, and they know it, whether they are ruins of business models or culture, but they just care about growth and revenue. Never mind that, in doing so, they make producing the original building material worthless, or at least far less valuable. 5 They justify their actions by saying they are improving the quality of life and basically stating that this is somehow the march of civilisation (so maybe instead of complaining and sounding the alarm we should help building an AGI, worship, and applaud). I think that Safari’s UI on iOS 26 will be added to the flaw list, and the Liquid Glass look isn’t helping. ↩︎ Sidenote: I find the JavaScript block/unblock options from Quiche Browser and Orion Browser very counter-intuitive when used next to content blockers: You have to enable content blockers but disable JavaScript to have a webpage with more things “blocked.” I wish the setting for JavaScript was called “JavaScript blocker” so it would share the same logic as regular content blockers. Jeff Johnson’s StopTheScript works like that, but the fact that JS can’t be reactivated via the toolbar extension button makes it harder to use on a daily basis. ↩︎ Turns out emails are pretty good “webpages”: no JavaScript, no annoying modal ads, just plain HTML and a little CSS; can the ideal web now only be accessed with email apps? ↩︎ This is not a drastic shift: before this A.I. era, many people used the Google app for search on their phone and not a web browser. A surprisingly large number of them would even answer “Google” when asked what browser they use, and would never access a URL directly via the address bar, typing the domain name of the site in Google instead. ↩︎ That’s why we can ask ourselves: If the websites they scrape can’t pay their bills anymore because A.I. is eating up most of their traffic and therefore their advertising money, what will they end up scraping? ↩︎ Kagi is by far the best of the traditional search engines, but I find that the price is too high, so I keep on cancelling and resubscribing a few weeks later. ↩︎ I also hope that other companies will copy the recently announced Cloudflare feature . This feature leaves a lot of unanswered questions, but I think it could help a few publishers. It shouldn’t become another way for Cloudflare to concentrate even more power over the internet, and this kind of feature hopefully won’t create a new class of gatekeepers. Maybe this feature will solve a lot of problems, maybe it is already too late. Perhaps a few publications can last a little longer thanks to this technology, namely those too small to negotiate directly with A.I. companies (which I also find to be pretty dumb, like “peeing in your pants for warmth in winter” ). By the way, all these upcoming negotiations, prices, and transactions around this technology should already be a concern for institutions like the European Commission, so hopefully they won't pass a new law four or five years from now when it’s far too little too late. ↩︎

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xenodium 5 months ago

Mochi Invaders now on the App Store

As a beginner learner of Japanese, I still need regular practice reading Kana ( Hiragana and Katakana ). Rather than using one of the countless existing resources, I decided to build my own little Space-Invaders-style game. No doubt I was procrastinating, but learning SpriteKit and building the app involved a fair bit of app testing, so I ended up learning while erm procrastinating. That's a win, right? Right? As of today Mochi Invaders is available on the App Store.

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xenodium 5 months ago

Markdown is coming to Journelly

When Journelly launched , I asked users to get in touch if they were interested in Markdown support. Since then, Markdown has by far been the most requested feature. Today, I’m excited to share that Journelly beta builds now include initial Markdown support! If you’ve been in touch, you likely already have access. If not, let me know you’re interested . Journelly still defaults to Org as its preferred markup, but you can now switch to Markdown from the welcome screen or the menu. While Org is my own markup of choice, it remains fairly niche. As I work to build a sustainable iOS app as a full-time indie developer, I need to reach a wider audience, without resorting to subscriptions. Luckily, I think we can have our cake and eat it too. Here's how I see Journelly's audience breaking down: This has always been Journelly’s main goal. I've worked hard to keep the serialization format in the background, focusing instead on delivering a smooth, friction-free experience. The primary goal: just write. I think this is working well. Ellane 's post sums it up: Journelly is the iOS Org App You’ll Love (Even if You Don’t Do Org) . If you just want a quick way to take notes or journal privately, Journelly already offers that. Adding quick notes, ideas, recipes, checklists, music, links, etc. is really easy and fast even if you don't do org ( Brandon says so too ). I got this one pretty well-covered also. I'm an Emacs org mode enthusiast myself and regularly share my Journelly entries between my iPhone and Mac . You don't need to take my word for it though. jcs is a seasoned Emacs enthusiast. From Irreal, he's covered Journelly pretty well . While journelly.com quotes and links to posts from happy users, I've been collecting posts from different users. I should share a post with all of them too! Which brings me back to this post: there are a lot of Markdown users out there. While Journelly’s UX has caught the interest of some Markdown fans, many prefer to stick with their favorite format. Your interest was heard! I did say, the more requests I get, the sooner I'll get Markdown support out the door , and so here we are. You can now try Markdown support via TestFlight. I look forward to your feedback. New to Journelly and want to join the Markdown beta? Get in touch.

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xenodium 5 months ago

Journelly 1.2 released

Journelly v1.2 focuses exclusively on improving app accessibility. In particular: Huge thanks to Yvonne Thompson for all her help shaping this release. VoiceOver support is in way better shape as a result. Journelly 1.2 available on the App Store Journelly feels like tweeting but for your eyes only. A fresh take on frictionless note-taking for iOS, powered by Org plain text. Check out journelly.com for details. Improved VoiceOver navigation and general app experience. Improved edit layout when "Settings > Accessibility > Display & Text Size > Button Shapes" is enabled. Save cooking recipes, movies, music, restaurants, coffee shops… Jot down your thoughts. Save your favorite quotes. Use it as a journal, memo book, or notes. Write your shopping lists. Document your travels.

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xenodium 6 months ago

Ranking Officer now on the App Store

With a handful of apps on the App Store, I like to keep an eye on their rankings and user reviews from around the world. I don't need much. Just a quick glance. A few of weeks ago, it just dawned on me that my Mac's status bar is likely the perfect place to keep this glanceable information handy. And with that, I built Ranking Officer. A little utility to do just that. I wasn't too sure if this app would make it to the App Store. To my delight, Apple reviewed and accepted on its first submission. As of today, you can install Ranking Officer from the App Store. You can now stay up to date on your app’s rankings and user reviews from around the world, right from your Mac's status bar. Just add your apps using their App Store URLs and get tracking. Get the latest ranking and review data, updated every hour. Monitor as many apps as you like (there’s no limit). No login or personal details required. No subscription necessary.

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xenodium 6 months ago

Journelly 1.1 released

Journelly 1.1 available on the App Store Journelly feels like tweeting but for your eyes only. A fresh take on frictionless note-taking for iOS, powered by Org plain text. Check out journelly.com for details. Journelly v1.1 is the first release since launching . It adds support for 10 new languages and delivers the first round of feature requests and bug fixes. Just as I'm getting ready to announce Journelly's 1.1 release, Ellane (from ellanew.com ) shared a wonderful blog post on her experience using version 1.0: Journelly is the Org App You’ll Love (Even if You Don’t Do Org) . I'm particulary excited to hear from Ellane given her Plain Text; Paper, Less philosophy. "It’s the perfect mix of simplicity and low-tech plain text wizardry" "It takes a very particular set of features for a new app to impress me enough to hit the purchase button as fast as I did with Journelly." "Journelly is the first Org-powered app I’ve seen that lays out the welcome mat for people who don’t even know what Org is, never mind how to use it." As an org mode enthusiast myself, I'm delighted to hear Journelly is paving a gentle road for org newcomers. Ellane's post also has a great list of features requests. Lucky for me, I can report at least two of them are covered by today's release: Be sure to check out Ellane's post , as she covers many details I'm not mentioning here. But lemme share one last tip I learned from her post today… Today I learned something new from Ellane’s post : you can Control-click the Journelly iCloud Drive folder on your Mac and select "Keep Downloaded" to ensure your notes are always available offline. Super handy, specially for those of us using Emacs on macOS. Currently, Journelly stores entries in Org plain text format, but Markdown support is on the way. Interested in Markdown? Please reach out . Early support is already available on beta builds. Lemme know if you'd like to join the TestFlight group. On the topic of Markdown: I also run lmno.lol , a Markdown-powered blogging service. Simple and focused, without the frustrating parts of the modern web. Custom domains are welcome too! My xenodium.com blog runs off lmno.lol . Save cooking recipes, movies, music, restaurants, coffee shops… Jot down your thoughts. Save your favorite quotes. Use it as a journal, memo book, or notes. Write your shopping lists. Document your travels. New languages: Danish Easily add hashtags using the new picker (most requested feature). Hashtags are now highlighted in the editor. Automatically capture selected text in Safari. Paste images directly from the clipboard. Tap on email addresses to compose a new message. New context menu options: Set location as Home. Open location in Maps. iPad keyboard shortcuts ⌘-N Create a new Entry ⌘-S Save the current Entry ↑/↓ Select entry in list ↵ Edit selected entry Uses the full date format based on your locale. Prevents the Esc key from discarding unsaved changes. Resolves incorrect link icon colors in Light Mode. The About screen is now available on fresh installs. Fixes issue where the navigation bar became inaccessible when viewing markup. Locations are now only clickable when valid coordinates are available. The new hashtag picker. Pasting images from the clipboard.

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Kaushik Gopal 11 months ago

How to make the iPhone Continuity Camera work properly in Chrome

I use a pixel as my primary android phone. But as a mobile developer, I also keep an iPhone handy for those times I need to test how an app works on iOS (especially if it’s not available on Android 1 ). But my iPhone doesn’t sit in a drawer unused. It doubles up as my webcam when not being used as a phone. This is possible because I use macOS for my primary desktop needs, and this wonderful feature it enables called “Continuity Camera”. I’ve removed a webcam from my setup thanks to this, and the camera actually works much better than most webcams out there today. But there’s one really annoying thing about this setup. It won’t be recognized in Google Meet when using a chromium browser. Searching on Reddit points out that this is a bizzarre known security requirement for chromium browsers alone. Your iPhone needs: But works like a charm. So if you run into this issue, fix those things and it’ll all work like a charm. thinking about you Flighty .  ↩︎ to be in landscape mode (so don’t have portrait lock on) have the screen turned off to be locked motionless (so won’t work if handheld) and have an unobstructed camera thinking about you Flighty .  ↩︎

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Carlos Becker 1 years ago

I love Continuity Camera, I hate Continuity Camera

Continuity Camera is the macOS feature that allows to use an iPhone as a webcam.

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Kix Panganiban 1 years ago

A Brief Review of the Clicks Keyboard for iPhone

I’m a fan of Michael Fisher, aka Mr Mobile. So when he announced his new product Clicks - I knew I just had to get one. Who isn’t nostalgic of old-school physical QWERTY keyboards? I was pretty convinced that a physical keyboard will improve my typing experience on mobile, and perhaps even increase my productivity on the go (which mostly means being able to respond to Slack and emails faster). After a week of using Clicks, my typing experience didn’t actually improve. In fact, it got so bad that I was typing so much slower now and I hated having to type on the keyboard. I wanted to give Clicks the benefit of the doubt, so I soldiered on for a few more days, but it was just bad. Here’s why I think we should just let this product die: On the upside: the build quality is pretty good, the usual iOS keyboard shortcuts work really well, and all the keys (including volume switches, action button, and power) are, well, clicky. Definitely not worth the $139 asking price though. For $30, maybe. On-screen keyboards have gotten so good after generations of optimization that moving to a miniature physical keyboard is disorienting, especially when you lose the predictive abilities of touch keyboards. Because touch keyboards have a tolerance for inaccuracy and lack of precision, they usually can predict which letter you are likely to tap on next based on what you’re spelling out - and as a result you can often type clumsily and still write pretty well. A physical keyboard has no such tolerances. I have to be precise all the time. And with the size of the keys on the Clicks (relative to the size of the keys on the touch keyboard), I have to be very precise - and my chubby fingers just lack that kind of dexterity. The new center of mass means I have to “cradle” your phone so that it doesn’t fall off while you’re using it. They even have this Getting Started guide on how you should hold the thing, because the ergonomics are extremely different and one-handed typing is no longer a thing. I find that my fingers get tired very quickly and often cramp, so I can’t use my phone long enough to actually get anything productive done. The keyboard layout is bizarre. The return key is right where I expect delete/backspace to be on the touch keyboard, so I often accidentally send messages while I’m in the middle of typing. Sure, I now have more screen real estate, but it also means that I have to travel across the Atlantic just to be able to swipe down and access the control center or my notifications. Magsafe is gone. So goodbye to my convenient Magsafe car mount and chargers. None of my USB-C accessories work anymore. The passthrough USB-C port on the Clicks seems to be implemented as a terminal device instead of a USB hub, so my portable audio dongles, drone controllers, and microphones no longer work. I can’t really type emojis on this thing, which have become a big part of my vernacular. Not a lot of apps actually support CMD + shortcuts, so web browsing by spamming the space bar is only workable if you’re on Safari.

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NorikiTech 4 years ago

AppForce1 podcast special

Jeroen Leenarts, the host of the AppForce1 podcast , invited me to record a special episode in early November, while I was still writing my book. We recorded the interview in late December 2020, when the book just came out, and Jeroen published the episode (after much editing —sorry!) in late January 2021. That was a long wait! You can listen to this special episode on BuzzSprout and hey, while you’re at it, consider subscribing to Jeroen’s podcast (if you’re into this sort of thing). I don’t listen to podcasts, but Jeroen has interviewed some big names in iOS, and the interviews are fun and personal. As I said, I don’t listen to podcasts, so I made a transcript for all you nerds who don’t either. Jeroen : [00:55] Hi and welcome to another special edition of my podcast. I’m here with Yuri Karabatov. Yuri is an iOS software developer, and he has been working with Babylon Health. And before that, he was developing at TAOlight and Ungert Design. He’s been organizing developer meetups in Moscow as well. And he wrote the book “ Junior to Senior .” Hi Yuri, how are you doing? Yuri : [01:18] I’m doing fine. I just launched my book :) Jeroen : [01:21] How did the launch go? I think you’re still in the soft launch phase. You just wanted to get it out and still needed to do some marketing. But the initial impressions, how does it go? Yuri : [01:32] Yeah, as you’re saying, it is basically in soft launch because my main goal for writing the book was to finish it. I never had any big writing projects before, and it was basically an experiment for me to see if I can make it. Even halfway through writing I wasn’t sure that it’s going to turn out well. And because of the soft launch, I still don’t have any substantial reviews yet. I’m selling the book through Gumroad and I have a few five star ratings there, but I didn’t yet get any reviews that go into detail on the book. The timeframe was compressed because I only had one and a half months to finish the book. Even a bit less than that, so five or six weeks—six weeks. (If you’re curious, I wrote a huge post that goes into (excruciating) detail on why and how I wrote “Junior to Senior.”) Jeroen : [02:35] What made you decide that you wanted to write a book actually, or at least try to write a book because you said it was a big experiment? Yuri : [02:42] Since I’ve left my previous job at Babylon Health, I’m on a sabbatical, so to say. So right now I am free to do something else and I decided to use that time first to see if I had something worth sharing with other people. Well, I am a developer. I know I can write code and I have some projects that are on and off that I’m working on right now. But I wanted to do something different and find if I had something to share that came from my own experience, and that for which I didn’t need to look for any references or to do much research. If you know, there’s Daniel Vassallo (who is also working for Gumroad now) who has become recently popular on Twitter with his idea of making small bets—basically, publishing something quickly and seeing how it does, and iterating based on that. In one of his tweets , he said that your first product might be something that you can produce really quickly from your own experience. It should feel as if you’re writing it without the need to do any research, it should come easily. And I decided to look for something like that also because I wanted to practice writing. It’s a bit complicated, why exactly I decided to write a book, honestly, because it’s all about experimenting. Jeroen : [04:43] If you look at the book, it’s called “ Junior to Senior: How to Level Up as a Software Engineer .” On the product page , you state that you have written this book after being a software developer for ten years. And you wanted to write a book that you wish you had at the beginning of your own development career. That sounds like you have a sort of archetype reader in mind of your book. So can you tell a bit about who you have written this book for? Yuri : [05:17] Pretty much I had in mind a few of my friends who are self-taught young engineers. There are some actual people whom I’ve written this book for. In them, I see myself a few years ago when I was just starting in the software development career. Jeroen : [05:43] You’ve been a systems administrator before you became a software developer. When did you start working, what year was that? Yuri : [05:50] I don’t have a degree, partly just because I didn’t finish university, but I studied for four years at two different universities. In the end, I moved to another city for a job and I never finished studying so I didn’t get my degree. I started working at 16 when I just entered my first university where I studied physics, and I started working basically as an IT support engineer. I’ve been working there while I’ve been studying. I started working in 2004, I think, and when I left in 2008, it was for a job as a systems administrator. After that, I kept working as a systems administrator. But I decided to become a software engineer because I knew that I had to grow my career, and a “default” systems administrator is a very office-based role, like, you know, there are DevOps who manage the clouds, and then there are the sysadmins who are local to the office. So I was the second one. Jeroen : [07:32] You have to have the hands on the machines to actually be able to support them. Yuri : [07:35] Yeah, yeah, exactly. It was fun. I liked it because my core skill is solving problems, and being a sysadmin is solving problems all day. So that was fun, and I like working with hardware. But at that point I had a choice either to become a DevOps (yes, I know “DevOps” is not a role ) or become a software engineer. And I chose to be a software engineer. Jeroen : [08:09] So then what did you need to do? Because you were a systems administrator, you are familiar with computers, but software has to be written, so you need to do programming. As a systems administrator you of course do some scripting to automate installation processes. So was it a big leap for you to switch from systems administration to software development? Yuri : [08:32] Yeah, that was a bit complicated. I never—well, I did program a little bit at the university. I even went to the ACM programming competition , if you know that. So I did some programming, some competitive programming at the university, but I never worked as a programmer after that. I chose iOS because at that time I bought a Mac, I liked how it worked. I liked iPhones, basically, so I decided why not? It could be a good starting point since iPhone apps were something that you could touch. It’s a very attractive notion to create something that you can interact with. I started to learn iOS development through the Stanford course . I did a lot of false starts, I guess. I worked on my own app for a while. Then by chance I found a designer who wanted someone to implement an app that he designed. It was a passion project, it was not freelancing, so we decided to try it out. We never finished it in the end, but both of us have got some experience. And after that, I was at a level where I was able to find actual work through a friend. Well, after that, I kept working already full time. Jeroen : [10:18] What I find interesting, if I look at your résumé , is that you spent a large amount of time in Russia, in Moscow, but then there’s Ungert Design in Hong Kong. Yuri : [10:33] Oh, that was a really fun story. My work history is just all over the place, really. Jeroen : [10:40] Quite literally. But how did you end up in Hong Kong then? Yuri : [10:46] The thing is, all this time I’ve been working remotely. After I had a brief stint as a web analyst doing Google Analytics and writing JavaScript for different people as a freelancer, I worked again as a sysadmin for a while when I started learning iOS development. And then I worked as an iOS engineer at a friend’s company, but remotely. Jeroen : [11:20] You mentioned that you wanted to get out of systems administration because you are tied to an office building, really. So the move away from systems administration was also to be able to work remotely? That was something that was sort of mandatory when you would work for someone, or how did that work? Yuri : [11:38] What happened was we moved out with my wife into the suburbs. So going to Moscow into an office required traveling for one and a half or two hours one way, and working at an office was just impossible with that commute time. I knew I could find something remote. And at that time I think I read Tim Ferriss’s “ The 4-Hour Workweek ,” and I decided to get out more on Twitter. I knew that was possible and I wanted to try working remotely. So being able to work remotely was a prerequisite. Jeroen : [12:29] Was it hard to find your first job remotely or how did that work out? Yuri : [12:38] The first few ones, they really fell into my lap. So at first I tried to make my own app. Then a friend referred me to a company of their friend. Then another friend called me to work with them because they knew I was a decent person. I mean, I was learning to be an iOS engineer. I wasn’t a really great software engineer, but they knew me as a person—that I would be able to do it. They hired me and I worked with with that company for a while. But after that, Ungert Design was my first company that employed me based on my skills. And that was a big breakthrough for me. Also, the fact that it was in Hong Kong, of all places. Jeroen : [13:37] OK. And then you you went on to, let’s see, TAOlight and then Babylon Health, also both development roles. Yuri : [13:46] Yeah. Ungert Design was a startup that made an app for coworking space management, but it didn’t work out in the end. It was really small. We had a little bit of capital, but it didn’t last too long. Yeah, it was a startup that didn’t take off. It was really fun to work with. All the people that worked there are my friends, so I think it worked out pretty well. But after that, the founder had to look for a job, basically because the startup didn’t work out. And at the company that he got into, TAOlight, they were looking to start their own mobile team. As the engineers from the startup, we were hired to be on that team. It was a really quick and short transition. And I spent a few years there. Jeroen : [14:52] From your LinkedIn history at TAOlight, I see that you also did some writing for junior developers, so writing guidelines for them. Is that also based on your idea that you want to give something to junior developers, because the book that you’ve written is also “Junior to Senior” and the book that you wanted to have when you were a junior software developer. Is there a link between these two things or…? Yuri : [15:16] Now that you mention it? Probably. Probably. I like to teach people in the sense that I use my knowledge to help out others if I can. But usually it is very personal. If I have some friends that I know, then I help them. Jeroen : [15:38] After TAOlight, which is a connected lights, technology-related firm, it seems, you went to Babylon Health in London. Yuri : [15:50] Notice that there was a break of a year between them. Jeroen : [15:55] Did you take time off for a year or what happened? Yuri : [15:58] I left TAOlight on my own because the company kind of changed direction a little bit. It was mostly about me rather than them. But maybe my main issue was that I didn’t grow as much as I wanted. Now, looking back and looking at my own advice that I’ve put in the book, I could use that place as a place for growth, actually, because the company trusted me and I could choose any direction I wanted. I could move into web, for example, or experiment more with the iOS app. Looking back, I think it was an overreaction on my part. Jeroen : [16:44] It’s actually interesting what you mentioned there, because I myself sticked at my first job for over nine years and I learned a lot there and actually grew a lot as there well. I was not even out of that company for half a year and I don’t have any regrets for sticking with them for nine years, but in hindsight, I would have said I should have left that company after four, maybe five years just to broaden my horizon and just see a different way that a company can do the business. I still have good relations with many of my old colleagues there. And it’s a company that I worked for—that’s already 10 years ago. But a number of people I still have in my network. That’s something that I noticed myself, actually. That I’m not one of those people that’s a fan of really hopping around a lot from place to place, but I do think that there is a pitfall in sticking with one place for too long if it’s at the beginning of your career. But that’s my personal opinion, of course. Yuri : [17:54] Yeah, I talk about that in my book. Basically, in my experience, I didn’t spend much time anywhere just because, well, I’m such a person that I quickly get bored of something, if you know what I mean. I’m not “bored” bored, but after you’ve mastered your work, if you are not pushed to grow, when you are forced to learn by yourself and not from the requirements of your work, it can become a little bit underwhelming. Right? Again, looking back, I would say that I’d rather choose to learn by myself and spend the extra effort than look for a job that pushed me to grow. Because when you’re doing self-directed learning, you have a little bit more freedom to learn what you want. And it’s less stressful. But again, being in a job that forces you to learn, that has high demands but doesn’t stress you over too much, then that is a great place for learning too. These are two things that are hard to choose between. I try to mention and discuss all of that in my book. What I recommend to junior engineers, looking back at my experience, is to stick at a company for a few years until you are a middle engineer, until you understand the project, and until you do research to understand if you’re missing learning compared to where the industry is moving. There’s nothing wrong in staying at a company for nine years, for ten years, if you are growing, if you are changing roles. And this is also something that I talk about in the section “You are not your role.” It means that in five years, you will likely not even use the same programming language. Jeroen : [20:18] That’s true. Yuri : [20:18] That’s because the job changes from under you. Even if you don’t move on purpose, the industry moves on and you will use new libraries, probably a new programming language, you will work on a different project. And that will give you learning opportunities, too. So there’s nothing wrong, really, staying for a long time working at one company. But you have to look around to see if you’re missing on jumping on the train, basically, because if you keep working on the same project, doing roughly the same things, then there’s a saying that you can have the same year of experience five times instead of having five years of extra experience. When there comes the time to leave this company, because it may come sooner than you expect, maybe your department will be reorganized and you’ll be let go, or something. You never know. You might discover, if you never look around, that the industry has moved on and your skills are obsolete. But if you watch the industry and what’s happening around you and learn new things, then there’s nothing wrong in growing at one company, if it challenges you. Jeroen : [21:52] If you want to stay relevant as a software developer, it’s good to look outside of your current role. If you’re just doing your day job and and you’re just having fun—at least that’s what I hope most people have when they’re working—what is a way to actually stay aware of the direction that the entire field of software development is going, or at least the parts that are relevant to the technology that you’re working on? Because, for instance, if you look at iOS development, we worked with Objective-C for quite a while, but nowadays you wouldn’t start a new app with Objective-C in most cases, and you would probably even start a new app with SwiftUI and not with UIKit as the main user interface framework. What I have noticed is that quite often if new tech arrives, there’s always this time frame that it’s still unclear whether or not it’s the actual new direction, whether or not the technology is stable, whether or not it’s a valid direction to go. Yuri : [22:59] What I would say is that you do not have to spend much time looking into stuff and even learning things. For example, I can honestly say, I don’t know SwiftUI. I never spent the time to learn it because our app Babylon Health couldn’t use SwiftUI yet because we needed to be backwards-compatible. SwiftUI is now two years old, but I never learned it— yet . I know I have to in the future, I know that it exists, I know some of its pitfalls and its strengths because I’m just basically reading two newsletters . That’s it. And I’m just watching what happens on Twitter. I don’t spend much time doing that. There is this recent controversy in software development where people would say, like, you need to do side projects or you’re not a real developer. If you don’t spend your nights tinkering on something, then you are not a real developer. But you can only do software development at work and keep up with the industry at work by reading a couple of newsletters. You don’t have to watch everything closely or experiment with something, because if you don’t need it at work, then, well, you can just be aware of it and learn it when it comes along. If something becomes really big, like Swift, you know, then you will probably notice that. It’s hard not to notice, unless you’re literally living under a rock. Because Swift just took over iOS completely and it’s really hard not to notice that. Jeroen : [25:15] With Swift, I still remember the language transitions between version one and version two and version three. Yuri : [25:22] That was great. Jeroen : [25:25] Indeed, that was great. It was a lot of fun. New Xcode version came around and then, oh, we’re not making the sprint this time around. Why not? Well, there’s a new version of Xcode available and we need to update our Swift codebase before we can continue. That makes for a happy business sponsor, I can tell you. Yuri : [25:43] Actually, this happened while I was freelancing. A bit of advice is that you can become an early adopter of that thing and leave the experts behind, because everyone starts at zero. That is what I did with Swift since I wasn’t employed full-time. Working with Objective-C at the time, I had a little bit of time—a few months—to really dig down and learn Swift and that directly got me a job. Jeroen : [26:21] At some point you were working at Babylon Health. That was until May 2020. But why give up your job and just be on your own for a while without any responsibilities besides just living your life? Yuri : [26:34] There were some internal changes at the company that involved reshuffling the mobile team a lot. Since I was a contractor, I was let go before the end of my contract. It happens, it’s fine. But I decided that since it worked out for me last time, I thought that it would work out this time too. Before I got a job at Babylon Health, I also spent almost a year not working. I can say that I’m really lucky that I can do that because of the structure of my expenses. Basically, we tried to keep expenses really low so that we have a decently sized emergency fund that we can spend without worrying too much about money. So I’m really lucky to have that. Jeroen : [27:32] Which is actually very sound financial advice, to have a nest egg that is either like half year in size or maybe even a year in size. It takes a bit of effort. But just knowing that whatever your company throws at you—or maybe they throw you out—knowing that you still will be fine for at least half a year to a year without any financial support is actually a very comforting thing to do. And I can highly recommend that to anyone who is able to get that together on their bank account, really. Yuri : [28:05] That is pretty much something that I’ve been doing on purpose. After I left TAOlight, I decided that I wanted to work again in a remote international company that paid well and where I could be a senior engineer, finally. I launched a small app, I worked on my interviewing skills, I researched how careers worked and all that. I talked to a lot of people and I’ve been looking for companies that fit what I was looking for. I found Babylon Health on Twitter where a recruiter said that they are hiring remote and all that. Right now, when I’ve had to stop working at Babylon Health, I’m taking a break to upgrade myself again while I have the time and the means to do so, because I purposefully work on being able to take these breaks. Jeroen : [29:15] And then you had the Gumroad experience, the 14-day challenge and then you decided to continue on that challenge and make it into a full book. Or how did that work out for you? Yuri : [29:30] I decided, do I even want to do iOS anymore? That was a big question for me, because I don’t like the long Swift compilation times, I’m not a fan of the overall direction Swift is taking. I still like the excitement of doing something interactive. But at the same time, I decided to look more into, for example, the indie hacking development, people launching web services and different stuff. And Swift is my only working language that I’m really proficient in. I can do something in Python and JavaScript a little bit, but not too much. So Swift is my only working language, and I don’t like that. It doesn’t really become something outside of Apple platforms. Sure, it has a Linux version. You can do some web development with it. And we did some services at Babylon Health, but still it’s not moving in a direction that allows me to use it everywhere. Jeroen : [30:56] It’s not ubiquitous like, Python, Django or Ruby on Rails or PHP, that there’s not a lot of job postings out there, hey, we are looking for somebody capable with Swift for our server. Yuri : [31:08] It’s not like it’s a problem per se . I was just looking to expand my skillset. Jeroen : [31:16] So, the book “ Junior to Senior ” and the writing process—what did you use to actually do the writing itself? Was it like an outline that you created, even though it might have been just a draft and that you then started fleshing out, or…? Yuri : [31:32] I decided beforehand that I’m going to write in Markdown because I have lots of notes. All my notes are in Markdown and the book was going to be in Markdown too. How to write it… for me it turned out that book writing was very linear. I did some research throughout writing to back up my claims, but it was pretty minor. First I just jotted down random thoughts and I spent the first day doing that, just jotting down random thoughts that I could talk about in relation to moving from being a junior to a senior engineer, upgrading your career and working on your skills, interviewing. So basically, anything that I could talk about. It wasn’t structured. It was really random. And then after that, I collected these notes, which were just a huge text file and made an outline out of them. And after that, I could work from this outline. Jeroen : [32:50] As you already mentioned, you initially started with the book due to the challenge of Gumroad one day starting a new author platform. And you wrote the book specifically targeted at people that you had in your own network. I think you said colleagues or friends that are actually starting out as software developers. And so how did that work out? You had a bunch of notes. You had a target audience. How did you combine the two and created something that was comprehensive? Yuri : [33:21] Making an outline helps me focus on just several points rather than going in different directions. For example, a very similar book is “ The Pragmatic Programmer .” I was kind of aiming for creating something like that, but from my own experience and more non-technical. Jeroen : [33:42] It’s interesting that you mentioned “ The Pragmatic Programmer ” because the 20th anniversary edition just came out last year. Quite recently, I again suggested that specific book to somebody who is self-taught, trying to get into a software development career and who basically had the question, OK, I kinda know how to program, but how do I become a software developer? A lot of people doing programming and who want to do it professionally have a hard time gaining the skills, gaining the knowledge to actually be able to consider themselves software developers. Because to me there’s a big distinction between programming something or developing some software. And I do see that in your book, you try to provide a person with suggestions on how they can, in a quite deliberate way, improve their skills that are relevant and worthwhile in a business scenario. Was that on purpose, that you want to teach your friends how to be a valuable software developer? Yuri : [34:50] Yes, and this was actually the section that I did some research for. I had some hunches and in my experience, actual software development work and working in companies is not too much and not only about programming. It’s also a lot about interpersonal skills and how you communicate, how you work on a team. And this research confirmed my hunches—it specified what the business, the companies saw as lacking in new engineers who have just left a bootcamp, who have just left a university. They know how to program, they know how to create something—to create products, maybe—but they do not know specifically how the workplace works. What do you do at work? How do big software projects get developed? Even if you’re working alone on some piece of code, you’re still working within the framework of the company. You work with design, you work with product people. You maybe work with business people. It’s also important to know that it’s not enough to just write code. Learning how to behave and communicate and how the business works is not knowledge that you get by osmosis. Basically, you have to go out of your way to find out how the company works, if you’re a junior software engineer. Jeroen : [36:43] And so that’s the specific area that you want to provide guidance so that people able to write some code can actually become a true software developer? Yuri : [36:54] It’s useful knowledge because it allows you to be more efficient and more useful to the business, because, again, if you want to maximize the potential of your career, then—and if you want to continue working—you have to know how the business works. Jeroen : [37:19] In my mind, teams that truly collaborate with each other as a whole get further, but also the individuals within the team professionally achieve more for themselves. I don’t think it’s a zero-sum situation. The business gains—the team gains—a lot. And individuals also get equipped with more skills and more worthwhile abilities that they can then, at a later stage in their career, actually do very useful and required things with for themselves, the business and whoever they come across in their career. Yuri : [37:59] Yes, exactly. One of the things that I think is particularly important is what I call “considerate communication” in the book. This is primarily the act of not wasting anyone’s time, including yours. I make a big fuss about not bothering other people more than necessary, but also spending this time thinking about other people to improve yourself. There may be two extremes, basically, either you ask other people for help at the first sight of a problem and then you are unlikely to learn much because other people will be doing the work. And it’s not respectful towards them. And the other extreme—that is actually quite frequent in software developers—is to have this notion that you have to do everything by yourself to prove that you can finish the task, that you know how to code something. This is also an extreme that is not beneficial towards improving yourself because you will spend too much time floundering about, and trying, and bashing your head against the problem when you could reasonably spend some time on the problem, and if you can’t get a solution, then you can ask someone. That saves the other people’s time since you don’t ask them right away. But also it saves your time because you don’t spend several extra hours not making any progress at all. Jeroen : [40:08] Why should people buy your book? Why should people read it? Yuri : [40:13] That’s a really good question. As I said, I wrote the book primarily to directly help some people I know and also to prove to myself that I can write a book not from second hand experience or something else, but write a book with advice that comes from my own experience that is worth something. These were my two primary goals. But as the structure of the book came into view, what I can say about it is where it can benefit people is that it is non-technical, first of all. What I see a lot in the developer world, a lot of people are writing technical books, but not many people share career advice or how to improve in not only in your career, but as a developer—not in some particular language or by doing some particular thing. My book is an abstracted way of looking at your career, at your knowledge, and it gives some frameworks how I think about my career and the knowledge maps that people could use in their journey to improving themselves as software engineers. I know I’m not perfect, but I’m interested in systems and frameworks, especially mental frameworks of how to approach things, how to do things “the right way.” And I thought a lot about how to approach learning in software development and the software development career. These two bits of knowledge are distilled in my book. Jeroen : [42:27] To me, the book comes across as to be aware that there is some level of control that you can exert as a software developer on the development of your own career. It’s not that you are, as a software developer, left to the whims of the company that you work for—if they promote you or if they give you more salary—but that it’s actually you as an individual who can take control and do things that have impact on the long term of your own personal development. Is that a correct assessment? Yuri : [42:57] Absolutely. For a lot of people, a job is just something that pays the bills and they don’t want to think about their job after work. I personally am not satisfied with myself, with my skills, with how my career progresses sometimes. I try to see what points of control I have and how I can maybe either exploit them or work on myself that I become better. Jeroen : [43:30] Now, you’ve published your book. You also mentioned that you still need to do some marketing with the book. You did a soft launch and now you’re going to do the real launch in a few weeks, I guess? So then the book is selling or it’s not selling. What are your plans from now into the next year? Yuri : [43:53] As I said, after I left my previous job, I thought about improving myself a little bit more in a more purposeful way, I guess. For example, I started this new blog of mine, NorikiTech , which has zero posts at the moment (not anymore! –future Yuri) because this Gumroad challenge came along, and this book idea popped into my head, and I decided to write it instead of writing something else. This comes back to my intention of improving my writing and being more visible and sharing my knowledge. I looked back at what I did before and I noticed that I’m mostly a knowledge hoarder rather than a knowledge sharer . But sharing knowledge at the same time gives you more learning opportunities for yourself, both to teach others and to learn the material better yourself. New, exciting opportunities can come out of it. Writing is one of my plans for the new year. I want to really make an effort at writing some very interesting posts on my new blog, both exploring some technical things and career things. If my book is about improving careers, then I’m going to write about that. I also want to write about some technical stuff. For example, I worked on my game and I learned C++ to write custom font rendering for it because I needed some, well, strange layout that nothing supported. That’s an interesting thing, so I wanted to write about that, too. This is one of my goals for the year and another is to—believe it or not—catch up on computer science. I noticed that this question came up a few times over the past years. I’m self-taught, so I never studied it formally and I never needed it for iOS, really. There isn’t much from computer science that you actually use in iOS development for some reason, except maybe for some graphics. There is not much, really, and I’ve done a lot in iOS. But again, I want to be a software engineer who can do more than just iOS, and for that, I need to close the gaps in my knowledge and also be more articulate about sharing what I know. So these are the two things that I want to work on for the next year. Jeroen : [47:14] If people are interested in your book, where can they find it online? Yuri : [47:18] Either on Gumroad—you’ll find a link in the description of the podcast—and also it’s pinned to my Twitter profile , which is my surname. The book is also on Goodreads so you can just look for “Junior to Senior” and you’ll find it. It has a black and yellow cover. Jeroen : [47:36] OK, this is Yuri. He just published his book and he clearly indicates that he wants to grow more in the next year by actually sharing more. And I think being on my podcast , this is a nice small step in that direction. It was fun talking to you, Yuri. If people have any questions, how can they reach you? Yuri : [47:58] I’m most active probably on Twitter. My handle is my surname that you’ll see in the title of the podcast. From there, I have a link both to my new blog and to my book. So that’s probably the best place. Jeroen : [48:14] Yuri, very much thank you for your time and I hope to see you someday in the future in person, maybe, if conditions permit. So thank you very much. Yuri : [48:29] Thanks for having me. It’s been fun to be on a podcast. That’s my first podcast! Jeroen : [48:35] Glad to be of service.

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