From time to time, I open a different browser to see if I’m missing anything. I tried the Dia Browser again, but I still don’t quite like it. I feel unsure about it. Its design doesn’t appeal to me, and it seems slower than the ARC Browser. My default choice remains Apple Safari. Oh, I want to like the Zen browser, but I don’t like it to be based on Firefox.

In “Google Betrayed the web”, Mike Elgan argues that Google has broken the foundational “Grand Bargain” of the internet—trading traffic to content creators in exchange for indexing their content. Google now uses creator content to train AI models and serves answers directly to users, bypassing the original sources. This shift eliminates referral traffic to publishers and independent sites while allowing Google to profit from their work twice over. Elgan calls for a post-Google internet as a response to this betrayal. His response centers on Google’s alternatives: Kagi, Perplexity, Fastmail, and Antropic. All alternatives that I personally use, except Perplexity.

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. 😔

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.

Reddit Starts Blocking Mobile Website, Pushing Users to App Instead:

Social network Reddit recently began blocking mobile visitors to its website while pushing them to download the official Reddit app, and it’s fair to say that the move is not going down well with users.

Two things come to my mind about how Reddit was even possible in the early days: the open web and people. Now, Reddit put the first part of the equation in the trash. The second part might already be happening, thanks to AI.

This is a test blog post from the Micro.blog app for Mac. This nifty 5 MB app, which is rather extremely small by today’s standards, keeps slowly but surely improving. Now returning to normal programming.

Manton Reece is struggling with Apple’s efforts to publish Inkwell on the App Store. He shared some details about his recent difficult experience, and I hope he will reveal more once the app is available.

The state of the App Store is astonishing, in a bad way. I recently spent a few minutes browsing the Mac App Store to find an iPhone app and check its compatibility on a Mac. The number of poorly made apps is incredible. It appears Apple no longer recognizes when an app is genuinely well-designed and serves a real purpose.

I use the TestFlight version of Inkwell every day.

Since I started making YouTube videos, I’ve used Apple Keynote to design all my thumbnails because I found it approachable, easy to work with, and capable of helping me quickly create acceptable designs. However, this morning I feel that my approach needs reevaluation. I briefly tried Canva, but the free version is too restrictive, and I dislike software with constant subscription prompts, as if I’m using a demo. I also thought about Acorn, but it never really resonated with me. For now, I plan to stick with Keynote unless someone suggests a better alternative I haven’t considered.