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.
Many thanks to our sponsor this week:
Links:
- Blinksale – Invoicing SaaS that Manton used for 16 years.
- Micro.blog – Manton’s microblogging service.
- Write.as – A service that offered a 5-year subscription plan.
- Stripe Invoicing – Comparable service to Blinksale from the popular payment processor.
- Braintree – A payment processing service owned by PayPal.
- Shopify – Payment processing that focuses on full-service hosted intefaces.
- wooCommerce – Automattic’s WordPress-based eCommerce service.
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August 12, 2022 at 7:53 pm.
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.
Many thanks to our sponsor this week:
Links:
- Blinksale – A super simple invoicing company that was even simpler for Manton than it was for new users.
- Netflix – Video streaming service that Daniel and Manton both like enough to not really know how much they pay.
- Our First Price Change – Slack announces oddly precise pricing increases, and a change of its terms for free accounts.
- MarsEdit 4.6 – Daniel’s blog post about the latest release of his Mac blogging app.
- Out-Heart the Competition – Video of Daniel’s 2015 talk about embracing competitors.
- React Native – Popular framework from Facebook that Manton is adopting for Micro.blog.
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August 3, 2022 at 3:32 pm.
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.
Many thanks to our sponsor this week:
Links:
July 27, 2022 at 5:53 pm.
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.
No sponsor this week! OMG WTF BBQ. Please sponsor us. Thx.
Links:
- Where Software Goes to Live – IgniteTech blog post about FogBugz’s transition from DevGraph to IgniteTech.
- Trello – Project management software that started within Fog Creek Software.
- Glitch – Another company that started within Fog Creek.
- ZenDesk – The support desk software that Manton used to use.
- HelpScout – The support desk software that both Manton and Daniel now use.
- Rich Siegel – Developer of BBEdit and another FogBugz customer.
- dumpbugz – Daniel’s open source scripts for archiving FogBugz content.
- Blinksale – Web-based invoicing app that Manton uses.
- 37signals – A famous web development company.
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July 23, 2022 at 3:15 am.
Daniel and Manton react to Elon Musk’s attempt to back out of acquiring Twitter. They talk about whether Twitter should even try to force him to follow through, or whether that is ultimately worse for the company. Is Twitter still a diamond in the rough, and could a leader with vision and enthusiasm make the company more valuable than Musk’s offer?
Many thanks to our sponsor this week:
Links:
- Musk Backs Out – Bloomberg article about Elon Musk’s announcement that he wants out of the deal.
- This Whole Ugly Episode – Hot take on Twitter acquisition fiasco from ex-CEO Ev Williams.
- Trash the Company – Article about Twitter’s lawsuit against, and condemnation of Musk.
- Stratechery – Ben Thompson’s newsletter, which included a thoughtful piece about Musk backing out.
- Twitter CEO Needs to Go – Om Malik’s article in April arguing that Parag Agarwal is the wrong choice for CEO.
- New Decade, New Ideas – Ev Williams announces his resignation as CEO of Medium.
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July 15, 2022 at 8:51 pm.
Manton and Daniel talk about Panic’s Playdate game system, the audaciousness of building a novel hardware device, and whether or not “What Would Panic Do” should still apply to most of us. They celebrate the thrill and joy of pursuing “weird” ambitions when you want to. Finally, they talk about their own tendencies to work on multiple projects of personal interest, and how much they should strive to avoid spreading themselves too thin.
Many thanks to our sponsor this week:
Links:
- Playdate – Panic’s hand-held video game system.
- What Would Panic Do? – Gus Mueller of Flying Meat’s article about becoming an indie developer.
- Dave Hayden – Panic developer who is largely responsible for the hardware design of Playdate.
- Pulp – Panic’s web-based development interface for Playdate.
- The Story of Playdate – Christa Mrgan of Panic reveals the history of the device’s development.
- Panic Goods – Resting place for Panic’s erstwhile t-shirt business.
- Nova – Panic’s Mac app for developing web sites.
- Transmit – Panic’s file transfer app for Mac.
- First Crash – Manton’s blog post about testing @cheesemaker’s app on Playdate.
- The Future of Unison – Panic’s 2014 post announcing the end of development for their Usenet newsreader app.
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Daniel talks to Manton about his continuing work to transition MarsEdit away from legacy WebView, the difficulty of doing so, and the thrill of becoming a “tangential expert” in web development. They react to a small rift in the WordPress community involving Matt Mullenweg and Go Daddy, and compare thoughts on what obligations, if any, consumers of open source software have to the creators.
Many thanks to our sponsor this week:
Links:
- Paste and Match Style – Federico Viticci describes several approaches to remap the default behavior of the Paste command.
- Clipboard API – W3C working draft for web-based clipboard/pasteboard access.
- MDN – Mozilla site for web developers.
- An Existential Threat – WP Tavern article about Matt Mullenweg’s deleted statements about Go Daddy.
- Audrey – Matt Mullenweg’s personal venture investment company.
- About WP Tavern – History of the site describing Matt Mullenweg’s investment in the site.
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June 26, 2022 at 2:52 am.
Manton asks Daniel about hints he’s dropped regarding an upcoming MarsEdit 5 release. Daniel talks about how another 5 years has crept up on him and that he now feels another update is overdue. They talk about embracing relatively old Apple frameworks that are nonetheless new to us, and focusing on shipping updates with features that add value, even if they don’t fulfill every “magical” nuance you hoped they might.
No sponsor this week! OMG WTF BBQ. Please sponsor us. Thx.
Links:
- What’s new in WKWebView – WWDC session about changes in the main web-rendering view for iOS and Mac.
- WebView Deprecation – Apple’s suspension of the previously promised restriction on legacy WebView apps.
- NSTextFinder – Documentation for integrating with AppKit’s native find/replace functionality.
- iA Writer – Popular writing app that has recently added support for cross-document linking.
- VoodooPad – Venerable Mac app supporting notes with cross-referenced links.
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June 17, 2022 at 9:26 pm.
Daniel and Manton react to announcements at WWDC, and share pessimistic and optimistic takes about what the future of the in-person conference might be. Daniel celebrates the new WeatherKit API and its “generous” pricing, while Manton remains somewhat dismayed by Apple’s continued focus on earning money off of developers. Finally, they talk about Swift Charts as a possible blueprint for future SwiftUI frameworks, and Passkeys as the future of authentication on the web.
Many thanks to our sponsor this week:
Links:
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Daniel and Manton talk about expectations for next week’s WWDC, the way the Apple Design Awards have changed over the years, WWDC’s Digital Lounges, and hopes for Xcode debugging improvements.
Many thanks to our sponsor this week:
- TextExpander: Communicate Smarter. Listeners get 20% off their first year.
Links:
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