Stream

Everything else

  • Focus

    January 17, 2020 2 min read

    <p>As apps deviate further and further away from the HIG with custom UI, whether for design reasons or in the pursuit of a mythical, cross-platform code base that management thinks will cost less, we lose the benefits of a well reasoned platform that was formerly easy to work with and a joy to use.</p>

  • Running commands remotely on a Mac that you don’t have access to using Hazel and Dropbox

    January 7, 2020 6 min read

    <p>...I'm just glad I'm to the point in my nerd existence where I can be happy applying a fix and not caring about the real underlying issues that don't concern me.</p>

  • Rebudget

    January 2, 2020 4 min read

    If you’ve been following along at home, you might remember that I started building a Mac app for managing my personal finances last April. Think of it as a powerful, privacy-focused, native alternative to Mint.com. Quicken, but not awful. Since then, I’ve helped shipped a huge redesign to the app at my 9-5 job as […]

  • Subscriptions or Bust

    December 12, 2019 13 min read

    <p>For a small software company whose product really is the app - as opposed to a SaaS with a companion app, or some other type of business that can bankroll an app by virtue of their real source of revenue - I don't see any other sustainable path forward than subscriptions.</p>

  • Making Siri Shortcuts run automatically – even when iOS doesn’t want you to

    December 3, 2019 7 min read

    <p>Let's talk about something fun and related to my new obsession with Siri Shortcuts and CarPlay. Namely, how to trick iOS into running Shortcut automations that the OS doesn't typically allow you to do.</p>

  • Triage Your Email in the Car with Siri

    November 24, 2019 5 min read

    <p>With this script, Siri will speak a summary of your unread emails and then allow you to take action on each individual message. You can listen to the full email body. Or, you can archive, delete, mark as spam, mark as read or unread, and send a reply.</p>

  • Rebecca Stand and the phone reason

    November 18, 2019 4 min read

    If you saw my tweet from earlier today then you’ll already know the punchline to this particular bug report. But for those of you who don’t follow my every dumb online comment, I present to you the strangest corner case I’ve come across in fifteen years of professional development. The app I work on during […]

  • Gone

    November 5, 2019 4 min read

    So, uhhhh. This isn’t good. I really hope I’m just confused and not sounding a false alarm, but… Back in April I wrote a quick post about how I was backing up the shared iCloud Photo albums that my friends and family all use to send pictures and videos of our kids back and forth. […]

  • Perfectly Cropped

    October 17, 2019 3 min read

    Here’s a fun, personal story about what can go wrong in an otherwise fine UI when things are redesigned. My wife typically only charges her phone when she’s at her desk during the day. She doesn’t leave it plugged in overnight, which means iOS’s software update never happens automatically for her. So, she just recently […]

  • Feels like the future

    October 16, 2019 2 min read

    Nick Heer writes about AirPods at Pixel Envy: It’s also the category of tech products that, I think, comes closest to feeling futuristic today I’ve never managed to phrase it like that in my head, but that’s exactly my feelings, too. For two reasons: One: AirPods are a damn marvel of technology and miniaturization. They’re […]