Linked List: February 15, 2025

Saturday, 15 February 2025

Martin Pilkington, Longtime Stalwart of the Mac and Apple Developer Community, Dies From Cancer ★

Sad news, posted to his Mastodon account:

Martin passed away yesterday, peacefully in his sleep. He was a true fighter until the bitter end but he is now pain free and at peace.

He’d been remarkably open about his battle against cancer, including the fact that he knew the end was near.

I linked to his software and writing several times over the years. He was a Mac developer’s Mac developer, with an eye for details, and his own work was infused with fine craftsmanship. His “Xcode 4: The Super Mega Awesome Review” back in 2011 was a genuine work of art and service to the community (linked with brief commentary), and he rightfully skewered Apple’s Catalyst Mac port of the Developer app in 2020 (linked with significant commentary).

Rest in peace, and my best and warmest thoughts to his friends and family.

Netflix Deeply Regrets Accidentally Making Netflix a Better Product for Its Customers ★

Joe Rosensteel:

Netflix deeply regrets accidentally making Netflix a better product for its customers. It temporarily pushed out a change that let people see Netflix shows in the Apple TV app, a change people have been asking for since the debut of the Apple TV app in 2016 with its Up Next queue and content aggregation features. Fortunately, Netflix swiftly corrected the error before too many of its users could experience anything approaching joy, or satisfaction with Netflix. Customers should definitely drop the issue and not press Netflix to turn the feature that certainly exists back on.

I see why Netflix is sticking to its guns on this one, but they’re on the wrong side. Apple TV users were overjoyed yesterday when the Netflix app briefly started integrating with the TV app for “what next”, etc. Steven Aquino described it as “jubilance”.

Only a small subset — perhaps, by Netflix’s grand global scale, downright minuscule — of Netflix users use Apple TV hardware. But those of us who do, do so because we love it. Most people think “Why pay extra for yet another box to connect, yet another remote control, yet another thing to learn, when Netflix and most other popular streaming services are just built right into my TV?” Apple TV users go the extra mile to buy the extra box — which isn’t cheap — because they have good taste and want an experience that is superior in all regards: technically, UI-wise, and privacy-wise.

So it’s not just a random small subset of its users that Netflix is disappointing by refusing to adopt the idiomatic conventions of good tvOS citizenship, it’s the subset of users who care the most, for good reasons. It’s a lot like making a Mac-like Mac app rather than serving Mac users warmed-over cross-platform slop. Or, as MG Siegler put it when he updated his post after it turned out this was a rug pull, “Fucking fuck, fuck, fuck. Do these fucking idiots know how stupid this looks and is?”

Financial Times: ‘Is Corporate America Already Souring on Trump?’ ★

Guy Chazan, Amanda Chu, and Joshua Franklin, reporting for the Financial Times (left-wing anti-capitalist fake-news ideologues):

In private conversations, some Wall Street executives go much further. One senior investment banker says the disorder and unpredictability of Trump’s actions — and those of Elon Musk, the billionaire Tesla chief who has become one of his most senior lieutenants — was greater than many business leaders had anticipated.

“With hindsight we did not appreciate the nature of what the administration was going to be like,” the banker says. “I do believe they are hurting their stated objectives of peace and prosperity.”

Via Nilay Patel, who quips:

These dummies could have had a compliant corporate Dem with literal Uber lobbyists on her staff and instead they did school shootings and measles.

Key Codes 2.2.2 ★

Many Tricks:

Key Codes displays information about the characters you type, as you type them into the log window. For each key, you’ll see its Unicode value, key code, and any modifiers.

Unless you’re a developer or script/macro tinkerer, you probably don’t need Key Codes. But when you do need it, it’s a godsend. There’s nothing else like it (anymore). Just a perfect little utility that the clever folks at Many Tricks have made available free of charge for a long time. (Available in the Mac App Store, too.)