Manton and Daniel compare notes after Apple’s March, 2022 special event. Manton isn’t super-excited, but Daniel celebrates that “The Mac Company” is back. Manton talks about his trip to Portland for Micro Camp, and announces that he is publishing the complete DRAFT of his Indie Microblogging book.
Many thanks to our sponsor this week:
- TextExpander: Communicate Smarter. Listeners get 20% off their first year.
Links:
- March 8 Apple Event – Apple’s recap page about the special event.
- Micro.camp – Virtual gathering for the Micro.blog community.
- Jean MacDonald – Community Manager of Micro.blog and sometime spur of Manton Reece’s productivity.
- Indie Microblogging – Manton published a complete draft of his book!
- Manton’s Video – Manton shares an update on his Kickstarter where he updates supporters on the status of the book.
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March 11, 2022 at 11:17 pm.
Daniel tells Manton about finally leaving FogBugz and going deep on Help Scout and GitHub Issues. Meanwhile Manton has also finished his migration to Help Scout! They talk about their mutual satisfaction with Help Scout and about how to best manage GitHub Issues.
Many thanks to our sponsor this week:
Links:
- Help Scout – Web-based Help Desk management software that Manton and Daniel have both switched to.
- GitHub Issues – The ticket-tracking system built in to GitHub.
- Mathew Patterson – Erstwhile Campaign Monitor employee who now works for Help Scout.
- Keep Customers Coming Back – Help Scout sings the virtues of following up with customers after making improvements.
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March 3, 2022 at 9:31 pm.
Manton talks to Daniel about his decision to switch from Zendesk to Help Scout, and gets Daniel excited about the prospect of finally switching away from FogBugz for his own work.
No sponsor this week! Please consider sponsoring us, or asking your employer to do so.
Links:
- FogBugz: Daniel’s current help desk and issue tracking system.
- Zendesk: Manton’s current help desk system.
- Freshdesk: A help desk system considered by Daniel.
- Help Scout: The help desk system Manton is switching to, and that Daniel is intrigued by.
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February 20, 2022 at 6:29 pm.
Daniel and Manton talk about the specifics of Apple’s attempted compliance with the Netherlands’s new dating app requirements. They express their continuing disappointment with Apple’s apparent disdain for developers, and their surprise at the poor management of the situation on the PR front. Daniel talks about finally moving from Mercurial to Git and the advantages of standardizing on technologies that have “clearly won.”
Many thanks to our sponsor this week:
Links:
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February 13, 2022 at 8:01 pm.
Manton and Daniel celebrate their 500th episode by looking back at several arbitrarily chosen episodes spanning the history of the show. They remark about the things that have changed, the things that have stayed the same, and their surprise that certain events happened when they did. They wrap up the episode with a discussion about their satisfaction with going full-time as indie developers, and unlikelihood that they will go back to “real jobs” any time soon.
Many thanks to our sponsor this week:
- TextExpander: Communicate Smarter. Listeners get 20% off their first year.
Links:
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February 6, 2022 at 5:01 pm.
Daniel declares to Manton that he is finally starting to feel comfortable as an iOS developer, and looking forward to shipping Black Ink for iOS. Manton, meanwhile, is getting more interested in ReactNative as a means to possibly porting Epilogue to Android.
They talk about the virtue of venturing into unfamiliar technologies, waiting to get over the learning curve, and adapting what you like about other technologies back to your favorite platforms. Finally, they talk about the value of embracing “essential tools” and about what distinguishes an essential tool from a merely useful one.
Many thanks to our sponsor this week:
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January 27, 2022 at 9:27 pm.
Manton and Daniel talk about Apple’s response to South Korea’s legal requirement that they support 3rd party payment processing in the App Store, and whether Apple’s insistence that it continue to be paid a cut is realistic. They also talk about what has changed since the early days of the App Store with respect to Apple’s sense of entitlement to a share of all revenue earned on its platforms.
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Links:
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January 23, 2022 at 12:03 am.
Daniel and Manton talk about the persistent allure of finding a better bank, weighed against the daunting tedium of successfully shutting down an existing account. Then they talk about Apple’s AirTags, the growing controversy about how “bad guys” are using them, and whether Apple should discontinue the product or mitigate the risks of continuing to sell them.
Many thanks to our sponsor this week:
Links:
- Wise – The international money-changer formally known as TransferWise.
- Mercury Bank – Banking services for businesses with an emphasis on free wire and ACH transfers.
- Stripe – Payment processing company with a beloved API.
- Setapp – Mac and iOS app subscription service which includes MarsEdit.
- Backblaze – A good remote backup service that nonetheless earned Manton’s wrath.
- Wordle – The web-based word puzzle game taking the world by storm.
- Letterle – Parody of Wordle in which you guess one letter.
- Sweardle – Parody of Wordle based on profane 4-letter words.
- AirTag – Apple’s general-purpose tracking device.
- Responsible – Nick Heer writes about Apple’s AirTags and the ways people abuse them.
- Tile – Predecessor to and ostensible competitor of AirTags.
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January 14, 2022 at 10:34 pm.
Manton and Daniel open the new year with more talk about increasing productivity and focusing on the tasks that are most important to us. They talk about the merits of “settling for good enough” as a valuable thing both in life and, more pertinently, in shipping software or completing any creative works.
Many thanks to our sponsor this week:
- TextExpander: Communicate Smarter. Listeners get 20% off their first year.
Links:
- 4000 Weeks – The book by Oliver Burkeman that Daniel is reading.
- Personal Kanban – The methodology evidently at the root of the “three slots” attention management system.
- Basecamp – Software that prompts Manton weekly to ask what he’s going to work on.
- Epilogue – Manton’s book tracking app for Micro.blog
- The Starry Night – Wikipedia page on the famous Van Gogh painting.
Links:
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January 8, 2022 at 8:28 pm.
Daniel and Manton take a light look forward to 2022, veer off into a discussion about their respective math skills, and end up talking philosophically about the limits of time and how we need to choose to spend our time on the things that matter most to us.
Many thanks to our sponsor this week:
- Linode: Instantly deploy and manage an SSD server in the Linode Cloud. New accounts get a $100 credit.
Links:
- The Dip – Seth Godin’s book on time management.
- 4000 weeks – Book that Daniel is reading about time management.
- Micro.blog – Manton’s microblogging service.
- Claude Monet – “It should have been a little more green”
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December 31, 2021 at 10:36 pm.
