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It's no wonder toolbars are so problematic on iOS/macOS 26 — just look how many states this goes through as you scroll

If this really is what we’re going to get as a shipping OS, I mean, come the fuck on.

One of a kind: manton.org

From a user standpoint, iOS 26 is fiiine. As a developer, though, this thing is shipping pretty broken. I feel like Apple has done the bare minimum to ensure that their own apps can get out the door and support their marketing, and tread water with the long tail of apps from the App Store that …

Did you know the Reduce Motion accessibility toggle dramatically *increases* the blur behind Liquid Glass elements? In fact, with this feature on, Liquid Glass looks way more like how it was demonstrated in the design sessions at WWDC. It also doesn’t actually reduce a whole lot of motion in the new …

After thinking about @marcoarment's comments, I've been debating dramatically scaling back my plans for iOS 26 to 'just' a visual update. Even still, I'm not confident updating the app with the new design language is going to leave users with a better experience than not-updating it. I feel like I …

Introducing Mythos Theme for Micro.blog: https://mattlangford.com/2025/08/22/introducing-mythos-theme.html mattlangford.com

Thunder. Indiana, August 2025 #aowsimages #photography #blackandwhite

The five things that were necessary before you could have podcasting: Blogging. HTTP. RSS. MP3. iPod. It's pretty simple, but this confluence eludes most tech people and journalists.

“Russia is turning occupied Ukraine into a giant military base” reports The Kyiv Independent today. From new launchpads for deep-strike drones in Donetsk to barracks built in former Black Sea resorts, occupation means that much of Ukraine “is already a Russian military base today.” Russia is a …

Another thing that has been bothering me is how, with every new release of Mac OS, the list of commands looks progressively more separated from the main menu label: https://mastodon.social/@sindresorhus/114817455492782483

No, #Apple has not destroyed Steve Jobs’ vision for the iPad https://victorwynne.com/vision-for-ipad/

The debate over whether LLMs are like calculators is mostly a distraction, for in any case calculation isn't a social activity. The ultimate goal of AI is to isolate us from our fellow humans in every way and every context, replacing them with artificial middlemen controlled by tech lords. Claude …

No means no, even for Perplexity · Victor Wynne When a website puts up a robots.txt file, it’s basically putting up a “No Solicitors” sign on their digital front door. It doesn’t matter if you’re selling Girl Scout cookies, collecting for charity, or claim you’re there to help the homeowner. The …

Not only did I exit Apple in February (My first computer in 1993 and all since were Apple made) I've started a program at my local library to help others exit big tech, save money and continue using older hardware. Computing without #Apple, #Google, #Microsoft is entirely possible. Using #GNU #Linux …

I gotta say, I’m not digging this white-on-white button motif in Liquid Glass. It looks buggy and unfinished. A little dated too: it reminds me of the late 2000’s when box-shadows were added to CSS 3 and websites were experimenting with using shadows as borders.

iOS 26: Everything You Need to Know About the Liquid Glass Redesign https://www.macrumors.com/guide/ios-26-liquid-glass/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=mastodon

New blog post: Tim Cook vs. Steve Jobs This may not be the blog post you expect from me. https://lapcatsoftware.com/articles/2025/8/2.html

There was something about the appearance of iOS 26 Safari WebViews I wasn’t too sure about, and now I know: there’s a material difference between the header and the web-page, but there’s nothing separating the two. No edge, no gradient. This looks unnatural and, dare I say, a little amateur. …

Knowing Louie like I know Louie, this ep of The Talk Show promises to be a good one. 👍 https://daringfireball.net/thetalkshow/2025/07/31/ep-428

The biggest 'problems' with Liquid Glass are almost entirely confined to two controls: tab bars, and toolbars. The blurry illegible content clashing with what's underneath, the flashing between light and dark — just two controls. When you think about it like that, it's hard to imagine them delaying …

macOS and iPadOS are definitely merging. macOS is looking more and more like iPadOS, and iPadOS is looking more and more like macOS.

1) Liquid Glass is beautiful 2) Real-world content is ugly I don't know that you can ever square that circle

To be completely honest with y'all, I'm feeling the same sense of dread about iOS 26 as I did with Stage Manager in iPadOS 16. And it's actually even worse, because design touches *everything* across platforms. The more time passes, the more I feel like the entire idea of Liquid Glass needs to be …

How ChatGPT interprets my blog:

New, on Morrick.​me — The cost of selfishness: https://morrick.me/archives/10097

Hey Elon Musk: Try using AI to help people instead of using people to help your AI company. https://machinesociety.ai/p/friends-dont-let-friends-make-friends-c3f

“When we are using social media, someone is reaping the rewards of our time. People are making money off of us. Be them advertisers or the CEOs of these platforms. Every tap, every video, every swipe is building and improving these platforms and their algorithms. As we use social media platforms, we …

I think AI in software will be a bit like CGI in movies. In the beginning it is all “look at these fancy new effects”. Eventually it is one part of a toolkit, and the best uses are the ones where it is so well integrated you don’t realize it is being used.

I’ve Got Better Things To Do Than This, and Yet

We've known for decades that translucency in UIs looks really cool, but is extremely difficult to design in a way that works with arbitrary content across versatile situations. With the glass-redesign rumors, many of us thought, “If anyone can do it, it's Apple! They must've finally solved it." They …

What I picture every flight headed to SFO for #WWDC25 looking like right now.

To learn more about Sky, here's @viticci with a walkthrough... https://www.macstories.net/stories/sky-for-mac-preview/ #Apple www.macstories.net

Sam and Jony and skepticism – Six Colors

Isn't it ironic that OpenAI has to pay billions of dollars for humans to design a device instead of just asking ChatGPT to design the device?

AI Age Brings The Biggest Acquhire

Apple Turnover

Apple Turnaround

Google created a NotebookLM notebook with everything they announced at Google I/O. So instead of slogging through thousands of hours of video and other content, you can just ask NotebookLM questions, listen to a podcast, or get a FAQ, etc. …

Use AI to reduce unnecessary difficulties, not to avoid essential effort:

Apple being petulant is unbecoming of a titan of their stature. Arguing in court in democratic countries is their right and is good. While they’re being combative that’s why we’ve built these systems and institutions. Playing silly buggers with judicial orders isn’t just obstinacy, it is thumbing …

Bill Gates writes about accelerating his plan to give away his wealth, winding down the Gates Foundation in 20 years: People will say a lot of things about me when I die, but I am determined that “he died rich” will not be one of them. There are too many urgent problems to solve for me to hold onto …

Employers: Everyone must return to the office, because we work best when people collaborate face-to-face. Also: We're going to replace everyone with A.I.

Connection isn’t just personal. It’s political.

Normal.

@numericcitizen I THINK this improvement is not so much new as now being more widely available .. I ask because I have always struggled with how micro blog book marks can really replace something like Raindrop .. but sounds like Manton has a process. I think it would be awesome to have a single …

Pssssst. So cool. 😎 https://usetapestry.com/connectors/ #TapestryApp

Delayed or not, Apple’s proposed Intents-based Apple Intelligence features require a ton of buy-in from developers for it to be of any real use, and the incentives really aren't there — donating your app's content and functionality to enrich Apple’s AI alone, bypassing your UI, UX, branding, …

I can still remember when we Apple fanboys in the 2000s would point to stuff like this happening in Micro$oft Winblows and laugh our asses off. We'd also point to tone-deaf ads, badly-designed UIs, and me-too product lines. Apple is the new Microsoft. You're doing great, Tim Apple! …

Perhaps nothing encapsulates Apple's decline in user respect more than the transformation of the Settings app on ALL of their platforms into an advertising vehicle. Which is impressive, considering it's competing with App Store search ads and using notifications for marketing. …

The Vision Pro one year later: this product just ain’t for me

“The road to fascism is paved with people telling you not to overreact.” - My motto for the next four years

Here is the full update to Reader, a lot of good stuff: Reader Public Beta Update #11 (Chat With Highlights, Apple Notes Export, YouTube v2, and more)

@numericcitizen Cool. Mb, as a primary photoblog, doesn't work for me because the quality of the uploaded (and even crossposted) photos is very shoddy. Mb strips out a lot of information and compresses the image a lot more than I like. Things were improved but not enough to make it a primary source …

Web Independence

AdamColeman on Matt Pearce

Or, Instead of All This—

Make a Damn Website

Severance MDR Terminal & Dasher Keyboard

Podcaster Reveals the Spicy Details of His Falling Out With Elon Musk thedailybeast.com

Apple's string of failures shows just how badly things need to change macworld.com

I agree with Jason. I’ll maybe go further—If Apple Intelligence summarizes your notifications then Apple *should* badge it with *their* Apple logo. Not some weird cog or brain or some other such icon. Put your name on it! Apple is the one presenting this information to you and they should be held …

I Made This

Tips on Using LLMs (AI) Effectively for Text

Art has value because humans created it.

To know what a product is means knowing what it is not. It took me years to figure this out.

Meta blog post – Manu

The Internet Archive collection of classic computer magazines, including: - Macworld - Byte - MacUser - Commodore - Amiga - Macweek And many, many more. Huge wave of nostalgia. Fully readable. Enjoy... ❤️ https://archive.org/details/computermagazines #History

@numericcitizen I'm learning IaC myself. I successfully set up a pipeline using YAML awhile back that's still working today, but I want to do more. I'm currently looking at this video, but it's very high-level. If I find more good tutorials, I'll be sure to send them your way!

Started working on a blog post today and had to actually go do some research to make sure I was right. This is a benefit of occasional long-form writing. It’s a way to refine how you feel about something, learning a bunch in the process.

Sunset Cliffs, II. San Diego, December 2024 #aowsimages #photography #blackandwhite

Mac mini port history

Window to America. San Francisco, September 2024 #aowsimages

Got a novel in you? Be it a thriller, romance or even your office Christmas speech, @ulyssesapp can help you write better and faster 📖⚡. MindNode and Ulysses support the TextBundle file format to exchange files, making it easy to brainstorm in MindNode and write in Ulysses ✍️ Let the creativity …

Giants of metal and glass, I. San Francisco, September 2024 #aowsimages

Hey, ABC News, you should be embarrassed by how you allowed that man to yell about anything he wanted. One person said he got 9 extra minutes by butting in, and they wouldn’t cut his mic.

“The EU version of iOS is the most fun version of iOS!”

It just occurred to me that Apple (and other “gatekeepers”) are getting a bit of their own medicine with the DMA. Developers in the App Store have always had to live with unclear and changing rules, as well as the risk that Apple will effectively shut down your business with an absolute rejection. …

“The key is that the DMA is not a targeted attack on the App Store model. It’s a sweepingly broad attack on the entire idea of integration.” — I think the key missing here is that the DMA targets integration *at the scale of designated gatekeepers*. That’s an important distinction. It isn’t simply …

How writing can help you solve problems

I was excited about what I had heard about JPEGXL. But this sounds terrifying.

1950s and 1960s Motel Postcards https://atomic-chronoscaph.tumblr.com/post/749506698772905984/1950s-and-1960s-motel-postcards

https://www.tumblr.com/trailerpark2/758909331985121281?source=share

You get an AI! You get an AI! Starting to enable automatic photo keywords and search for all paid customers, no longer requiring Micro.blog Premium. Check out the video on YouTube here, recorded a few months ago. Now available to everyone. (I reserve the right to tweak this if it bankrupts me.) …

The problem I see with Apple today is that it is a Cargo Cult. Early 2000s Apple was not afraid to kill darlings — they were not scared of disruption, and best of all was to disrupt yourself. That's not true anymore. It's “And Jobs said there shall be a store, and thou shalt take 30%, and all will …

U.S. Considers Breaking Up Google as Antitrust Remedy

Introducing stoot for Micro.blog

Pluralistic: Apple vs the "free market" (15 Aug 2024)

Must-read blog post by Cory Doctorow, connecting enshittification to Apple and the legal agreements that give corporations power: Apple doesn’t oppose regulation; Apple loves regulation, so long as they’re the ones doing the regulating. They want to be able to shape and define the digital market, …

Forbidden Fruit

Microsoft has spent the better part of the 15 years trying to win back developers and users post Vista. Sometimes succeeding (VS Code, which is just good software), sometimes failing (Bing), often fumbling with bad decisions (Recall), but despite being THE platform for games, people use Steam, not …

The richest company in the world (congrats guys, you’re back on top) being fucking rent-seeking pieces of shit isn’t going to earn your precious services more $$$, it’s just going to convince a whole new generation of users to avoid the App Store for all payments and have a distaste towards your …

Already we see how these sorts of policies play out poorly for Apple: the Apple Vision Pro is so far, an expensive flop that has very few apps and has made its devs very little money (I’ve talked to many. Only a few have done “well”) and most are wholly unwilling to even build an app for it. These …

Like a lot of 90s kids, I grew up on Windows at home but used Macs at school and switched to Macs in college during the 2000s. We bought iPods, not Zunes. MacBooks, not Vista. iPhones, not Windows Phones (or Windows Mobile). iPads, not Android tablets. But 2010s kids have other options. And Apple’s …

People like me are too deep into the Apple ecosystem to ever reasonably leave. Until/unless they fully neuter macOS, I’m here for life. And I’ll realistically never use Android. But the next generation of users might use an iPhone, but they also rely on the web and services from other companies. …

I miss when Apple was the underdog. As someone who was a Mac user in the mid-90s, it was a thrill to watch them grow in the 2000s. But now every decision they make affects millions of people. It’s just not possible to make everybody happy, and every little flaw is magnified. At this point it feels …

Church of Light, I. Galicia, May 2023 #aowsimages

I signed up to all my Patreon subscriptions on their website years ago. They don’t /need/ an iOS app. I never use the iOS app. I’ve tried it but it offers nothing and takes 30%. Just go all-in on your website, Patreon. Tell Apple to fuck off. Let the open web win again.

Bffr Apple, this is so anti-user for absolutely no reason. MacOS is still the best desktop operating system but Apple seems content on trying to change that every year as they make decisions that are bad and also diametrically opposed to anything a pro user would actually want. …