Tim Sweeney reacts to Apple’s new linking rules (Twitter X): Epic will contest Apple’s bad-faith compliance plan in District Court. I’ve said before that for devs who want to see the App Store’s payment rules change, Epic was an imperfect champion, but they’re who we’ve got. Glad … | Continue reading
Apple’s new rules for linking out of an app are totally unacceptable. The whole point of the court ruling is that we shouldn’t have to play these games. I’m not going to opt-in to Apple’s terms and probably no developers will. | Continue reading
My track record of blog posts that go a little against the grain (but which are later proven right) is pretty good. Early essays about Twitter and the App Store. But I’m wrong sometimes! I was wrong about AI. Ignored it for months, thinking it was a distraction. Maybe I’ll be wro … | Continue reading
I have a knee-jerk reaction to products that only the well-off can afford. See also: Apple Watch Edition. All product design is a trade-off on limited time and the constraints of technology. The first iPod was $399 but a few years later it was affordable and everywhere. Apple Vis … | Continue reading
I like this closing in Victoria Song’s Apple Vision Pro hands-on for The Verge: I’d been furrowing my brow, concentrating so hard, I felt the beginnings of a mild headache. That tension dissipated as soon as I took the headset off, but walking back out into Manhattan, I kept repl … | Continue reading
Created a very simple web page at blogarchive.org, mostly just a couple links to other resources. Later will have a more formal spec. Now it’s at least easier to point people to one place. | Continue reading
Thinking about Iowa results… To the most liberal, progressive folks in the Democratic party: Trump is coming for us. I hear a lot about world events and cultural issues, and not enough about what Biden has done and can still do. Let’s get real. Republicans are not going to stop T … | Continue reading
Supreme Court has denied both appeals in Epic v. Apple. My reading of this: we can now link to payments on the web from within apps. Apple should update dev guidelines which are now (partially) illegal in the United States. A small win. | Continue reading
Mark Gurman on Apple’s EU plans, although it’s not clear whether this is his speculation or actual plans: Apple will need to split the profit-generating App Store in two: a version for the EU and a version for everywhere else. Those living in the EU will get to install apps from … | Continue reading
Iowa caucus night! It all feels a bit ridiculous, like a parallel reality… the freezing weather, clunky voting process, and leading candidate arrested and awaiting trial, but I’m glued to the news coverage anyway. 🇺🇸 | Continue reading
Finished reading: Godkiller by Hannah Kaner. If I knew this was going to be this good, would’ve started it earlier. Great pacing and length. Glad there’s a sequel not far off. | Continue reading
There has been a long-standing issue in Micro.blog where blog category names had to be ASCII characters. No more! Today I rolled out a few major, related improvements to categories: Category names can now contain special characters. This is important for non-English languages. Ca … | Continue reading
Really enjoyed Monarch: Legacy of Monsters. I had kind of tuned it out when it first popped up on Apple TV… We just watched through the whole first season over the last few days. | Continue reading
Rabbit R1 has now sold out of their first 30k units (Twitter X link). Still questions about their business model, but maybe they’ll make it up on volume. 🤪 I really do think they’re on to something with this. Wish I had pre-ordered one, and still might. | Continue reading
Glad we can count on Apple to feature MLK on their home page today. Sometimes I worry Apple has lost their way and it will just be another big Vision Pro ad, but thankfully no. Great quote they highlighted: “Because of our involvement in humanity, we must be concerned about every … | Continue reading
Micro.blog supports importing from a lot of different services: Twitter, WordPress, Medium, Tumblr, Ghost, Markdown, Substack, Write.as, Foursquare, Goodreads, and others. For each one we want to add, I download an archive from a test account on the external service to figure out … | Continue reading
Brr, woke up to about 25°, cold walk with the dog. Hope everyone across the country is bundled up and staying warm today. Looks like we’ll get some freezing drizzle but hopefully not much in the way of serious sleet or snow. Still slightly traumatized from the ice storm a couple … | Continue reading
New video from @numericcitizen all about Micro.blog standalone pages and related tips. Cool! | Continue reading
Rolled out several behind-the-scenes improvements this morning to cross-posting and ActivityPub. This from @news may be helpful: Added some new logging to help troubleshoot potential cross-posting issues. Now before cross-posting, Micro.blog logs which external services the post … | Continue reading
Calm before the storm. Slept in a little, catching up on work now before Home Depot and related errands. ❄️ | Continue reading
On this week’s Core Int, we talk more about AI devices, comparing the Rabbit R1 and Humane Ai Pin, and speculating about where things go from here. | Continue reading
I’ve decided to opt-out the Micro.blog apps from the Apple Vision Pro store. My boring CEO take: it’s not something we have time to test and support with a small team. More rant-y take: I don’t believe in the product yet, and worry about us all living in a headset. Touch grass, f … | Continue reading
Finally figured out why I hadn’t had much luck with edited posts on Micro.blog making their way to Mastodon. Mastodon requires an “updated” date, not just “published”. Fine, but these are the little things that make interoperability in the fediverse essentially trial and error. | Continue reading
Going to be a cold weekend in Austin. But iced coffee is still my default as long as we’re above freezing. ☕️ | Continue reading
I have gripes about Substack even aside from content moderation, but I do think it’s worth giving them credit for letting you bring your subscribers — email addresses and payment info — with you when you leave. Imagine if Apple was cool with developers having their own customers … | Continue reading
John Gruber in a post on the passing of Niklaus Wirth: Most of the apps that established the Macintosh as the platform for people with good taste in the 1980s and early 1990s were written in Pascal. THINK Pascal was an IDE years — maybe over a decade — ahead of its time. THINK Pa … | Continue reading
Last month I mentioned we have a brand new feature rolling out later this month. It is coming along really well, but probably will slip until early February. Any launch is a lot of work and I don’t want to get too pulled away from the other maintenance and fixes we’re always doin … | Continue reading
Because my thinking-out-loud about news headlines in Micro.blog went over so well, for my next trick I’m planning to go into hardware: Micro.phone will have a really small screen. | Continue reading
Rabbit has sold through their initial 10k units already. @danielpunkass and I talked about this for the upcoming podcast… I’m fascinated by the cloud backend (would be neat to train it to post to a microblog) and the personality they’ve managed to get into the branding and design … | Continue reading
Missed this Patreon blog post from last month on accounting for Apple’s 30% cut: Apple is requiring us to start using their in-app payment system in order for Patreon to remain available in the App Store, which means purchases made from our iOS app will be subject to Apple’s 30% … | Continue reading
Got some really interesting replies on my post about a potential news section in Micro.blog. To be clear, this is not being worked on anytime soon, maybe never. We have our hands full with other things! But the discussion gave me a lot to think about. | Continue reading
Just did some research for a reply to “someone who is wrong on the internet”, drafted the reply in detail, then discarded it. It doesn’t matter! Have to keep reminding myself that not everything is an invitation to debate. | Continue reading
2024 is going to be something else. One feature I’ve had in the back of my mind for a while is a news section in Micro.blog curated by a journalist. We just aren’t big enough to hire anyone for this. Maybe volunteers? No algorithms, no misinformation. | Continue reading
Outrage is like a poison. It’s good to be passionate, thoughtful, outspoken even. But if there’s a trend in the last handful of years of social media it’s that everyone is mad about everything. It’s sometimes warranted and always exhausting. | Continue reading
Doing more work with CloudKit. Honestly haven’t really done much with it before. Everything I do has a custom backend service, so CloudKit is just rarely needed. | Continue reading
Weird morning, apparently I forgot my Apple ID password? The password in 1Password didn’t work. Either someone in the family reset it, or I’ve been hacked, or I’ve lost my mind. Reset it. | Continue reading
Excited to see the Rabbit R1. Only $199! Not sure who is going to crack this AI device category, but it’s going to happen. Nice line from the keynote: “Our smartphone has become the best device to kill time, instead of saving it.” | Continue reading
If you use Micro.blog on the web, you may notice the layout has changed slightly. These kind of design updates are my favorite. Just a little better, not throwing everything out in a way that would be jarring. | Continue reading
ActivityPub plugin for WordPress has bumped to version 2.0, lots of good changes. No-brainer prediction that blogging with ActivityPub will continue to improve throughout 2024, in Micro.blog, WordPress, and elsewhere. | Continue reading
2024 has started busy. Juggling a lot of different things, hopefully it all settles out. Still aiming to release a major new feature toward the end of the month. There is a new companion mobile app too that @vincent has taken the lead on. | Continue reading
Usually CNN.com is not great. Shallow soundbites and clickbait along with your breaking news. But sometimes there’s a true surprise, like this long article about Chinese immigrants to America. Flight to Ecuador, then the trek north. A stunning journey that it’s hard to fully comp … | Continue reading
It seems really easy to trip up Safari into trashing localStorage, even before its 7-day window. For example, if I load the same site in private browsing mode, then go back to the regular session, the cookies remain but not localStorage. Seems like a bug, or privacy protection go … | Continue reading
Created a page to track my goal of visiting all the Texas state parks. It’s a pretty daunting list, but it’ll be fun to update it throughout the year. This is the kind of thing you lose if everything is just a post on someone else’s social platform. | Continue reading
I’ve been critical of the $3500 price specifically and the entire premise of the Vision Pro more generally, but now that I know it comes with a polishing cloth, I’m in. | Continue reading
I don’t enjoy flying. This 737 Max 9 news is actually reassuring, though, that the plane landed safely after a huge hole was made in the cabin at 16k feet. Kudos to the pilots for keeping their cool. Also, phones sucked out and found in working order after making the drop! Must b … | Continue reading
Trump lies so much it’s bonkers. Meanwhile, I kind of like it when Biden accidentally goes off script, starts to say a little too much, and then you can see him bite his tongue and pull himself back, smiling. He’s human and honest. Is he old? Yes. Is he perfect? No. Still, good g … | Continue reading
Went on a short hike at Lake Whitney State Park. Windy day near the water. | Continue reading