← Feed

Posts

• View post

  I’m increasingly of the opinion that AI is the One Ring, and you absolutely shouldn’t touch the thing. "A mortal who keeps one of the Great Rings, does not die, but he does not grow or obtain more life, he merely continues, until at last every minute is a weariness. And if he often uses the Ring to make himself invisible, he fades: He becomes in the end invisible permanently, and walks in the twilight under the eye of the dark power that rules the Rings.”

• View post

  PCalc on iPhone Duo Day 5. Is this _too_ cute? When the Duo starts to fold, I initially split up the controls along the UIViewReservedRegion of the hinge, and only when you pass a threshold, do I switch into laptop mode.

• View post

  Love it when I get emails from Apple suggesting I screw over my customers who are still on Intel machines. I wonder when Xcode will drop support for generating Intel binaries…

• View post

  Tim Cook's new photo on the Apple Leadership page looks like a charismatic Bond villain about to reveal his whole plan to you.

• View post

  So, my dad died the week after WWDC, and I’ve not been making much progress for September’s OS releases. I’ll get there eventually, but it might take me a while. Thankfully most stuff seems to work fine, other than the PCalc widget on macOS, but I think that’s Apple’s bug. No need to reply with condolences - I’m okay, as much as one can be, just tired. This is just your regular reminder that people are going through stuff you don’t know about.

• View post

  Did you know you can just do stuff in the character creator screen if you want to?

• View post

  I've always enjoyed this quote from Douglas Adams, but never thought it would apply to me. Apparently my own cutoff point was about 15 years late.

• View post

  Apple's little mascot doesn't seem to have a proper name yet. The Apple community is calling it variants of “Lil Findy” which is cool, but is still effectively, “Baby Yoda”. The original Mac OS X Finder when I worked on it was codenamed “Millennium”, so my proposal is… “Milly”.

• View post

  I do feel your pride merchandise should actually be vaguely recognisable as pride merchandise. https://www.macstories.net/news/apple-releases-watch-band-watch-face-and-wallpapers-to-celebrate-pride-month/

• View post

  "Meanwhile, the poor Babel fish, by effectively removing all barriers to communication between different races and cultures, has caused more and bloodier wars than anything else in the history of creation."

• View post

  Plugging my brain into the overstimulation machine for sixteen hours a day does not seem to be helping with my stress levels.

• View post

  Trying to decide if this description of generative AI on the BBC could be any more wrong: “Generative AI is technology that enables a computer to think or act in a more human way. It does this by taking in information from its surroundings, and deciding the best response based on what it learns.” https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cz04emrxp4xo

• View post

  Checking Twitter occasionally is like checking in on an ex. You remember some of the good times you shared, and want to make sure they are doing ok. Once you actually see what they are up to now though, you quickly remember why you left.

• View post

  I've released a small PCalc 4.11.1 update that's out now for the Mac. https://pcalc.com/store/pcalcmac There was a bug with the theme getting reset, which I _could_ have fixed in five minutes, but I ended up doing what I should have done over three decades ago, and added a dedicated section to the settings that puts all the visual customisation in one place. No more having to search for all this stuff in a submenu somewhere!

• View post

  Like many people, I had my Apple ID locked last night, and it was a big hassle trying to get it unlocked and working again. One tip - when you go through all the rigmarole to get it going again, one thing that doesn't switch on by default is receiving iMessages or FaceTime calls via your Apple ID. So, like me, you will probably be missing messages until you reenable those in Settings. Also, if you send somebody a new iMessage it will default to your phone number which may not be what yo...

• View post

  If your cookie dialog doesn’t have a “reject all” button at the top level, or worse, doesn't even have the button at all and makes me uncheck 200 options of “legitimate use” manually, I consider you of highly dubious moral character.

• View post

  PCalc 3.8 is available on the store now! Full support for iOS 12 and Siri Shortcuts, plus all the new devices. Also includes my whimsy for this year, a lovely set of animated iMessage stickers by @dlanham featuring Pascal, the PCalc panda. Get it here: https://pcalc.com/itunes_store_link/tlasystems

• View post

  Folks, if you have any episodes of the old Debug podcast archived locally, give @Gte a belated 50th birthday present and send him the file. Everything got taken down when iMore was taken out, and that's a lot of history to lose!

• View post

  Debenhams out here promoting unrealistic beauty standards.

• View post

  I have to assume that the business that are laying off employees and replacing them with inferior cheap AI systems, are going to have a similar experience to those who cut cable bundles and went to streaming services. Oh, did they slowly ratchet the prices up on you, and now you are paying way more than you ever did? How surprising.

• View post

  I love the spam that says “have you ever thought about appearing on podcasts?”.

• View post

  If I had thought about it, I would have cleverly promoted the fact that Dice by PCalc has a semi-scientifically-accurate “Moon Gravity" mode.

• View post

  Watching the Artemis launch on the same day as Project Hail Mary has left me unreasonably hopeful they meet some rocks.

• View post

  Apparently, the Artemis II has 260 Mbps internet via lasers, I guess technology has improved a little bit since the last time we were visiting the moon.

• View post

  Apple Music just added a thing in iOS 26.4 where they look at your favourite musicians and tell you about concerts nearby, and it has cost me £80 already.

• View post

  Me too, Max, me too 🦋

• View post

  Tomorrow…

• View post

  A timely update to my #TTRPG dice rolling app, Dice by PCalc, is out now! This release adds a bunch of new dice themes, including one that's a 50th Anniversary tribute to Apple, and to my time there on the Finder team. There's also a blue velvet dice tray, and a variety of other new features and bug fixes. iOS: https://pcalc.com/store/dice Mac: https://pcalc.com/store/dicemac

• View post

  I'm not the only person to have thoughts about Apple's 50th anniversary today, but these are mine: https://sixcolors.com/post/2026/04/apple-at-50-gonna-be-gonna-be-golden/

• View post

  iPod Socks 2025. https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2025/11/introducing-iphone-pocket-a-beautiful-way-to-wear-and-carry-iphone/