brantonb

This isn’t unique to Apple. The Windows developers were very vocal about a full screen start menu in Windows 8 being a bad change. We were told that we weren’t allowed to talk about it anymore on the large mailing list about the product. The decision had been made and complaints would no longer be read or responded to.

> In the early iOS beta, the new tab button was at the top of Safari, as far away from your thumbs as it could be.

It’s relatively recent in iOS history that Safari’s address bar is at the bottom. There’s a setting to move it back to the top. This specific example is probably as innocent as a default getting accidentally changed during the development process.

They list sponsors on their website: https://ladybird.org/#sponsors

I definitely went into the wrong restroom a couple of times after an office move to the opposite side of building 9.

Enough people use 867-5309 as their grocery loyalty card's phone number that it's often got savings available at the gas pump. Use the local area code. It works great for filling up rentals while traveling, too.

I was simply providing a single data point. Please feel free to use that to support your theory or ignore it.

From a pure numbers perspective, if you work 40 hours/week and commute 3.5 unpaid hours/day, then dropping the commute and taking a 50% pay cut results in only a 28% hourly pay cut and an extra 17.5 hours in your week.

And let’s not forget the gas and car maintenance savings. I reduced my annual driving by about 4,000 miles. My car will also not have to be replaced as soon. I’m also eating cheaper because I’m more likely to make my own lunch rather than eating out. I’m sure there are more expenses like this that add up.

If I could make the finances work, I think I’d take that deal. (I’d be unlikely to sign up for that commute in the first place.)

I have data for myself. My annual driving dropped from roughly 9,000 miles to 5,000 miles when I switched to WFH. In addition to avoiding the daily back and forth, I’d often make a detour on my evening commute to get groceries for the next couple of days. Now I plan things out better and make fewer shopping trips, as well.

I wonder if I could negotiate cheaper car insurance rates. I’m driving far less and on safer streets, rarely getting on a major highway.

There is a “Comic Code Coding Essentials“ bundle for $30, licensed for up to 5 users. Unfortunately, it’s at the very bottom of the page so it’s easy to miss.

I think your link got cut off. Here’s the direct link to the section on when to use typed throws. I hadn’t read this before, and it changes how I’ll approach them. Thanks for pointing it out!

https://github.com/swiftlang/swift-evolution/blob/main/propo...

If you want a more software focused take on it, there’s The Phoenix Project.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17255186-the-phoenix-pro...

I didn't want to have to organize my work and personal repos using a directory structure, so I use matching on the remote instead. Since my job uses a GitHub organization, I'm able to conditionally include a config file that uses my work email in any GitHub repo under that organization.

I wrote it up here, if that sounds useful: https://www.brantonboehm.com/code/conditional-git-config/

At my last job, we slowly started adopting Swift in 2016 by writing some unit tests with it. Once we felt comfortable and established some coding conventions, we started adding some production code. By the time I left in fall 2023, we were well over 50% Swift without any big rewrites of Obj-C code. Almost all the new code came in as Swift because developers enjoyed writing it over Obj-C.

Sounds like you rely on Categories a lot. Check out Extensions in Swift. [1]

There are some limitations (e.g., Swift enums lose a lot of their power if they're needed in Obj-C) but overall the interop is great. I don't remember anything in UIKit that couldn't be done with Swift. And if you're dealing with unicode text, doing things in Swift may make your life much easier.

[1] https://docs.swift.org/swift-book/documentation/the-swift-pr...

I totally understand that you have to play the game, even if I think the game makes search results worse. Appreciate your consideration and the post itself. (I'm an iOS dev that's made the jump from Obj-C to Swift and now from UIKit to SwiftUI.)

Yes, I'm asking for a bit of work to be done so that I can read their future posts like this. I spend money on well-crafted indie software but typically only after following the author for a while. I'd like to remain engaged and was offering a suggestion on how the author could make that happen.

The current RSS feed is not useful for humans. I'm not into SEO, so maybe RSS feeds are taken into account. You can publish multiple feeds, though.

This post was great, so I added the RSS feed to my reader and I almost instantly removed it. I always knew those "7 Best Writing Apps for iPhone (2024)" posts were only there for SEO, but seeing a post from 2021 with that title is frustrating. This post appears to be the only non-SEO-related post in the feed.

Not trying to take anything away from the author: the app and this post look great. But consider doing more writing like this and breaking them out into a dedicated, non-SEO feed. I'd subscribe to that in a heartbeat.

> For instance, the NSPopover is a good candidate for bubbles that hint at stuff in the Mac app. An iOS counterpart sadly does not exist, so no bubbles in the iOS app.

Ignoring popover presentations in UIKit, there’s also a new TipKit framework in iOS 17, but it’s Swift-only.

https://developer.apple.com/documentation/TipKit

The author has done a great job while remaining in Obj-C. I’m really curious how long they can avoid Swift, keep the native experience, and offer new features in the platforms.

20 years ago, I was a college kid who built a running log website as an alternative to keeping paper records. My college cross-country team lived all over the country, so this let us keep each other accountable during summer training. It was fairly early in the Internet, before GPS watches and not many runners had heart rate straps. It got featured in Women's Health and Runners' World (UK edition) magazines.

When I interviewed at Microsoft my senior year, this gave me a ton to talk about. It was real experience building a product and having customers. I could answer questions with something real and different than the other candidates. I know I bombed two of my interviews, but I ended up doing 7 interviews on the day and getting an offer.

The website is still around, but I haven't done anything to it other than delete the production log that fills up the server disk occasionally in the last 15 years. I don't know why anyone uses it, there are much better options. I still run and I certainly don't use it. But the server bills are cheap, so it lives on.

Thank you for making me one of today’s lucky 10,000!

https://xkcd.com/1053/

In high school, I took two semesters of typing on typewriters. For our tests, Mrs. Beck would take the correction ribbons out. There was no point in trying to fix anything, keep going as fast as possible.

We went to a tri-county competition that used computers instead. I was the only one from my school that realized we could correct our mistakes during the competition. I sacrificed a bit of speed to get 100% accuracy and won the whole shebang. Mistakes were heavily penalized in the scoring.

> This is the same for encryption: the number 1 threat is lost encryption keys

This is so true. I worked on v1 of BitLocker. Key management was a much bigger feature than the actual full-disk encryption. I only recently got a Yubikey because I know how easy it is to shoot myself in the foot, and I’m still very nervous about it.

I assume any anonymous surveys at work that roll up through my management chain aren’t anonymous at all. My manager will get responses from only ~10 people and my writing style will be unique within that small sample size.

There are differences between iCloud and local backup. For example, iCloud backup doesn’t backup your Notes or Health data but local backup can. Sync != backup — without a backup, if you sync a bad change you’ve lost the data.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204136

I can’t solve the whole problem for you, but you can `git commit --fixup HEAD~4` if you know it’s 5 commits back. No need to figure out the hash. `HEAD^^^^` would also work — sometimes if I have to repeatedly fixup the same commit, adding an additional ^ to a previous command is easiest.

My first job was pumping gas at a full service station in Ohio in the late ‘90s, where full service stations were rare. We had two islands, with two pumps each. When out-of-towners would pull up and see us approach, they’d often drive to the other island. We’d get a big grin and walk over to them again. We’d get the best tips from them, because they didn’t know what to do.

I’d probably check someone’s oil about once an hour, but we washed windshields by default. It was before “pay at the pump”, so I spent a lot of my time walking credit cards in and out of the store to run them. It was actually a fun summer job for a high school kid.

A few summers later, I got a software internship at that oil company’s headquarters, working on a Visual Basic app for the pricing department to set prices at all of their stations. I’d often complete my week’s work by Monday afternoon and spend the rest of the week in their library, learning about all sorts of new technology. They treated me well and I was fortunate they didn’t offer me a full-time job at the end of my internship, because I likely would’ve taken it.

When I’ve filled up in Oregon, I’ve not seen them do anything but pump gas. During the pandemic, I drove through Oregon many times and learned to get gas before entering the state.

I did two long training days in Cool this past weekend, on some of the same trails as Canyons the week before. High temperatures were in the low 50°s. Y’all got really unlucky with the heat. That DNF rate was brutal — congrats on getting a finish!

> It’s “fun”.

Type 2 fun is my favorite way of describing it. Usually starts with good intentions, it’s miserable while it’s happening, but afterwards the mind convinces itself that the experience was enjoyable.

https://www.rei.com/blog/climb/fun-scale

A counterpoint is that if the companies running these platforms are run by American companies, then their efforts to combat hate speech will be disproportionately focused on English language and American hate speech. This can allow it to flourish elsewhere.

I was just looking at the Garmin inReach on REI’s sale a few minutes ago. $350 for the device ($50 off right now), $30 activation fee, and $12/month for two years is $668. Upgrading my 3 year old phone is $800. Kind of a no-brainer to use the phone I’d be carrying anyway.

I’m not looking to use it for weeks-long trips. Mostly trail running and maybe a few days in the back country.

The alt text on that XKCD has aged so well.