Manton and Daniel catch up on the latest developments in the WordPress vs. WPEngine kerfuffle, and continuing after-effects. They talk about Matt Mullenweg’s tendency lately to deliver seemingly calm and encouraging messages that are nonetheless laced with evidence of his spite towards antagonists. Finally they talk about Automattic’s decision to reduce its own contribution to WordPress Core development, and the implications for the rest of the WordPress community.
Aligning Automattic’s Contributions – Automattic announcement that they would drastically reduce their contributions to the open source WordPress project.
Daniel talks to Manton about his new Micro.one initiative, which aims to bring in new users to Micro.blog. They talk about the risks and rewards of offering a free trial, the sustainability of under-priced web services, and whether Manton can measure the success of his new pricing options.
Manton ships a new Micro.blog feature for photo collections. Daniel and Manton talk about the virtue of providing third-party APIs to support the same kinds of features as you add them to the platform as first-party features. How to decide when to release a major, paid upgrade? Daniel weighs the possibility of subscription pricing for MarsEdit. And finally, teasing Micro.one and developing features and products in secret so that people can’t talk you out of them before they ship.
Manton is working on a new feature for Micro.blog, with particular attention to the Mac app. Daniel is refactoring MarsEdit and taking advantage of Swift 6 concurrency. Manton and Daniel talk about the latest announcements from OpenAI and the potential impact to software developers of the AI era.
Manton tells Daniel about the accidental mini-disaster he caused at Micro.blog while daring to deploy changes while on a cruise. They talk about the risk of losing trust with users when you make mistakes, especially repeatedly, and how unit testing might be a good protection against such problems. Then they talk more about Bluesky’s recent surge in popularity, and prospects for the future of the open web.
Daniel and Manton talk about Apple’s new Image Playground, an AI-based graphic generator. Even if it’s not super-impressive, maybe it’s exciting for the average user? Manton relates his recent attempts to write a new app in SwiftUI, which leads to an assessment of whether SwiftUI is ready for prime-time on iOS and/or Mac. Finally, they talk about whether we’re all propelling towards a web-only future, and whether that might be just fine.
Election Day! Daniel and Manton talk about early voting, political outcomes, and the impacts of those outcomes on our professional ambitions. Then they switch topics to the Mac, with Apple’s new hardware and what Daniel purchased. Finally, they talk about the incentive AI provides for ever-more-powerful computing resources, and take stock of our personal responsibility for conservation.
Daniel and Manton talk about upcoming changes we might see to the Mac product line. They review the state of social networks including Bluesky’s new funding and user growth. Finally, how much money is enough and is it a failure if you don’t constantly seek more?
Trademarking Micro.blog, how to appeal trademark rejections, and whether to get a lawyer. Manton and Daniel talk about whether it’s important to invest in protecting your trademark from the get-go. They discuss Automattic’s control of the .blog domain, whether it poses a risk to Manton, and Manton considering rebranding to de-emphasize the “micro” aspect of his platform. Plus a quick mention of Automattic and WP Engine, which also revolves around trademarks.
Daniel talks about his recent updates to Black Ink, for both Mac and iOS. He and Manton compare notes about updating icons for iOS 18 to support Dark and Tinted home screen modes. They talk about application versioning, again!, and the virtue of choosing to do things one way sometimes just because it’s right. They react to recent speculation about the identity of the inventor of Bitcoin, and whether it’s responsible for anybody to make such allegations. Finally, they talk a bit more about AI, what it means for the future of programming, and it’s impact on the world’s approach to manufacturing energy.
