Really loving iPad OS 26 on the iPad mini. The multitasking works great even on the smaller screen!

First time using the CreateML app built into Apple’s developer tools for some experimenting. Surprisingly easy to use and test out training data sets!

Booted up a macOS 26 virtual machine to see how my apps look. While I’m happy by default that old apps, not compiled with the latest SDKs, still retain their look and feel, after only a few seconds the old design doesn’t feel right at all in Tahoe. Will be interesting to see how many …

Pretty good WWDC even with most of it being spoiled by rumors. Although, I was pleasantly surprised that all the iPad improvements, including the new multitasking features, are also available on the 6th Generation iPad mini! I know that device was just replaced late last year with the A17 Pro model, …

Switching back to the Kindle for my primary reading device for books and long web articles has resulted in me reading way more. I didn’t realize until recently that switching to the iPad Pro for my reading device really resulted in a dip in my reading goals. Nothing, at least for me, seems to be …

All the rumors of a revamped multitasking interface for the iPad feels like the last chance for me not to trade in my iPad Pro. While it is a great device physically with its insane thinness, I just don’t feel like I can do enough on it to justify bringing it around. Especially when the form factor …

All new video out! Taking a look at the usual and unusual Apple-branded merchandise from the 1990s. youtu.be/v7LsBd7sj…

Reviewing tomorrow’s video! Should be out early in the morning!

Fun little non-LEGO build! Had to modify it a little, swapping the side for the floppy drive, so it is more true to form!

I know next to nothing about Magic the Gathering, but these Lord of the Rings cards are so much fun to pick up! Some of the best LOTR artwork!

Of all the various Apple APIs, I’ve really been enjoying deep diving more into the Local Notifications system for an app I’m working on. Something feels great about a tried-and-true API to work in where most edge cases have already been solved.

New month and new project! Fingers crossed I can get it up and running in the next month or so. Been thinking and wanting this app for a very, very long time, so it feels good to start it finally.

Of all the great topics covered on the Focused podcast, the most useful topic for me has been completing monthly reviews to help stay on track and remind myself of everything good and bad that has happened. Highly recommend episode 226 for a more in-depth explanation of reviews!

Of all the parts of AI that seem scummy or just not wanted, automatically showing AI summaries on content has to be one of the worst parts of this “revolution”. I still hate that whenever I use Safari’s reader mode it has the annoying Summarize button at the top of the article. …

New video out today! A chill walkthrough Apple’s 1990s Company Store thanks to QuickTimeVR! So many pieces of Apple merchandise that I had never seen before…and would love to find one day! youtu.be/C5h_6cEYK…

Finally got my Destiny 2 Christmas Reward! It was the first time I really got serious about finishing one of the Destiny Reward challenges and it was so much fun!

Going a bit further back for my next video out hopefully later this week!

My latest go-to relaxing environment, oddly enough, has been the Apple TV’s Snoopy screen saver and Bill Evans Trio at night. Something about the fun little Snoopy animations and jazz makes me feel so calm while I wind down. A quick side note…to my surprise, Apple does actually call the …

New video in my Cocoa Archives series! Covering one of my favorite old iPhone games, Tunnel Shoot! youtu.be/IzUDOkmi-…

The VisionPro is starting to become my go-to for working away from my desk. It’s not the most portable, and the battery situation is still a bit weird. However, nothing beats a huge Mac screen and being able to place support windows anywhere.

Really great post about AI that mimics my own thoughts on a lot of the talk about vibe coding and similar AI assistance coding topics. One section stood out the most: “If you’re writing the same boilerplate every day like some industrial-age cog monkey, automate it yourself. Write a library. Invent …

Would love a 10 part documentary series covering the gas station food industry. This sausage thing is crazy!

Reading this recent post by the company behind Things really makes me want to give Swift on the server a real chance. I tend to lean towards Node.js-based backends, but maybe it is time to change. culturedcode.com/things/bl…

New video out today! Announcing a project I’ve been wanting to start for a few years now focusing on the preservation of early iPhone Apps/Software! youtu.be/WK7qnFGvY…

One thing that does feel pretty different in the best possible way is SwiftUI’s integration with MapKit. So much easier to add annotations and overlays, making it more enjoyable to work with maps!

Started reading: Masters of Doom by David Kushner 📚 Starts off pretty quickly and interesting. Can’t wait to finish!

Feels so good finally adding a loose copy of issue #1 of my favorite comic series ever to my collection!

Some of my favorite photos from Washington last week

Well, I finally crossed the barrier of rewriting an AppKit app to use SwiftUI. Hoping to have the app rewritten and out in the next few weeks!

The one feature I’ve been using the most on my M4 iPad Pro is Night Shift to make it more like a Kindle. It makes it feel really weird to have this super bright and color-accurate screen, just to leave it warmer so it doesn’t kill my eyes during long reading sessions.

The peaceful shores of Rosario Beach

Finished reading: The Dude and the Zen Master by Jeff Bridges 📚 What a great book/interview with some amazing quotes to remember and live by!

Finished reading: Rogue Saucer by John Vornholt 📚 Not too bad of a TNG story with a unique concept about the Enterprise and its saucer section.

Amazing pick up of Imaginary Storefronts by Mateusz Urbanowicz today! Really love reading all the little details of the various shops he designed!

Stopped by Dicks Drive In today!

First meal for this Washington Trip! Really hit the spot after almost 2 hours of traffic!

Nice relaxing night building some fun F1 Lego mini sets before my day of traveling tomorrow!

New video out today! Covering some exploration of OS X Tiger’s Dashboard Widgets! youtu.be/8UuCWwek_…

Really great read from Miles Klee at Rolling Stone about the downfalls of AI chat services and mental health. Hoping that eventually all of this AI stuff settles down into something with more benefits than negatives. www.rollingstone.com/culture/c…

This upcoming week’s video covers one of my favorite OS X features, Dashboard!

Finished reading: Doctor Who and the Seeds of Doom by Philip Hinchcliffe 📚

While it is amazing that the MacBook Airs are so amazing at almost anything you throw at them. But nothing burns that battery out faster than Xcode & SwiftUI Previews.

Nothing like spending the day trying to migrate a web application into a Docker container/image. Docker is so powerful and helpful. I wish more projects just started out using it from the start to save everyone a lot of headaches!

Spent the last two days building a little Mac App to keep track of basic contract customer information. The two things that really stood out were just how easy it was to enable CloudKit thanks to SwiftData. And the second was how effortless it was to build a simple iPhone/iPad version of the app as …

First YouTube video out, celebrating the 20th Anniversary of OS X Tiger! youtu.be/uFpIDKUcu…

Getting a lot closer to finishing my Tiger 20th Anniversary video!

When your physical card pulls are less than stellar, but you get some luck with digital cards!

Love LGR Blerb videos covering big shows like this! It’s oddly relaxing to just see all the cool old pieces of tech and follow Clint around www.youtube.com/watch

Working on a little experiment that may or may not pan out…

Was able to pick up the Apple Fitness pin today from my Apple Store! Wish they would do this more often since it’s such a cool promo!

iOS’s Voice Memos automated text transcripts are surprisingly great! Especially for something built into the system. Not having to use a third-party app, which all seem to collect way too much personal information, is so nice!

It still amazes me how many apps collect so much user data. The privacy notice on the App Store has 100% made me avoid downloading apps that collect way too much personal information. I really wish more apps would be selective about what they collect.

Keeping up my daily VisionPro usage after listening to how David Sparks uses it to help stay focused on tasks with the immersive environments. I do feel like the mix of VisionPro windows and the macOS virtual display is incredibly useful. Hoping for some great improvements at WWDC!

I’m surprised I missed this VisionOS 2.0 feature in the Photos app where you can take any existing 2D photo and create a Spatial photo out of it. The results are truly amazing and make it feel like you are right back where you were when taking the original photo. And honestly, these …

It’s crazy how few good Sudoku apps support filling in a puzzle with the Apple Pencil on an iPad. So far, Sudoku Club is pretty solid and thankfully does not collect data on you!

Just discovered Focused from Rely.fm, and it is such a great podcast! It covers some interesting topics that really resonate with me at my current stage in life.

Diving into the Vapor server project for Swift. So far, it is pretty nice, but it is so nice to just be able to use all the Swift I’m used to writing to control a server. And the out-of-the-box Docker support is also super helpful!

Whenever I use the iPad keyboard in portrait orientation, I always miss the older mode where you could split the keyboard in half. The floating keyboard is just not useful enough for everyday usage.

The Worf/Klingon subplot of TNG season 4 is surprisingly interesting. It’s crazy to think how far the Federation and Klingons came from TOS to where a Federation captain is helping usher in a new Klingon leader.

Apple making physical pins for their Fitness Achievements is so awesome! I wish they would do this more often! 9to5mac.com/2025/04/1…

Finished reading: Tiny Experiments by Anne-Laure Le Cunff 📚

Using the Vision Pro more and more makes me wish that in addition to Mac Virtual Display, I would love to be able to send a single window to the Vision Pro. Letting the window act more like a normal Vision Pro app would go a long way for usability.

Watching the TNG episode “In Theory” where Enterprise crew member D’Sora falls for Data romantically. With all the recent AGI/AI talk and fears about it replacing humans, I wonder how much longer before people truly begin to fall in love with all of the AI “personalities” popping up everywhere.

I tried out the reMarkable tablet a few months back and wasn’t impressed by the price point vs features…unsure how it will perform with all of the recent tariffs. Sad truth is that a lot of the supplemental material made by the reMarkable team is surprisingly good!

Working on a new web project and just feel like Bootstrap, which has been my go-to for years, is starting to feel a bit bloated. Might be time to explore some other options for a lightweight frontend framework.

Super interesting documentary about the early days of the web and the whole Mozilla/Netscape open source release www.youtube.com/watch

Wonder how many companies will be too quick to accept whatever an AI system says about an employee before even seeing their resume. Can’t wait for it to become even more difficult to get a job in the near future!

Really amazing interview about early Microsoft. Long interview, but very interesting with some unique stories that I hadn’t heard of before. youtu.be/xi1Lq79mL…

It’s been a few weeks since discovering Tot, and I’m still amazed at how much I use what is essentially a lightweight text app. It has quickly become indispensable to my day-to-day Mac usage. Can’t recommend it enough! tot.rocks

Was rewatching an old interview with Jon Rubinstein after HP bought Palm, and it makes me miss the heyday of early 2010s technology. Everything felt so exciting and interesting with all the various players all trying to compete with Apple and Google. www.youtube.com/watch

One thing I can’t complain about SwiftUI is just how easy it is to build a multi-column table on the Mac. Essentially, 4 lines of code, and you get a basic table without any hassle.

Finally starting to feel semi-confident with SwiftUI for macOS apps. So much of it is just keeping around sample code of how exactly little things work, like the file picker now being called file importer. That one I don’t know if I’ll ever get used to.

Wrapping up Gates’ recent autobiography. Kind of surprised where the book ends. Hoping eventually we get the rest of the Microsoft story after the first year or so of the company.

Not sure if it is just me, but the Dynamic Island and Live Activities feature for iOS seems so broken for me. One day everything is working, the next nothing, and the day after working again. Really wish big flagship features would work more frequently.

Great episode of Under the Radar from a few weeks ago. While framed with the idea of optimism of Apple’s platforms, the advice by David Smith about looking for something positive in a negative situation really holds true for most situations overcast.fm/+AAFgnYXG…

Retro night with the original Gran Turismo on the PS2

Amazing how “AI Chat Apps” are becoming the new App Store spam. Most just seem to be wrappers for the standard AI clients. Even kind of funny how they all have similar-looking icons knocking off OpenAI.

It is amazing that when you drop into more obscure areas of App Store Connect, the early 2010s Apple web design still lives!

Today was the first day that I started a new Mac app using SwiftUI and didn’t give up on it within a few hours. Surprisingly, I even managed to build most of the functionality without too much headache.

Watching Severance for the first time, it feels like one long Twilight Zone episode. Still not sure if that is a positive or a negative yet.

One of my favorite photos of the Apple Visitor Center in Cupertino! Hoping to attend some developer events later this year!

Finally releasing the Mac app, Batch Renamer, I’ve been working on for the past month! Easily rename files with nothing more than a CSV document! nsmug.com/batch-ren…

A little tea while I finish up web work for my upcoming app

Getting even closer! Just finishing up the product page and smoothing some of the rough edges.

A little behind on The Talk Show, but really great episode with Craig Hockenberry about recent hardware and some fun Apple history tidbits. Plus, the episode introduced me to a new app Tot by The Iconfactory! daringfireball.net/thetalksh…

Pokemon Red on a mountain top!

I’ve been slowly making my way through the great Oral History series from the Computer History Museum. The Jon Rubinstein sessions are really interesting if you enjoy Apple product development history! youtu.be/PJxElfc0N…

I can’t believe I just now found out about this iOS feature…www.macrumors.com/how-to/us…

Nothing like thinking you are ready to release an app and then deciding to tweak the UI and add new features. Working to make tomorrow my cut off day to release!

SwiftUI is slowing growing on me. Debating if to convert a bigger project I have in AppKit over just to get the experience.

Finally giving SwiftUI a real shot with all the news about a new UI from Apple. It isn’t AppKit or really anywhere near AppKit, but I’m making progress. One big help has been the app Interactful to easily see all the various SwiftUI components available to use. One of the best features of …

Getting even closer to release!

All this talk about Apple’s possible plan to release a massive update to all their platforms’ UI makes me wonder if it is truly the end times for AppKit. I find it hard to imagine that any big UI changes would be brought back to AppKit due to how much Apple has been pushing SwiftUI adoption.

Really great WWDC 2024 video I seemed to have missed this past June. Great examples of where SwiftUI makes somewhat tedious AppKit features easier to adopt in an app. SwiftUI still isn’t my go-to when I start a new Mac app, but maybe 2025 is the year that changes. …

Putting the final touches on an app I’ve been using for months. Can’t wait to release it soon!

While there has been a lot of negative press written about Apple’s recent announcement of delayed Apple Intelligence features, the bigger issue in my opinion is Apple’s recent move to pre-announce features/products before they are fully ready. Their previous strategy of waiting and not rushing to …

Finally finished the Lego Porsche 911 set. Probably the closest I’ll ever get to owning a Porsche!

Found an amazing developer bringing back classic OS X style apps to modern macOS! Mario’s QuickTune 7 is by far one of my favorites so far. However, Music MiniPlayer might be a close second since seeing the drawer UI brings me so much joy. What is even more impressive is that both apps are …

Nothing feels better than cleaning up the Developer folder on my Mac of various projects I’ve finished or abandoned. Making “room” for more projects!

Finished reading: The Dominion War: Book 1 by John Vornholt 📚

Still watching the CHM Oral History of Bertrand Serlet interview about his life and career. Got to an interesting part where he mentioned Database Kit at NeXT. Hadn’t heard about it, but was able to find this interesting PDF scan of the “NeXT Database Kit” sell sheet on the Internet Archive!

Launching my very first “AI” website today…looking for immediate Series A funding from all interested parties! dineinorout.com

Tinkering on a new website that has been a lot of fun to work on. Hoping to have it finished up by the end of this weekend.

I’m still pretty early into Bill Gates’ Source Code memoir, what a great read! I’m always a sucker for any firsthand retelling of the computing revolution in the mid to late 60s. The closest thing I think I’ll ever experience to that time period would have been the App and iPhone revolution in the …

One of the things I miss the most from older versions of the iOS Music app is the ability to change the placement and order of the tab bar items. As someone who rarely uses the New and Radio tabs, I would love to put Albums and Playlists in their position for fast access.

So awesome to see a great Mac App published by John Siracusa today! Even better to see an old-school style Mac App Icon to go with the amazing name, Hyperspace! Makes me wish John would make more “Hyper”-related apps in the future! apps.apple.com/us/app/hy…

Found a great Vinyl, CD, and VHS store near University of Washington called Neptune Music. Picked up some great boxset CDs!

Great rainy day at Gas Works Park in Washington!

Great finds from REPC yesterday. Almost bought the AutoCAD box set for $40 as an avid AutoCAD user in high school. However, I didn’t have anything to run Windows 3.1 easily.

Photos from day one in Washington

Finally started the new season of my favorite Apple TV+ show, Mythic Quest. Of all the possible businesses for Apple to have gotten into over the years, an HBO-style production/distribution studio was never on my bingo card.

This Humane buyout by HP reminds me a lot of when HP bought Palm. However, in that case, the Palm brand and tech lived on for a bit longer than I expect Humane. techcrunch.com/2025/02/1…

Swift Playgrounds is nice and all…but nothing beats the good old macOS Command Line Tool project template!

Still tinkering with SwiftData and finding a lot of nice improvements to CoreData. Little things like support for external storage of data for images aren’t too bad. Although, I do wish SwiftData came with more out-of-the-box support for basic external data types like images, just to make it easier …

Out of Scope Sunday: My favorite part of any new hobby…organizing and cataloging!

Tried yet again to use SwiftUI on a Mac app, and it didn’t quite work out. Thankfully, I was able to use SwiftData, which really is such a big improvement over CoreData.

Great episode of Reconcilable Differences today, all about deciding where to put your work on the web so that you end up owning as much of it as possible. I feel like this pro-personal web sentiment has been growing a lot over the past few months, and I’m really hopeful it continues to strengthen …

It’s not clear whether you’ll be able to boot up a Macintosh five years from now or not” Steve Jobs, Interview about Pixar, November 22, 1996 Managed to last a whole lot longer than 5 years…30+ years and counting.

Using my iPad Mini as an almost iPhone replacement really makes me hope Apple is exploring and planning to release a foldable iPhone. An iPad that folds in half for portability, but expands for extra space, would make it the perfect everyday device. And knowing Apple, they would find some way to …

Came across this post by Stephen Hackett on 512 Pixels talking about the new page that David Sparks is building on his blog, MacSparky. (Following the links, this idea stemmed from Derek Silvers) Interesting experiments like this “Now” page show just how unique and interesting blogging can still be …

NSWorkspace has to be one of the more obscure AppKit classes. Really powerful features, even with the limitations of App Sandboxing. Interesting though that it never got fully transitioned to a newer Swift class where it would have dropped the NS prefix.

While there has been a lot of bad press lately about Apple and the App Store, it’s still inspiring to see small apps being clever and unique. First, I had ever heard of the Bears Gratitude app; however, it’s great to see Apple highlighting a fun app created by a small husband-and-wife team. Reminds …

I played a fair amount of my Asus ROG Ally today, and it makes me wish more developers, and more importantly, Apple, would have put additional effort behind using the Game Porting Toolkit announced back in 2023. Sure, the chances of Apple making a device like the Ally are slim to none due …

Of all the features Swift brought to developing on Apple platforms, the .filter and .map functions on arrays are by far my favorite and most used of any Swift feature.

Watching Star Trek: The Next Generation on the Vision Pro in the Moon environment feels like the future. I may not use the Vision Pro every day, but these small experiences make me wish more people could experience the Vision Pro.

Apple Intelligence Writing Tools: 

While everyone appears to be pretty lukewarm about Apple Intelligence, besides Apple’s marketing department, I wish there was a more streamlined and cohesive way to use the one feature I do like: writing tools.

Whenever I use the Proofread feature within an app like Ulysses, I just get this big …

It is amazing that a year in to the Vision Pro and Personas are still in “beta” This must be one of the longest “public betas” Apple has ever had. support.apple.com/en-us/118…