Core Intuition episode 584 is up now with our reaction to the just-announced App Store changes for the EU. Recorded shortly after all the news dropped today, so there’s a lot to unpack and follow up on. | Continue reading
I was starting to get excited about the new marketplace functionality coming to the App Store, until I got to the part about needing to show Apple a €1 million line of credit. Out of reach for most of us. | Continue reading
Still sorting out Apple’s changes for the EU, coming in March. On first reading, it’s totally different (and better) than the external linking rules from just last week. Feel like I’m on a roller coaster. | Continue reading
Casey Liss blogs about the multiple-monitor potential of Vision Pro: Yesterday was an odd day, in which I spent time working at two different local libraries. While I was there, I realized that I am a week and change too early. If I had my Apple Vision Pro with me, I could have t … | Continue reading
I’ve always been against the death penalty, but this experiment with nitrogen in Alabama is particularly twisted. Also, this is just wrong: Mr. Smith’s case is unique in part because the jury that convicted him of murder also voted 11 to 1 to sentence him to life in prison, rathe … | Continue reading
Just got derailed reading the EU’s Digital Markets Act again. I’m sure the Apple lawyers see some wiggle room in there, but to follow the spirit of the law it should at least look something like Android sideloading. Tired of the games for what is inevitable in the long run. | Continue reading
Most political campaign emails are too long, with manufactured urgency, and formatted poorly. But I just got a Joe Biden email that only says: “Together, we will defeat Trump. Again.” That’s the whole email. We’re all busy and I can get behind mass emails that are succinct. … | Continue reading
The more I hear from Jesse Lyu, the more impressed I am. I finally pre-ordered a Rabbit R1. Kicking myself a little for being so indecisive on day one. Hope they can get manufacturing rolling smoothly. | Continue reading
Happy 40th anniversary to the Mac! My first introduction to the Mac was as a kid, visiting my uncle who had a Mac SE… I would just pore through the manual and knew there was something special about the UI. Got the Mac Classic a handful of years later and have been building apps e … | Continue reading
The Wall Street Journal has an article today about Apple’s plans for sideloading in the EU: Apple’s approach to the EU law will help ensure the company maintains close oversight of apps downloaded outside the App Store, a process known as sideloading. The company will give itself … | Continue reading
The reaction to Barbie is overshadowing what a success the 8 nominations are. And of the women nominated for best actress, who would you remove from the list to nominate Margot Robbie instead? These lists are so tough. For best director, though, there’s a strong case… I blogged a … | Continue reading
Listening to Rabbit founder Jesse Lyu on This Week in Startups and learning a lot. They aren’t selling the R1 at a loss. Also more details about how the LAM works. | Continue reading
David Smith blogs about Stephen Hackett joining his indie company: I am extraordinarily proud of being an “indie”, it is a meaningful part of my professional identity. As such I held on too long to a sense of needing to do it all myself. But I’ve grown in this regard and I am ext … | Continue reading
There are a lot of new blogging systems popping up. This is a good thing. Micro.blog will be competitive with almost anything, but also there’s the bigger picture… If the open web is getting better, we’re better too. A rising tide lifts all boats. | Continue reading
Daniel Jalkut has shipped Black Ink for iOS! I’m sure we’ll be talking about this on the next Core Intuition. This release has been years in the making, most of which I imagine was just Daniel trying to figure out when to call it done. With software, there’s always more to do. | Continue reading
From the blog post for Day One shared journals, they do a great job of explaining why the feature exists and what to use it for. No obvious way to share a journal entry to anyone on the web though, right? I thought after being acquired by Automattic they might do more there. | Continue reading
This is a really nice feature from Feedbin: Fixable Feeds. I noticed this in the UI just by accident a few days ago and updated a few feeds that were out of date. | Continue reading
Micro.blog can be thought of as a mashup of a Twitter-like social timeline and a WordPress-like blog posts admin interface. Some parts of the interface are designed for interacting with the community, some parts are designed for managing your blog, and some parts are kind of in l … | Continue reading
As long as she has support and money, Nikki Haley should stay in the race. I don’t think she’s in it for VP. It’s more to be the alternative if everything implodes. Such a difficult path, though, because too many delegates will be awarded before Trump’s trial starts in DC, if it … | Continue reading
Another blog post from Paul Frazee on the thinking behind Bluesky’s technical plumbing: We ended up calling the AT Protocol a “federated” network because we couldn’t think of a more appropriate term, but it’s not really a kind of federation that anyone is familiar with. The peer- … | Continue reading
Interesting take by Dave Winer (in audio, here’s the download link) about the sort of post-Twitter technical mess we might be in, specifically around ActivityPub and the complications of federation. I do worry about new standards being so difficult compared to the old social web. | Continue reading
I wonder if there’s an update on how Apple is helping employees in Texas deal with the abortion ban. Not finding much newer than this 2021 article in The New York Times: Asked what Apple was doing to protect its employees from Texas’ abortion restrictions, Mr. Cook said that the … | Continue reading
Jason Snell writing at Macworld: Now that today’s iMacs and iPads are essentially the same in terms of their internal hardware, maybe it’s time for Apple to do the unthinkable and allow the iPad Pro (and only the iPad Pro) to run macOS in a virtual machine. I love this, no matter … | Continue reading
Accidentally stumbled on my old post from 2011 titled “30% of the future”: The new Apple has fallen into the trap of thinking they should also be an advertising company and an overpriced payment processor. It’s a slippery slope from here to becoming just another mega-corp that ha … | Continue reading
I wonder if there’s an update on how Apple is helping employees in Texas deal with the abortion ban. Not finding much newer than this 2021 article in The New York Times: Asked what Apple was doing to protect its employees from Texas’ abortion restrictions, Mr. Cook said that the … | Continue reading
This is a nice write-up by @leonp of the iPhone app Beluga, which essentially publishes a static microblog site to S3. Includes a tip for integrating with Micro.blog too. | Continue reading
Speaking of Alec Baldwin, I loved his Trump impressions on SNL, but James Austin Johnson as Trump is uncanny. It’s funny but also real, not overplayed. Last night’s opening (video clip on YouTube here) is one of his best… Just perfect. | Continue reading
I’ve read too many articles about the accident with Alec Baldwin’s gun firing on the Rust set, like this new one in The New York Times, and I still don’t get it. Prosecutors really don’t have anything else to do? It’s a tragedy, but I’m not losing sleep that Alec is out there run … | Continue reading
John Gruber asks the relevant question for Apple’s new linking rules: Here’s a simple thought I had today regarding whether Apple’s new External Purchase Links entitlement policy is a good faith compliance with Judge Gonzales’ order: Will any developers actually choose to use it? … | Continue reading
David Pierce at The Verge on the Vision Pro and Safari-based web apps: Embracing the web will mean threatening the very things that have made Apple so powerful and so rich in the mobile era, but at least at first, the open web is Apple’s best chance to make its headset a winner. … | Continue reading
About halfway through the 4th season of For All Mankind. Enjoying it. Sort of forgot some of the characters from previous seasons… Would love to rewatch the whole series when it wraps up. | Continue reading
On the latest Core Intuition, Daniel and I talk about Apple’s new external linking rules and their attempt to audit developers for 27% of revenue. From the show notes: They talk about what Apple’s balance of priorities with money-making vs. world-changing should be, and whether t … | Continue reading
Micro.blog has always stubbornly stuck to static-site generation (first Jekyll, then Hugo) and probably always will, even as there is a lot more complexity layered on top. There’s just something future-proof about having a folder of HTML files. We need to better expose this found … | Continue reading
While troubleshooting today, I took a minute to notice how many posts are on my blog. About 6400, of which 4700 are short microblog posts, 1700 long-form posts. But the surprise was over 12,000 replies, which I don’t really think about. All of this needs to funnel through Micro.b … | Continue reading
Life is short, make the most of it. This is on the old El Milagro building. Shame about the misspelling. | Continue reading
Good post by Paul Frazee on why Bluesky uses rich-text facets. I’m not quite convinced — I think a subset of HTML is a more universal solution that scales from microblogging to feeds to the full web — but lots of respect for the thought Bluesky has put into this. Can’t wait to do … | Continue reading
I’m not ordering a Vision Pro, but I went through the buying process out of curiosity. Apple put a lot of work into this. The integration with the face scanning and web checkout is very nicely done. | Continue reading
I said I’d stop writing about Apple for a minute, but this is a really good post over at Daring Fireball: Essential to the Mac’s continuing relevance is that it is continuously evolving. Much has changed since 2010, and much will surely change between now and the Mac’s 50th anniv … | Continue reading
Recorded a new @coreint that’ll be published in a day or two. I think I got all my “App Store 27% tax” gripes out on the show, so now I can resume non-Apple microblogging. | Continue reading
Fantastic blog post from Andy Baio about the fall of Ello. I would poke in on it every once in a while but didn’t realize it was completely offline now. Andy writes: I was worried that, by taking outside funding, Ello’s values were no longer fully-aligned with the community: they … | Continue reading
Iowa sues TikTok over the app’s 12+ age rating. From attorney general Brenna Bird: It’s time we shine a light on TikTok for exposing young children to graphic materials such as sexual content, self-harm, illegal drug use, and worse. TikTok has sneaked past parental blocks by misr … | Continue reading
Apple can be frustrating with the App Store because they will have policies that are plainly wrong, morally if not legally, and still try to convince you that you’re the crazy one. Increasingly this is what I hear from Apple: “I’ll only be a dictator on day one.” Hubris + total c … | Continue reading
Read And Find Out shirt from Dragonsteel. Brandon Sanderson picked up this phrase from Robert Jordan, answering reader questions that might be covered in future books. | Continue reading
Not sure if anyone noticed but there was a bit of a rollercoaster going on behind the scenes with Micro.blog’s queueing and ActivityPub the last couple of days. Lots of little tweaks later, much happier with everything. Faster and more reliable. | Continue reading
Brent Simmons blogging after the new Apple linking policy: But I need to remember, now and again, that Apple is a corporation, and corporations aren’t people, and they can’t love you back. You wouldn’t love GE or Exxon or Comcast — and you shouldn’t love Apple. It’s not an except … | Continue reading
I like Tim Cook, but there are moral issues he seems completely blind to, like this 27% tax nonsense. Forget iOS. By Apple’s logic, they could also charge 27% (or anything!) for any business that has a Mac app and links to their web site. Never in computing have we seen a company … | Continue reading
There’s some interesting stuff in Bluesky’s moderation report. Kudos to them for being as transparent as possible. The screenshot of the backend is fascinating too… It’s often hard to prioritize tools that no one else sees. | Continue reading