Daniel and Manton talk about the Meridian announcement, check-in apps, and the potential for a new “place marking” infrastructure. Daniel reiterates an earlier point on the podcast about how specialized features like Micro.blog’s bookshelves could be generalized for new types of data and workflows. Finally, Daniel pre-announces his new blogging app that is just for pizza posts. 🍕
Manton and Daniel talk about Daniel’s latest detour into working on new features for FastScripts, at the expense of other, possibly more pressing work. They discuss the merit of seeking out “quick wins”, while acknowledging the difficulty of predicting whether a goal will turn out to be a quick win or a huge time sink.
Daniel and Manton follow up on the iPhone 14, discussing who bought it and revisiting the different payment plans. Then they talk about the Micro.blog 3.0 for iOS beta release with a long detour into the TestFlight approval process and why it often feels ridiculous.
Manton and Daniel react to Apple’s latest event and compare notes about the potential impact on their wallets. They marvel at the production value of Apple’s many long videos, but wonder how much value they have, and whether they go too far in dramatizing customer catastrophes. They talk about their shared appreciation of the Apple Watch, and shared belief that Apple’s events are getting too long and boring.
Daniel and Manton talk about next week’s Apple event and the expected iOS and iPadOS releases, including Apple’s choice to withhold Stage Manager functionality from non-M1 iPads. Then they talk about 5G wireless and the advantages of Apple’s eSim support for using the second SIM to add data independently from your main plan.
Manton and Daniel catch up on their respectively busy vacation plans over recent weeks, and start looking forward to a more structured September schedule. Daniel shares his early progress on MarsEdit 5 development, while Manton talks about his experience converting a private blog from WordPress to Micro.blog, after first going all-in on the WordPress Block Editor, to understand how it works.
Daniel and Manton talk about Manton’s decision to cancel his Blinksale account, after 16 years of service. They weigh the relative value of the thousands of dollars paid as a fraction of the overall business conducted. They talk about Stripe’s increasing dominance in the world of financial services, and how they even offer a comparable invoicing product as a built-in feature.
Manton tells Daniel more about his experience with Blinksale, how they raised his monthly fee to account for features that he didn’t receive. They talk about our collective tendency as customers to lose track of the amount we are paying for subscription services that raise their prices regularly over time. Daniel explains that he shipped MarsEdit 4.6 but that it doesn’t include all the updates he hoped for, and they elaborate on the challenge of continuing to ship updates while perpetually having to put off certain changes.
Daniel and Manton talk about plans for MarsEdit 5, requiring a later version of macOS, and even employing SwiftUI in the new version. When is it the right time to drop support for older OSes because of the lure of newer features? Then they talk about when a major upgrade is “paid upgrade-worthy” and which platforms Daniel should invest in for MarsEdit’s future.
Manton and Daniel talk about the latest stage of FogBugz’s corporate ownership, the reaction among its few remaining users, and how happy Daniel is to have gotten out when he did. They ponder how important it is for any company to continually update their apps, as long as they continue to fulfill their primary purpose, and Manton makes a discovery about a long-time service he’d assumed was not receiving regular updates.
