The Irony of the App Store

Why is Inkwell stuck in review:

I submitted Inkwell for iOS to Apple for review on April 21st. It has gone through numerous rejections, code changes, resubmissions, clarifications, one phone call, and one appeal to the review board, which I’m still waiting to hear back on.

What a bizarre yet expected journey for a small developer trying hard to secure a little place in the App Store sun. I wish Manton a sooner-than-later resolution to this matter. It would be sad to see such a nice, little, and useful app not make it to the App Store. An app that can exist because of the open web, but can hardly live on a closed platform. How ironic. 😔

When Does Using Tools Become Laziness?

Yesterday, I was criticized for adding an AI-powered feature to my Microblog frontend. It was suggested that, since AI can generate blog post titles, I might appear lazy. I explained that I’m not a native English speaker and sometimes need help with writing. Is that really wrong? For those using spell checkers and grammar checkers, are they lazy, too? At what point do the tools we choose to develop and utilize indicate our laziness?

Bye Bye Grammarly?

Apple Expanding AI Writing Tools With Grammar Checker in iOS 27:

Apple is planning to introduce a dedicated AI grammar checker for Writing Tools that will work like Grammarly. When writing in Messages, Mail, and other apps there will be a translucent menu that slides up from the bottom of the iPhone’s screen, and it will show suggested revisions next to the original written text.

I feel Grammarly is a hack and offers spotty integration with apps like Craft. For something like writing and text editing, Apple has always been ahead of the pack compared to Windows. It’s time for a complete system-level solution.

Shortcuts AI

iOS 27 to Let Users Generate Wallpapers and Build Shortcuts With AI — MacRumors

Bloomberg says the Shortcuts app has a prompt that says “What do you want your shortcut to do?” with a text field to enter a description. Shortcuts that are created using AI are then automatically installed and immediately available for use.

If true, I can’t wait to try it out! Shortcuts are out of reach for me. Too complicated, bad editing experience. With AI, this could flip the table and make them usable for me!

AI Data Centers Are Deeply Unpopular, Across the Political Spectrum, John Gruber’s comment:

It’s hard to overstate how unpopular this polling paints AI data centers. It’s just an absolute messaging and marketing disaster for the entire tech industry.

In case you missed it: I’ve been working in IT and data center-related tech and projects for more than three decades. Not all data centers are meant to host AI-related stuff. But the trend is clear: it’s becoming harder and harder to find general-purpose data centers… why? Because hosting AI is much more profitable per square-foot. Like Gruber said: Money talks.

Seizing Triggers to Reconsider

I struggle with my current AI usage because I frequently reach my token limit1. I see two options: upgrade to a bigger plan2 or use the limit as a signal to shift my approach—try something different or adopt a new strategy in real-time. A few years back, I didn’t rely on AI at all for my creative work. Now, with AI’s vast potential, I have found new creative possibilities that depend on it, so it’s hard not to upgrade or buy more.

  1. I’m currently a Claude subscriber only, nothing else. I’m also hitting the very low free-tier limit of ChatGPT. ↩︎

  2. Or restart my ChatGPT subscription in addition to Claude’s. I would use both for different needs. ↩︎

I Love Dashboards

Continuing my experiment with using my Craft Daily notes, I discovered and experimented with Claude Cowork Live Artifacts. These are interactive HTML-based dashboards that can be automatically updated on a schedule or on demand. This one is built using the Craft Daily notes data and presented inside Claude Cowork. I already have a big dashboard that I have created and hosted on Vercel, so it’s a different approach, a much more expensive approach because Claude Cowork consumes tokens after each update.

Playing With The Digital World

Since last year, I’ve been tracking my daily creative activities using Craft Daily Notes. Today, I tried out Claude AI and asked it to create a visual timeline for a specific day (yesterday in this case). Pretty interesting, isn’t it? Useful? I’m uncertain. I enjoy experimenting with digital tools and AI; it really elevates the experience. The challenge is to automate this and have a consistent format from day to day.

Internet in 2026: Closed Platforms

I experimented this weekend with the YouTube APIs to realize how much the platform limits the exposure of its features. It’s a shame and reflects what the internet has become nowadays: a collection of private gardens.

Above all that, the setup of the APIs in Google Cloud seems obscure and unintuitive to me. Luckily, I always have Claude AI nearby to help me.