Linked List: May 6, 2022

Friday, 6 May 2022

Camo 1.6 Adds Support for Safari, FaceTime, and QuickTime ★

Aidan Fitzpatrick, writing for the Reincubate blog:

Today we’re thrilled to launch a long-awaited feature in Camo: full compatibility with Safari, FaceTime, QuickTime, and more. As well as adding support for all of Apple’s apps on modern versions of macOS, this update also enables all third-party apps that previously relied on Camo’s integrations to work natively. Discord, Slack, WhatsApp, and others now run great with Camo without modification.

With the release of Camo Studio 1.6 and macOS 12.3, Camo is the first virtual camera to be natively compatible with all apps in the Mac ecosystem. [...]

This change comes as a consequence of two years of conversation with Apple on how we can make the most of the incredible cameras in their devices. This wasn’t the feature we originally intended to ship as part of Camo 1.6, but once we heard the good news from Apple we rearranged our launch schedule to make this happen. Thank you, team Apple!

Fantastic news. Camo is terrific software. Using a spare iPhone as a webcam is a great way to put an older device to good use, and delivers image quality that far surpasses most dedicated webcams — including the one built into the Studio Display. The biggest knock against Camo, until now, was that “virtual webcams” didn’t work with Apple’s own apps.

Now what we need is a good mount for using an iPhone with Camo on the Studio Display. Here’s a clever one James Thomson jury-rigged with Lego bricks.

Steven Frank on Playdate ★

From the Playdate Twitter account:

When Playdate shipped, Panic co-founder Steven wrote a little about what it meant to him. And in the spirit of doing things differently, posted it to a Gopher (!) site.

If you’re up for it, find it here: gopher://stevenf.com:70/0/journal/2022/04/18/first-playdates-shipping.txt

I took a guess that curl could handle a gopher URL, and I was right. From Frank’s piece:

It’s OK to take risks with design. In a world of metal and glass slabs, a console that vaguely resembles a slice of Velveeta (R) can’t help but catch your eye. I know everything is kind of depressing recently, but color is OK, shapes are OK, and joyfulness can be a feature.

Limitations like monochrome displays and a minimum of buttons and controls are not only rocket fuel for developer creativity, but also broaden Playdate’s appeal to people who may find modern games intimidating or out of reach due to their complexity. Which is not to say that all Playdate games need to be simplistic, but rather that variety is good.

So happy to see Playdates shipping. I’m even happier to see that they’re building such an enthusiastic and clever developer community.