A New Foursquare Is Born

I’m making great progress with my new web app. It’s already 90% feature complete and ready for my next trip to Paris, starting next week. When I started this project, I had a fairly clear idea of what I wanted, but as I made progress, it became easy to experiment with new features I didn’t think would even be possible. One such feature is the ability to securely share my check-ins publicly so you can follow me! It’s my only custom-built web app with a public-facing view.

La Sagrada Familia is now complete. When I visited the basilica in 2014, after a few moments inside, I simply cried. So beautiful. I’m happy to see this monumental architectural masterpiece completed.

On *OS 27 Betas

I’ve been rather silent since the release of Apple’s latest major betas, except for a few reaction blips. While I love the new iOS 27 and iPadOS 27, I cannot install macOS 27 beta. Installation always fails at the very end of the download process. Go figure. 🤷🏻‍♂️

iOS 27 Liquid Glass is what it should have been from the start. Oh, and the speed and stability on my iPhone 15 Pro Max prove to be the best fest beta ever. I’m still waiting on the Siri AI waiting list.

Mac mini Canada: 52 configurations, one clear winner

If you’re shopping for a Mac mini in Canada right now, the Apple Store configurator is both powerful and opaque. It shows you one combination at a time, with no easy way to compare shipping wait times across the full lineup. So I decided to do something about it.

Using Claude’s browser automation tools, I navigated the Apple Canada store programmatically, cycling through every possible Mac mini configuration: all 52 of them, spanning two chips (M4 and M4 Pro), two CPU/GPU variants, two memory tiers, five storage options, and two Ethernet speeds. I captured the live price and shipping lead time for each one directly from the store. No guessing, no third-party data. Everything you see was pulled in real time from apple.com/ca.

The result is the reference table below. The headline finding is blunt: if you want a Mac mini without a long wait, your options are narrow. Only the base M4 model ships in 3 to 4 weeks. Upgrade almost anything (memory, storage, Ethernet, or chip), and you’re looking at 10 to 12 weeks. The Mac mini may be Apple’s most configurable desktop, but right now it’s also one of its hardest to get quickly.

Google’s Gemini Mac App Is Native, in a Distinctly Google Way, But Annoyingly Presumptuous, but John Gruber had this to say:

(Sidenote: The Gemini Mac app is a native Mac app, but it is … weird. Gus Mueller poked around at it and found that it’s the product of a Java-to-Objective-C converter that Google made, and much of it was originally written for Android.)

A trillion dollars company can’t make great Mac app, i.e. native Mac app. 🤢 Pass.