By John Gruber

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Introducing the Wavelength AI Bot Designer ★

Richard Henry, writing for the Wavelength blog:

AI is a huge part of Wavelength today — 1/3 of all messages sent invoke the @AI bot in a conversation.

Today we’re launching an AI bot designer built into Wavelength. This lets you easily create custom AI bots — amazing lifelike personalities that you can interact with in your group chats or via direct message. You can choose from GPT-3.5 or Claude Instant v1.1 for the model that powers your bot. We’ve found that sometimes a particular model is much better for a character, so it’s worth trying both and comparing results. [...]

Make a fun bot? You can share it with others using a link, or make it public so that anyone can discover it. Make a fun character, a text-based adventure game, or anything else!

I’ve been testing this feature for a few weeks (in my previously disclosed role as an advisor to Wavelength), and it’s a lot of fun. For characters, I’ve found the Claude model, from Anthropic, to be better. Or at least more “in character”. Two fun bots I’ve made: Don Rickles and Triumph the Insult Comic Dog.

Here’s a screenshot showing the difference — same prompt/bot definition, just switching from GPT 3.5 to Claude. It’s fun to get trivia question answers with a bit of personality.

Ted Chiang on AI: ‘The Machines We Have Now Are Not Conscious’ ★

Science fiction writer Ted Chiang, in an interview with Madhumita Murgia for The Financial Times (Archive.is link):

Chiang’s main objection, a writerly one, is with the words we choose to describe all this. Anthropomorphic language such as “learn”, “understand”, “know” and personal pronouns such as “I” that AI engineers and journalists project on to chatbots such as ChatGPT create an illusion. This hasty shorthand pushes all of us, he says — even those intimately familiar with how these systems work — towards seeing sparks of sentience in AI tools, where there are none.

“There was an exchange on Twitter a while back where someone said, ‘What is artificial intelligence?’ And someone else said, ‘A poor choice of words in 1954’,” he says. “And, you know, they’re right. I think that if we had chosen a different phrase for it, back in the ’50s, we might have avoided a lot of the confusion that we’re having now.”

So if he had to invent a term, what would it be? His answer is instant: applied statistics.

My puerile mind is tempted to make a joke that tacking on “system” would make for a fun acronym, but I shan’t crack that joke, as I think Chiang makes a strong point here. What we have with these LLMs isn’t low-level intelligence but rather high-level applied statistics that creates the powerful illusion of low-level intelligence.

See also: Chiang’s very short story “What’s Expected of Us”, referenced in the interview.

Saturday, 3 June 2023

Sky Guide ★

My thanks to Sky Guide for sponsoring this week at DF. Sky Guide brings the beauty of the stars down to Earth. Just hold it overhead to automatically identify any star, constellation, planet, or satellite. Thanks to AR, understanding the cosmos has never been simpler. (Good timing?)

Sky Guide is just a wonderful, painstakingly well-crafted app made by a small team that clearly has tremendous enthusiasm both for astronomy and making great apps. Download and try it out free of charge.

Among the Companies With the Worst Reputations in America: Twitter, Facebook, and TikTok ★

Axios:

This survey is the result of a partnership between Axios and Harris Poll to gauge the reputation of the most visible brands in America, based on 20 years of Harris Poll research.

I’m not as interested in the top of the list as the bottom. Here are the companies with the worst reputations, starting with the obvious “winner”:

1. The Trump “Organization”
2. FTX
3. Fox Corporation
4. Twitter
5. Meta
6. Spirit Airlines
7. TikTok
8. Bitcoin
9. BP
10. Balenciaga

So other than the two outright criminal organizations at the top and an ostensible “news” network that just lost the largest defamation lawsuit in history, there are no big companies in America with worse reputations than Twitter or Facebook, and the only company separating them from TikTok is the worst airline in the country. Sounds right.

(But what the hell did Balenciaga do to get on this list? Update: This.)

Friday, 2 June 2023

Dithering ★

How could I not link to this month’s cover art (by the ever-talented Brad Ellis) for yours truly and Ben Thompson’s podcast? Two episodes per week, 15 minutes per episode. Not a minute less, not a minute more for just $5/month or $50/year. We’re now starting our fourth year, and we’ve had remarkably little churn — people who subscribe to Dithering tend to stay subscribed.

Ben and I will both be in Cupertino next week for WWDC, and our next episode, with thoughts on the keynote, will be out Tuesday morning.

Bonus content:

• There’s a Dithering group with over 3,200 members on Wavelength, the new private group messaging app I started advising earlier this year. The link to the group is in the show notes for each episode.

• Speaking of WWDC, Dithering subscribers are welcome to use discount code dithering to save $50 on tickets to The Talk Show Live From WWDC 2023 next Wednesday in San Jose. It’s like getting a year of Dithering free of charge.

iA Presenter ★

New Mac app, now out of beta, from the makers of the renowned iA Writer. iA Presenter is a presentation/slide deck creation tool where you write your deck using Markdown. But even though you’re creating with plain text, iA Presenter is, as you’d expect, an exquisite design tool. $4.50/month, $44.50/year, or a one-time purchase of $89.

See also: iA founder Oliver Reichenstein is hanging out on Product Hunt today, answering questions regarding iA Presenter.

You Should Follow Daring Fireball on Mastodon ★

Inexplicably late but better than never, there’s now a Daring Fireball account on Mastodon where links to new articles are posted automatically. You should follow.

Twitter Staff Exodus Continues After a Weird, Sad Day on Twitter Even by Twitter’s Weird, Sad Standards ★

Mike Masnick, writing at TechDirt:

Basically, a manufactured martyrdom controversy, combined with Twitter pretending to stand up to encouraging hatred, only for Musk to double down that hate has a comfy, welcoming home on Twitter.

Of course, in the midst of all this, the news came out that Ella Irwin, who had been leading trust and safety since relatively early in the Elon Musk reign, and who had been on Twitter through Wednesday directly responding to trust and safety requests, had resigned and was no longer at the company. It’s unclear if her resignation had anything to do with this mess, but the timing does seem notable.

Still, given all of this, is it really any wonder that advertisers like Ben & Jerry’s have announced that they’re ending all paid advertising on the site in response to the proliferation of hate speech?

Also yesterday, Twitter iOS engineer Yoshimasa Niwa resigned:

I just sent that email.

-- numstat gives me these numbers.
+ 728752, - 263722

One former Twitter colleague told me, “This is a big deal. One of the few (8?) remaining iOS engineers at Twitter. Yoshi has been at the company for something like 14 years and is one of the very best iOS engineers I know — maybe one of the best in the world.” Until yesterday Niwa had been at Twitter since 2010, and thus may well have been the longest-standing employee in the entire company. He’d worked at Twitter for more time cumulatively than Jack Dorsey. That “numstat” nerdery reveals the number of lines of source code Niwa had added and removed over his tenure — just short of one million in total.

Sidenote: In recent weeks Niwa published AlpacaChat, an open-source Swift library to run the Alpaca-LoRA LLM locally on Macs and iOS devices.

Update 3 June: Adam Singer, a Twitter engineer for 8 years, resigned today.

Thursday, 1 June 2023

MLS Season Pass Drops Price for Midseason ★

Benjamin Mayo, writing for 9to5Mac:

MLS Season Pass on Apple TV is dropping its price to account for the fact that about half of the season is now over. The 2023 pass subscription is now available for $49 (down from $99), with an additional $10 discount for Apple TV+ subscribers. The monthly subscription price is unchanged.

Although Apple does not release viewership figures, Apple SVP of services Eddy Cue commented this week that MLS Season Pass had exceeded its own expectations and doing “much better than forecasted” in terms of both subscription and viewership numbers.

We’ll have to take Cue at his word on that, given that Apple never released its forecast nor is releasing viewership numbers now, but I’m not surprised. MLS has a smaller fanbase than the NFL, NBA, MLB, or even NHL, but I’m sure its fans skew younger.

‘Asteroid City’ Letterboxd Scavenger Hunt ★

Letterboxd:

In a marvelous first for us, we’ve teamed up with Focus Features to create a playful Asteroid City scavenger hunt. You’ll be looking for fourteen items inspired by Wes Anderson’s signature aesthetic, hidden around our website and apps, in the lead up to the theatrical release of his eleventh feature film.

Every day for the next fourteen days, a new item will be hidden on Letterboxd somewhere in the extended Wes Anderson universe of films and their creators. We’ll drop daily clues on our social media, and once you have collected all fourteen items, you’re automatically in the draw to win the grand prize: a private screening of Asteroid City for you and your friends at your nearest cinema.

Letterboxd continues to ascend in Hollywood, and I love to see it. They’ve even got an announcement video from Jeffrey Wright, whose palpable disdain for the teleprompter is absolutely endearing.

See also: This recent feature on Letterboxd by Harper Lambert for TheWrap.

The Talk Show: ‘guyenglish.zip’ ★

Guy English returns to the show to talk about the live show from WWDC, Mac Pros past and future, Marathon and Mac gaming, and Apple’s seemingly imminent XR headset. And definitely not to talk about Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker.

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Survey Results on Why Android Users Switch to iPhone ★

Michael Potuck, reporting for 9to5Mac on a survey of Android switchers conducted by CIRP:

The top reason was actually an issue with the Android experience. Over 53% of respondents said they moved to iPhone because of problems with their Android smartphone. Specifics cited were “their old phone did not serve them, because it was aging, needed repair, or had some deficiency that affected their user experience.” The second most common reason to switch was for new features on iPhone like “a better camera, enhanced accessory options, or a more intuitive user interface.” [...]

Finally, just 6% of those who switched from Android to iPhone said they made the move because of iMessage and FaceTime.

It’s easier, and more comfortable, for Google to argue that it’s all about the green bubbles. The hard truth is that iPhones and iOS are simply better overall.

Facebook Pre-Announces Meta Quest 3 Headset; Timing Is Purely Coincidental I’m Sure ★

Facebook, on the Meta Quest blog:

The countdown is on for today’s Meta Quest Gaming Showcase, but there’s some juicy news we just couldn’t wait any longer to share.

Today, Mark Zuckerberg announced our next-generation virtual and mixed reality headset, which launches later this year. It’s called Meta Quest 3. It features higher resolution, stronger performance, breakthrough Meta Reality technology, and a slimmer, more comfortable form factor. Quest 3 will ship in all countries where Meta Quest is currently supported this fall. The 128GB headset starts at $499.99 USD, and we’ll offer an additional storage option for those who want some extra space. Mark your calendars because we’ll have lots more to share at Meta Connect, which returns this year on September 27.

One difference between Apple and other companies: Apple acts like they are the only company in the markets they are in. They never rush out scared pre-announcements to get “ahead” of Samsung or whoever. Apple has the discipline and confidence to hold their fire until they are ready.

Three Mint-Condition 2010 Tesla Roadsters Available at Auction ★

Rob Stumpf:

Earlier in May, we told you about three zero-mile 2010 Tesla Roadsters found in a shipping container overseas. These pristine examples will seemingly be the last brand-new, completely assembled first-gen Roadsters to be sold 13 years after they were initially built. But why were they never delivered? And how did they land in China?

Gruber Motors, the shop brokering the deal, performed some detective work to figure it out. It was discovered that the three Roadsters were all intended to be dismantled by an early Tesla competitor — test mules in last decade’s international EV race. And now, someone has submitted a $2 million bid in hopes of adding them to their collection.

First time I’ve had reason to actually link to Gruber Motors. (No relation.) Here’s a link to the auction.

Wednesday, 31 May 2023

U.S. Pay-TV Subscriptions Fall to Lowest Levels Since 1992 ★

Speaking of the demise of regional sports networks, here’s Todd Spangler reporting for Variety:

As streaming video continues its ascendancy, cable, satellite and internet TV providers in the U.S. turned in their worst subscriber losses to date in the first quarter of 2023 — collectively shedding 2.3 million customers in the period, according to analyst estimates. [...] With the Q1 decline, total pay-TV penetration of occupied U.S. households (including for internet services like YouTube TV and Hulu) dropped to 58.5% — its lowest point since 1992, two years before DirecTV launched as a new rival to cable TV, according to Moffett’s calculations. [...]

Google’s YouTube TV was the only provider tracked by MoffettNathanson that picked up subs in Q1, adding an estimated 300,000 subscribers in the period (to reach about 6.3 million) and netting 1.4 million subscribers over the past year. [...]

Pay TV is suffering from what Moffett calls “the impoverishment cycle,” in which higher sports-broadcast fees have driven retail prices higher — thereby fueling cord-cutting and forcing distributors to increase prices to compensate. Even ESPN, one-time stalwart of the traditional ecosystem, has conceded that there will be a day when a la carte streaming is a viable option, Moffett noted.

It’ll be interesting to see how much YouTube TV growth is juiced by NFL Sunday Ticket later this year.

Reddit API Pricing Would Cost Apollo Developer $20 Million Per Year ★

Christian Selig, developer of the splendid Reddit client Apollo:

I’ll cut to the chase: 50 million requests costs $12,000, a figure far more than I ever could have imagined.

Apollo made 7 billion requests last month, which would put it at about 1.7 million dollars per month, or 20 million US dollars per year. Even if I only kept subscription users, the average Apollo user uses 344 requests per day, which would cost $2.50 per month, which is over double what the subscription currently costs, so I’d be in the red every month.

I’m deeply disappointed in this price. Reddit iterated that the price would be A) reasonable and based in reality, and B) they would not operate like Twitter. Twitter’s pricing was publicly ridiculed for its obscene price of $42,000 for 50 million tweets. Reddit’s is still $12,000. For reference, I pay Imgur, a site similar to Reddit in userbase and media, $166 for the same 50 million API calls.

Selig does some ballpark math and estimates that Reddit currently generates about $0.12 in revenue per month per active user. The average Apollo user would cost $2.50 per month in API fees — 20× higher.

Right now Apollo is free to use, but offers a Pro tier with a slew of additional features and fun stuff for a one-time payment of $5, and an Ultra tier with even more for a $13/year subscription. If Reddit goes through with this API pricing, Apollo’s free and Pro tiers would be unsustainable, and the Ultra subscription would have to cost at least $50 or $60 per year.

Matt Birchler on Apple and Gaming ★

Matt Birchler:

I would not be surprised if No Man’s Sky releases for Apple’s VR headset on day one, and it gets lots of press as it will likely be one of the few games there at launch, but I don’t think it’s an indication of Apple really “getting” gaming in a meaningful way.

Personally, I just don’t think Apple has it in them to get high end gaming to click on their platforms. Yes, they make a ton of money on iOS games, but poke your head into the App Store top charts and you can pretty clearly see they’re making that money on shitty free-to-play games that rely on whales to spend absurd amounts of money on gems and tokens and whatever else.

Let’s put aside revenue as a measure of a platform’s success in gaming — the free-to-play phenomenon skews that. But even putting aside money as a measuring stick, it’s clear that the iPhone is the premier mobile gaming platform. There are way more good iPhone-only games than Android-only ones. Are there any good Android exclusive games at all?

The question is: will Apple’s XR platform be like the Mac and Apple TV, where gaming is an afterthought, or will it be like iOS? I wouldn’t bet on the headset turning Apple into a top-tier platform for immersive VR games, but I wouldn’t bet against it either. It’s a chance to start fresh.

The opportunity is massive: PC and console gaming is considered more “serious” than mobile gaming not just because the games are bigger and the devices more powerful, but because you play them on bigger screens. Nintendo’s Switch proves that — the Switch is way less powerful than any recent iPhone, but way more “serious” because you can play it on your TV. (And yes, of course, because Nintendo’s first-party titles are unique and extraordinarily good.)

VR gaming has the potential to be far more immersive than anything you play on a TV or PC monitor. Someone will crack that nut eventually.

Bally Sports Fails to Pay the San Diego Padres, Loses Broadcast Rights ★

Alden Gonzalez, reporting for ESPN:

Diamond Sports Group has decided not to pay the San Diego Padres their latest rights fee, a monumental development that will revert the team’s broadcasting rights to Major League Baseball and establish precedent for an uncertain, rapidly evolving landscape.

Diamond, the Sinclair subsidiary that operates under the name Bally Sports, skipped its payment to the Padres a couple of weeks ago and had until the end of its grace period on Tuesday to make the team whole and maintain their long-term agreement. Choosing not to meant Tuesday’s game against the Miami Marlins was the last Padres game under the Bally Sports umbrella. Moving forward — starting Wednesday, continuing through the end of the season and resuming in perpetuity — MLB will air Padres games through its streaming service and on different cable channels.

The regional sports network collapse draws nigh. Jason Snell:

It sure feels like a milestone moment in the future of sports broadcasting — and the unwinding of the exclusivity of cable TV for sports broadcasting.

‘Boycott Target’ Song Tops iTunes Charts ★

Shannon Thaler, reporting for The New York Post:

Staunch alt-right rapper Forgiato Blow is topping iTunes charts with his new song, “Boycott Target,” but claims Apple’s censorship is “keeping it off the radar.” The song — featuring fellow rappers Jimmy Levy, Nick Nittoli and Stoney Dudebro — was released on May 25 in response to Target’s Pride-themed clothing for children. [...]

The track has hit No. 1 on iTunes’ most popular chart across all genres, and sits above songs by Taylor Swift and Luke Combs that are in the No. 2 and No. 3 spots, respectively.

Speaking of signs of rising fascism in the U.S. This is so goofy I thought it was a parody (“Stoney Dudebro”?), but it’s not.

Forbes: TikTok Creators’ Private Financial Information Stored in China ★

Alexandra S. Levine, reporting for Forbes:

Over the past several years, thousands of TikTok creators and businesses around the world have given the company sensitive financial information — including their social security numbers and tax IDs — so that they can be paid by the platform. But unbeknownst to many of them, TikTok has stored that personal financial information on servers in China that are accessible by employees there, Forbes has learned.

TikTok uses various internal tools and databases from its Beijing-based parent ByteDance to manage payments to creators who earn money through the app, including many of its biggest stars in the United States and Europe. The same tools are used to pay outside vendors and small businesses working with TikTok. But a trove of records obtained by Forbes from multiple sources across different parts of the company reveals that highly sensitive financial and personal information about those prized users and third parties has been stored in China. The discovery also raises questions about whether employees who are not authorized to access that data have been able to. It draws on internal communications, audio recordings, videos, screenshots, documents marked “Privileged and Confidential,” and several people familiar with the matter.

In testimony before Congress earlier this year, TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew claimed U.S. user data has been stored on physical servers outside China. “American data has always been stored in Virginia and Singapore in the past, and access of this is on an as-required basis by our engineers globally,” he said under oath at a House hearing in March.

TikTok should be banned in the United States, and Chew should be charged with perjury. This is not complicated.

WSJ: ‘Why You’re Losing More to Casinos on the Las Vegas Strip’ ★

Katherine Sayre, reporting for The Wall Street Journal (News+):

Blackjack, a fast-paced card game, historically paid out a ratio of 3:2 when a player hit 21 on the first two cards. That means a gambler wins $15 for every $10 bet. Now, many blackjack tables on the Strip pay out at 6:5, which means that same $10 yields only $12.

John and Kristina Mehaffey, owners of gambling-news and data company Vegas Advantage, have been cataloging these changes since 2011, walking miles-long routes through casinos to record the number of blackjack and roulette tables set outside of VIP areas.

According to the Mehaffeys’ data, more than two-thirds of blackjack tables on the Strip currently offer 6:5 payouts, as opposed to 3:2.

6:5 blackjack should be illegal. I mean that. I don’t understand what the gambling regulators in Nevada are doing that this is permissible. What I’ve seen in recent years is that all of the lower-limit tables have 6:5 payouts, and to get real blackjack, with 3:2 payouts, you need to play at tables with $50 minimums, sometimes $100 on weekends.

Update: My own home state of Pennsylvania mandates 3:2 blackjack payouts by law. Who would ever have thought you’d get a better legal game of blackjack in Philadelphia than in Las Vegas?

Spotting and Fighting Fascism in America ★

Heather Cox Richardson:

Beginning in 1943, the War Department published a series of pamphlets for U.S. Army personnel in the European theater of World War II. Titled Army Talks, the series was designed “to help [the personnel] become better-informed men and women and therefore better soldiers.” On March 24, 1945, the topic for the week was “FASCISM!” [...]

The War Department thought it was important for Americans to understand the tactics fascists would use to take power in the United States. They would try to gain power “under the guise of ‘super-patriotism’ and ‘super-Americanism.’” And they would use three techniques:

First, they would pit religious, racial, and economic groups against one another to break down national unity. Part of that effort to divide and conquer would be a “well-planned ‘hate campaign’ against minority races, religions, and other groups.”

Second, they would deny any need for international cooperation, because that would fly in the face of their insistence that their supporters were better than everyone else. “In place of international cooperation, the fascists seek to substitute a perverted sort of ultra-nationalism which tells their people that they are the only people in the world who count. With this goes hatred and suspicion toward the people of all other nations.”

Third, fascists would insist that “the world has but two choices — either fascism or communism, and they label as ‘communists’ everyone who refuses to support them.”

It’s downright spooky how this pamphlet from 80 years ago describes Trumpism and the MAGA movement to a T. Here’s the original pamphlet. (Via Kottke.)

Tuesday, 30 May 2023

iCloud’s ‘My Photo Stream’ Feature Is Shutting Down This Summer ★

Stephen Hackett, writing at 512 Pixels:

Photo Stream is one of the original components of iCloud, and was kept around even after iCloud Photo Library launched in 2014. Here’s how Apple pitched the feature when iCloud was new.

Michael Tsai:

You can see why they are consolidating on iCloud Photos, but Photo Stream had some appealing features that will be lost. First, you could backup/sync an unlimited amount of data (for a limited time). There was no need to worry about upgrading your account temporarily or having photo storage crowd out storage for other apps. Second, you could access recent photos and videos on all devices without having to store everything in the cloud.

Web Roulette — A Swipeable Randomized Web Browser ★

Sarah Perez, writing for TechCrunch:

If mindlessly browsing the internet is your preferred way to combat boredom and waste time, the indie app makers behind to-do list app Clear and game Heads Up have a new product you’ll want to try: Web Roulette, a mobile web browser app for iOS built for the short attention spans of the TikTok era. With the debut version out now, you can add your favorite websites or choose from its suggestions, then swipe through the sites to see what’s new or shake the app for a surprise webpage when boredom strikes.

The team says the idea initially struck them as something of a joke. But they soon realized the idea of a ‘swipeable,’ shakable web browser that delivered our daily hits of dopamine may actually have merit.

“I mean, this is actually how I spend much of my time browsing the web — I bounce back and forth mindlessly and semi-randomly between my favorite sites, hoping for something fresh. Maybe there’s something here?,” explains Impending founder and designer Phill Ryu.

I’ve been beta testing Web Roulette for a week or two and it’s just plain dumb fun. In the early days of the App Store (and before that, the early days of the web), it was common for people to come up with a dumb fun idea that could be made in a week or two. Web Roulette exemplifies that ethos. It’s not useful, per se, but it’s not useless either. But it’s mainly just fun. I’m so glad to see that coming back.

See also: This fun launch video on TikTok — interrupted by a special guest. And this tweet with a sketch of the team’s original concept. I love comparing “here’s the napkin sketch of the original idea” to the shipping product.

Monday, 29 May 2023

‘Lisa’s Final Act ★

Trailer for a new documentary from The Verge:

Sabotage, hired goons, and a landfill in Utah: this is a story about the life, death, and afterlife of Apple’s most pioneering computer, the Lisa. A major inspiration for the Macintosh, Steve Jobs championed the Lisa, then turned against it. In Lisa’s Final Act, The Verge unearths a new spin on this tale. We discover the outsider who gave the maligned computer another chance… before Apple closed the door on the Lisa forever.

Full documentary debuts tomorrow.

Update: Right on schedule, the full 30-minute documentary is out.

‘Succession’ Finale ★

Alan Sepinwall, writing for Rolling Stone:

A lot happens over the course of the 90-minute Succession series finale, “With Open Eyes.” Alliances are made, broken, and made again. Votes happen, fortunes rise and fall, losers become winners, and vice versa.

For all intents and purposes, though, the only part that matters is a five-minute sequence toward the end.

I’m always wary of recency bias, but at the moment I’d put Succession in the hall of fame for the best TV shows ever. Four great seasons, a rich ensemble of vivid memorable characters, never a bad episode, and a truly great finale.

See also: Sepinwall’s ranking of the top 25 characters on Succession, from least to most despicable.

The Talk Show: ‘One True HIG’ ★

Neil Jhaveri, founder and lead developer of Mimestream, the terrific new native Mac email client for Gmail, joins the show to talk about email, Mac apps, and indie software development.

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Adam Engst: ‘Why I Use Mimestream for Gmail’ ★

Adam Engst, writing at TidBITS:

Where Mimestream shines is in its attention to visual form and functional detail — the small interface elements and features that make working with email feel familiar, fluid, and fast. I spend hours per day in email, and while I’m willing to tweak my working habits slightly to match what an app can do, I prefer it to accommodate my idiosyncrasies.

For instance, I seldom delete messages. My Google account has plenty of space, and Gmail’s performance doesn’t degrade with massive email stores, so I prefer to keep everything for posterity and focus my attention on unread and starred messages. So it’s vital that my email client supports that approach rather than pushing its own concept of Inbox Zero or whatever philosophy it might have.

I can’t predict what refinements and affordances will make working with your email a joy, so I want to share some of what I find compelling about Mimestream. Many of these aren’t unique, they’re just very well done, and the result is that using Mimestream feels like driving a well-engineered automobile instead of a low-end car that feels like it was assembled from cheap, off-the-shelf components.

Kolide ★

My thanks to Kolide for their continuing sponsorship support here at DF — they sponsored Daring Fireball last week, and they are the presenting sponsor at the upcoming The Talk Show Live From WWDC. They’re a great company with a great product.

Here’s an uncomfortable fact: at most companies, employees can download sensitive company data onto any device, keep it there forever, and never even know that they’re doing something wrong. Kolide’s new report, The State of Sensitive Data, addresses this issue head-on.

Kolide offers a more nuanced approach than MDM solutions to setting and enforcing sensitive data policies. Their premise is simple: if an employee’s device is out of compliance, it can’t access your apps. Kolide lets admins run queries to detect sensitive data, flag devices that have violated policies, and enforce OS and browser updates so vulnerable devices aren’t accessing data.

To learn more and see Kolide in action, visit kolide.com.

Sunday, 28 May 2023

WordPress Turns 20 ★

It’s funny what gains traction for the long haul, and what turns out, in hindsight, to be a flash in the pan. I, for one, never would have predicted that WordPress would grow to become, by far, the most popular CMS in the world, and the foundation of a thriving company whose primary goal is making the web a better platform.

Saturday, 27 May 2023

Mimestream 1.0 ★

After a few years in public beta, Mimestream 1.0 is out, and it’s fantastic. Mimestream is a Mac email client specifically for Gmail. They’ve got plans to expand to iOS, and plans to perhaps expand to IMAP (and JMAP) email accounts in the future, but as it stands today, Mimestream does one thing and does it incredibly well: it’s a true Mac app for Gmail. It’s both a great Mac app and a great Gmail client. $5/month or $50/year, with a two-week free trial.

Jason Snell:

Apple Mail is free. Gmail in a browser window is free. But after two years with Mimestream, I couldn’t put down my credit card fast enough.

Mona: Mastodon Client for Mac and iOS ★

I quipped yesterday that I thought Ivory for Mac wasn’t just the best Mac Mastodon client, but the only good one. A bunch of readers chimed in to endorse Mona, by Junyu Kuang, as a good Mac client. I had tried Mona a while back, and found it lacking in numerous ways on the Mac, but I took another look yesterday and my readers are correct: it’s a very solid Mac client now. Free to try, $10 to go “pro” on any one platform (Mac, iPhone, iPad), and just $16 to go pro on all three. Those are introductory prices that are going up on June 1.

Friday, 26 May 2023

Platformer: ‘Inside Twitter’s Failed Space Launch’ ★

Zoë Schiffer and Casey Newton, reporting for Platformer:

Spaces are hosted on Twitter’s own servers and servers rented from Amazon Web Services. AWS servers for Spaces are “insanely underprovisioned” relative to the need for them, according to a former employee who worked on the project.

On Wednesday, the lack of servers led to a predictable series of cascading failures. In the run-up to the event, engineers expected that Spaces would be able to accommodate hundreds of thousands of users. But too many people joined the first stream simultaneously, and the app kept crashing as a result.

Musk’s own Twitter app crashed repeatedly during the event, we’re told. Musk, who uses the employee-only build of the app known as Earlybird, was said to be furious afterward.

I’m sure he was.

Inside the largest Slack and Discord channels of former tweeps, the mood after DeSantis’ botched announcement was nothing short of jubilant.

I’m sure it was.

Texas Monthly Profiles Tapbots Founders Paul Haddad and Mark Jardine ★

Speaking of Tapbots, here’s Andrew Logan writing for Texas Monthly:

Amir Shevat, Twitter’s former head of product for the developer platform, who lives in Round Rock, was responsible for ensuring that the tools Twitter provided independent software developers using the platform met their needs. He said about 17 percent of engagement on Twitter, historically, was through third-party apps, which played a vital role in defining Twitter’s identity.

To my knowledge no one at (or formerly at) Twitter has ever revealed that before. Obviously the overwhelming number of Twitter users only ever used Twitter’s own first-party clients. The reason third-party clients were so important to Twitter, though, is that Twitter power users were drawn to them.

Jardine said he has received positive feedback on the initial launch of Ivory, which he admits was released without all the features he wanted to include. Users being excited about his work is uplifting, he said. But that’s not what entirely motivates him. “Without [Ivory], we have no business,” Jardine said. “There’s a lot of pressure riding on it.”

Despite the pressure, Haddad seems to be thriving in this brave new world. “I’m not at the whims of a dictator anymore,” he said.

Amen to that.

Ivory for Mac ★

Now shipping in the Mac App Store: Tapbots’s Ivory for Mac. I’ve been using it in beta for a few months, and don’t know what I’d do without it. It’s not just the best Mac Mastodon client, it’s the only good one that exists. $15/year just for the Mac client, but the real deal is Ivory’s $25/year “universal” subscription for Ivory across both MacOS and iOS.

Ivory for Mac is written using Catalyst, but it by no means is just Ivory for iPad with a few tweaks. (If that’s what it were, Tapbots could have shipped it months ago, when Ivory for iPhone and iPad shipped.) Ivory for Mac is a Mac app. But, numerous Catalyst-isms show through. System-wide Services menu items don’t work. Smart punctuation (automatic curly quotes and proper em-dashes when you type two hyphens) only work when you type slowly. Some views scroll via standard keyboard shortcuts (space/shift-space, Page Up/Page Down), but some don’t. A lot of these are things that I consider shortcomings in Apple’s Catalyst framework — the whole point of Cocoa from 20+ years ago is that standard controls get standard behavior out of the box, relieving developers from the drudgery of making simple expected platform-standard features work. Catalyst isn’t like that — or at least isn’t like that yet.

But this is Ivory for Mac 1.0. Progress during beta testing was steady, and knowing Tapbots’s high standards, I’m quite sure will continue to be. And on the whole, Ivory for Mac as it stands today is not just a glass of ice water in hell, it’s a whole pitcher. If you use Mastodon on a Mac, you’re nuts if you don’t try Ivory.

See also: John Voorhees’s review at MacStories.

Tetris on a Chicken McNugget ★

There hasn’t been a decent Tetris game for the Mac in decades, but now you can play it on a Chicken McNugget. What a world. (Via Kottke.)

Thursday, 25 May 2023

Discord Adds Support for Markdown ★

I hate to complain as Markdown continues its march to world domination,^* but it’s really dumb that Discord added syntax for underlining (and ugly syntax at that). The only reason underlining should be used today, in any context, is to indicate hyperlinks. Any other use of underlining should be considered a typographical faux pas.

* Where by hate I of course mean love.

‘DeSantis Blows Up on the Launch Pad’ ★

Taegan Goddard, writing at Political Wire on Ron DeSantis’s much-ballyhooed campaign launch on Twitter Spaces yesterday:

In the end, the event had all of the appeal of a glitchy conference call.

Politics aside, the event was humiliating for Elon Musk and Twitter. The space crashed on the server side several times, and it crashed the Twitter app on my iPhone at least 6 or 7 times. And even when it finally got going, the audio quality was terrible.

Wednesday, 24 May 2023

Bungie Teases the Return of Marathon ★

There were hints about this last fall, but now it’s official: Bungie is reviving Marathon:

Marathon is currently in development for playstation 5, xbox series x/s, and pc with full cross play and cross save.

This news either evokes some strong feelings and memories, or you were not a Mac gamer in the ’90s. I get it, but it seems downright criminal that the Mac isn’t on their platform list.

2023 Apple Design Award Finalists ★

Always an interesting perusal. Apps on my iPhone that made the list: Flighty, Camo, and Knotwords. Oh, and Universe — a very ambitious website/store builder for iPhone, iPad, and Mac.

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