marcoarment

marcoarment, 10 months ago to random

Can we please pronounce it “ten”

marcoarment, 11 months ago to random

America was founded on the promise of freedom and equal rights for all.

In reality, this has always been unevenly applied. Freedom is a constant battle, and everyone’s rights are FAR from equal.

The most American thing we can do is to keep pushing hard for freedom, liberty, and truly equal rights for EVERYONE.

marcoarment, 7 months ago to random

This new Slack redesign is great if you hate screen space, clarity, contrast, ease of use, information hierarchy, messages, channels, and communication

marcoarment, 10 months ago to random

Linode/Akamai has notified me that they're forcing an offline migration of one of my primary databases within 48 hours.

In the middle of a week.

It'll cause ~8 hours of complete Overcast downtime if I don't bring up a new instance and migrate everything over myself by then.

And this server costs 20% more than it did a year ago.

The Akamai acquisition of Linode has not improved anything for Linode's customers, as far as I can tell. So far, we're just paying more for equal or worse service.

marcoarment, 2 months ago to random

If I ran a website that supported Google-account login, I'd be pretty pissed at how they're suddenly putting up an obnoxious overlay over my site's layout.

Why is this not bothering more people? Does anyone give a shit about their websites anymore?

Does Google?

marcoarment, 27 days ago to random

"The iPad Pro doesn’t need to run macOS, but the answer to why an iPad Pro can’t do something a Mac can do, shouldn’t be to carry two kinds of computers with the same M-series chips, with the same RAM, with the same storage, and do different things on each.”
https://duck.haus/@joesteel/112448850000669090

marcoarment, 5 months ago to random

A social network’s best days are not when we’re using it mostly to talk about another social network.

marcoarment, 7 months ago to random

Netflix has raised prices more frequently in the last few years than I've found a great new show on Netflix.

marcoarment, 7 months ago to random

ok look I know this is really stupid and pedantic, but come on, we’ve had 26 years to learn this

It's Wi-Fi

not Wifi or WiFi or wifi or wi fi

Wi-Fi. Hyphenated. Both words capitalized.

thank you for coming to my ted talk

(while you're here, “log in" is two words when being used as a verb… your login button or link should not say "login”, because the action they take is to "log in”)

marcoarment, 7 months ago to random

We make fun of other companies' poor product-naming choices, but are we really doing that much better over here in Apple-land?

This glorious paragraph had to be in a product announcement's press release — in the main body text!

marcoarment, 10 months ago to random

Huge congrats to @caseyliss for shipping Callsheet, a great new iOS app for quickly looking up movies, shows, actors, crew, etc.

It's the same info you'd go to IMDB for, but WAY, WAY faster and nicer. No ads, no garbage, fully native, and FAST FAST FAST.

App Store: https://apps.apple.com/app/id1672356376

Press:

https://www.caseyliss.com/2023/8/7/callsheet

https://9to5mac.com/2023/08/07/callsheet-app-iphone-cast-and-crew-data/

https://www.cultofmac.com/825004/casey-liss-callsheet-interview/

https://www.macstories.net/reviews/callsheet-provides-movie-and-tv-details-with-an-uncluttered-native-interface/

marcoarment, 7 months ago to random

The Humane press tour touts a story about the founders having two product concepts — a "women's health device" and the Ai Pin — then a series of men ignoring the former (of course) and saying they should definitely pursue the latter.

Let this be a lesson to you all…

marcoarment, 7 months ago to random

Pretty sure I get brew update vs. brew upgrade wrong even more frequently than inserting a Micro-USB cable the wrong way.

marcoarment, 1 year ago to random

Great things to do THIS week instead of next:

• Prepare test devices with a test Apple ID to run the betas

• Decide which devices will stay on iOS 16/watchOS 9/etc. (keeping in mind that Watches cannot downgrade!)

• Start wearing your test watch to collect health data if applicable (thx @_Davidsmith)

• Create a new version of your app in App Store Connect, and get its first build through TestFlight approval, so you can quickly issue another build next week if beta 1 breaks your app

marcoarment, 1 year ago to random

Blackbird, my Swift-async SQLite wrapper, has graduated from alpha-don't-use-it status.

It's now beta-so-be-careful status!

Blackbird's design principles:

• Prioritize speed of development over all else.
• No code generation.
• No schema definitions.
• Automatic migrations.
• Async by default.
• Use Swift’s type system and key-paths instead of strings whenever possible.

GitHub:
https://github.com/marcoarment/Blackbird

Swift Package Index:
https://swiftpackageindex.com/marcoarment/Blackbird

marcoarment, 1 year ago to random

This might be my favorite SwiftUI error-garbage I've ever seen

marcoarment, 7 months ago to random

The Humane Ai Pin introduction video is… bizarre. https://hu.ma.ne/

Super low-energy, low production value, and the first few minutes are a list of shortcomings and what it doesn't do before they tell us anything positive or demonstrate any features.

Are they trying to succeed? This vibe almost feels like they ran out of steam and are hoping to be acquired so they don't need to go through with it.

marcoarment, 7 months ago to random

“Even Marco Arment, who slapped together much of the basic inner-workings of [Tumblr], has lived something like five distinct internet lives since he left the company well over a decade ago.”

https://tedium.co/2023/11/09/digital-media-downsizing-jezebel-vice-tumblr/

(“Slapped together”? Come on… well, it WAS hectic and very challenging and there was tons of pressure and I was 25… I guess that’s not that far off.)

marcoarment, 6 months ago to random

Amazon AI-generated review summary for a printer:

“Customers are divided about the size, value, color, ease of use, performance, quality, and speed of the printer. They mention that it's a great product and that it can print a lot of things.”

Helpful…

marcoarment, 6 months ago to random

SwiftUI's .accessibilityRepresentation { … } is fantastic!

I built a custom slider from SwiftUI primitives (roundrects, drag gesture, etc.), and didn't have to try to match the native Slider's accessibility mechanics — I could just put a real slider in like this:

MyCustomSlider(…)
.accessibilityRepresentation {
Slider(…)
}

marcoarment, 3 months ago to random

Never buy anything from Dyson's website.

Never, ever, ever, ever.

Been fighting with them to resolve a duplicate order (from their website crashing) since Black Friday. They've had the return since January 4. I still don't have a refund. (Just filed a chargeback. I hate doing that.)

I've lost HOURS to this. I've never seen a company with such poor basic service.

marcoarment, 7 months ago to random

Feels great to build something right now.

Blackbird, my SQLite wrapper for Swift, now supports full-text search (FTS5): https://github.com/marcoarment/Blackbird

marcoarment, 1 month ago to random

The entire Mac processor and display lineup: "Shit.”

marcoarment, 15 days ago to random

My favorite thing about tethering is

nothing

nothing is my favorite thing about tethering

Please, cellular Macs already!

(Today's anti-favorite: if the phone loses reception for even a moment — common on trains! — it disconnects tethering and never reconnects. You're just offline until you notice. Then you need to reconnect from the Mac's Wi-Fi menu again, after waiting for the option to become available, a process that's almost as slow as dialing up your ISP with a modem in the 1900s.)

marcoarment, 1 month ago to random

It's absolutely possible. But millions of people had strong reasons to use iPhones even before there were any apps, and then also before the apps were plentiful or compelling.

The customers were already there.

The challenge Apple faces with AVP is getting enough people to buy (and keep using) a device type that they weren't already buying (headsets), which is VERY expensive and limited, to accumulate enough customers for the content and software ecosystem to develop.
https://mas.to/@DrewTheLoud/112276696057829298