Episode 616: A Right Way to Do Things

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.

Many thanks to our sponsor this week:

Links:

  • Furbo.org – Home page of Craig Hockenberry.
  • Iconfactory – Craig’s app-development and design company.
  • Retrobatch – Mac-based app for image workflow automation by Flying Meat.
  • Gus Mueller – Founder/developer of Flying Meat.
  • You Know It’s There – Steve Jobs quote in a 1985 Playboy interview about craftsmanship in furniture.
  • Really Satoshi Nakamoto? – Article by CoinMarketCap about the HBO documentary alleging his true identity.
  • Nostr – Cryptocurrency-heavy social network.
  • ChatGPT – The well-known large language model AI service.
  • Claude.ai – https://claude.ai/
  • Artifacts – A post from Anthropic about Claude.ai’s Artifacts feature.
  • Canvas – OpenAI’s new feature, similar to Artifacts.
  • Three Mile Island Will Reopen – NPR article about the reopening of the famous nuclear power plant.
  • Three Mile Island Accident – US Government breakdown of the 1979 incident at the plant.

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October 11, 2024 at 8:53 pm.

Episode 615: Fancy Glasses

Manton talks to Daniel about his Daniel’s latest experience trying to use his Apple Vision Pro. They react to Meta’s Orion glasses demo, and wonder how much of a threat, if any they’ll be to Apple. They consider the possibility that accessories like glasses should be tethered to a phone, as a high-performance, expensive piece of hardware the customer has already bought. Finally, whatever happened to Google’s interest in AR Glasses?

Links:

  • Introducing Orion – Facebook’s blog post announcing their new augmented reality glasses.
  • Orion and Reality Labs – Ben Thompson interviews Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth about the new technologies.
  • Ray-Ban Meta Glasses – Meta’s less ambitious glasses, in collaboration with Ray-Ban.
  • Meta Quest – Meta’s considerable cheaper, lower-tech alternative to Apple Vision Pro.
  • Shipping vs. Shipping – The Talk Show episode 410 featuring Jason Snell.

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October 8, 2024 at 11:25 pm.

Episode 614: 500 Thumbs Down

Daniel and Manton talk about the community drama and impending fiasco of WordPress and Matt Mullenweg vs. WP Engine. They weigh the arguments of either side. Then they consider the larger issue of dependencies we have on the platforms we develop for, and how we strive for independence from platforms that can make or break our business.

Download Audio (MP3, 39 minutes)

Many thanks to our sponsor this week:

Links:

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September 30, 2024 at 2:29 pm.

Episode 613: Extremely Fiddly

Daniel and Manton talk about the latest releases of iOS 18 and macOS Sequoia, and the confusion of macOS versioning with the switch from 10.15 to 11. They explore new iOS features like home screen customization. Then Daniel describes the change in macOS Sequoia to limit keyboard shortcuts that use only the option key.

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Links:

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September 20, 2024 at 3:42 pm.

Episode 612: Let’s Just Say I’m Skeptical

Daniel talks to Manton about the new iPhones, whether they’re buying one or not, and the pros and cons of pickup vs. delivery. They discuss the merit of AppleCare+ particular for iPhones. They consider the new Camera Control button and whether it’s likely to be a “dud” or not.
Daniel and Manton going for the new phones, whether to buy AppleCare+ or not. Finally, they consider the possibility that the new AirPods hardware is feature-locked by software, and whether it’s ethical to charge customers more for features built-in to a hardware device.

Many thanks to our sponsor this week:

Links:

  • Apple Event – Apple’s latest product announcement video featuring iPhone 16 and Apple Watch Series 10.
  • µBrowser – Web browsing app for Apple Watch.
  • Minimized Embiggening – Accidental Tech Podcast episode discussing the possibility of Apple selling software-limited hardware.
  • iFixit – Repair-it-yourself site famous for its hardware teardown.

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September 16, 2024 at 1:31 pm.

Episode 611: Do Not Hallucinate

Manton and Daniel talk about the upcoming Apple special event where new iPhones are expected to be announced. They talk about their respective likelihoods of buying one, and remark on the diminishing importance of smallness in a phone’s physical design. They discuss the nascent Apple Intelligence features in macOS and iOS betas, the general competitive state of AI services, and the virtue of being able to easily switch from one hosted AI services provider to another.

Links:

  • Apple Event – Watch live at 10 a.m. Pacific Time.
  • What to Expect – The Verge’s rundown of anticipated announcements.
  • Apple Intelligence – Apple’s product marketing page for Apple Intelligence.
  • Priority Phishing Email – Cabel Sasser shares his experience with Apple’s AI misclassifying a scam email.
  • Claude – ChatGPT competitor from Anthropic.
  • Prompt Engineering – OpenAI documentation on improving the effectiveness of AI prompts.
  • Apple’s Pre-Prompts – MacRumors reports on the uncovering of OS-bundled prompts in Apple’s apps.
  • Claude’s Pre-Prompts – Documentation from Anthropic about the specific prompts they preload their AI products with.
  • Llama 3 – Open-source LLM software from Meta.
  • xAI Rush in Memphis – Manton’s post about Elon Musk’s huge AI server center in Tennessee.

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September 7, 2024 at 8:21 pm.

Episode 610: Reinventing the 90s

Daniel and Manton talk about the Overcast redesign and customers getting upset about changes to workflows they are used to. Manton gives an update on his new text editor and early bugs. And finally, the current state of SwiftUI and how to decide when to start from scratch with a new framework.

Download Audio (MP3, 36 minutes)

Many thanks to our sponsor this week:

Links:

  • Overcast rewrite announcement — Marco’s blog post on the 10-year anniversary of the app.
  • ATP 602 — Latest episode with update on Overcast changes.
  • Help Scout — Customer support email software that Daniel and Manton both use.

August 31, 2024 at 6:16 pm.

Episode 609: Accidentally Opt-In

Manton and Daniel discuss closed platforms vs. more open platforms, Apple’s new EU rules around linking for external purchases, and Patreon’s option to pass Apple’s fee on to creators or patrons. Then, a coding update on Manton’s work on a new text editor for Micro.blog, comparing and contrasting with MarsEdit’s text editor.

Download Audio (MP3, 46 minutes)

Many thanks to our sponsor this week:

Links:

August 17, 2024 at 3:19 pm.

Episode 608: They’re Not the Underdogs

Daniel and Manton talk about the U.S. Government’s anti-trust verdict against Google, and consider the impact it may have on browser vendors such as Apple and Mozilla. They discuss the slow rollout of Apple’s beta Apple Intelligence features, and bemoan the lack of extensibility and integration points for developers. Finally, they talk about how increasingly locked down computing platforms are diminishing the ability for the diverse population of developers to push the limits of said platforms.

Links:

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August 9, 2024 at 7:49 pm.

Episode 607: How Spoiled We Are

Daniel and Manton talk about the CrowdStrike fiasco, Daniel’s narrow escape from traveling chaos, and the resilience of people during an emergency. They wonder how a company whose overt value is to protect you from outages can survive a catastrophic failure? They also chat about OpenAI’s recently announced SearchGPT, and the potential it may have to disrupt Google. Will all future search engines use AI? Finally, they consider the potential for a future where search engines are freemium and ad free. Many thanks to our sponsor this week: Links:
  • CrowdStrike – Article on the Verge about the worldwide software failure.
  • 1Password – Popular cross-platform password management software.
  • LastPass – Verge article about LastPass’s security breaches.
  • SearchGPT – OpenAI’s prototype phase AI-assisted search engine.
  • Perplexity – Popular AI-assisted search engine.
  • Kagi – Ad-free search engine.
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July 27, 2024 at 5:20 pm.