John Brayton

  • CocoaHeads Boston will meet online this Thursday.

    New participants are always welcome. Being in the Boston area is not required. Get in touch for video conference details.

  • My aging eyes are very happy about the larger text in the left window pane of Xcode 12.

  • An Apple News widget responding to text size changes. I am fascinated by how it chooses which articles to display.

  • Installing 14 on my carry phone.

  • I had a great time at the Release Notes Happy Hour.

  • Check out LIVE-ish concurrent with WWDC 2020 if you have not already done so.

  • Unread had a bug that prevented it from launching on the iOS/iPadOS 14 beta. I just released a fix.

  • WidgetKit is impressive, but the lack of scrolling is a big limitation.

  • First Impressions of the WWDC Keynote

    • This is a big year for the Mac. I am excited about Apple’s processors. I am leery of the user interface changes.
    • It looks like the biggest change for most iOS and iPadOS apps will be home screen widgets.
    • I am surprised that SwiftUI was barely mentioned in the keynote.
    • They mentioned lots of Catalyst changes, but then talked about how the Mac could run iOS apps. I imagine this will be clarified in the State of the Union.

    Apple did a fantastic job with the presentation.

  • Good to see Apple starting the keynote by acknowledging important issues: racism, the murder of George Floyd, and Coronavirus.

  • My WWDC Wish List:

    • ARM Macs
    • iPad multitasking improvements
    • A Snow Leopard year for iOS
    • Big App Store policy changes

  • Barr needs to grapple with the phrase “stepping down”. I am happy to see that Geoffrey Berman will not leave willingly or quietly.

  • HEY and the App Store

    When Apple News initially became available and could include content from any RSS feed, I made my blogs available in Apple News. Eventually Apple deleted them from Apple News because I did not post as frequently as Apple later decided to require.

    To be clear, I never asked that my blogs be featured or even discoverable in Apple News. I never asked for or even wanted Apple to highlight content from my blogs. I just wanted my website visitors to be able to click on a Subscribe in Apple News link on my website to read it through Apple News. Just like one can do in any RSS reader.

    The HEY situation is analogous. Basecamp is not asking Apple to promote HEY. Basecamp does not need Apple to host HEY app downloads. Basecamp is explicitly asking not to use Apple’s payment processing system. Basecamp just wants to distribute a native iOS app for HEY. Apple made the App Store the only mechanism for doing so in the name of security. Basecamp chose to distribute the HEY Mac app itself, without the Mac App Store.

    For some developers, the benefits of distributing through the App Store are worth the cost. For others, the App Store is just a burden. Apple’s requirements for simply distributing an iOS app are absurd and the cost is too high.

  • Andy Ibanez: Please Help, Apple Is Threatening To Terminate My Apple Developer Account With No Clear Reason

  • For fellow registered voters in Massachusetts: a petition to put ranked choice voting on the ballot.

  • There was a good crowd today for the Black Lives Matter protest here in Haverhill, MA. I would guess there were about a thousand in attendance.

  • Before the 2016 election The Boston Globe posted a satirical front page detailing what a Trump presidency could look like.

  • I am looking forward to tonight’s online CocoaHeads Boston meeting. New participants are always welcome, as are those who are not in the Boston area.

    Get in touch if you need video conference details.

  • This episode of 9to5Mac Watch Time with @ishabazz and @apollozac is an informative discussion of racism.

  • What’s the plan now, America?

    Cedric L. Alexander at CNN:

    I am a black American man who has been privileged to serve in law enforcement for 40 years. Today, if a young person of color asks me what they should do if a police officer stops them, I answer: Put your hands on the steering wheel where they can be seen, cooperate and comply. And should they answer me back, as they likely would today – Even if I did all that, we are still getting murdered – I would have nothing to tell him or her. With my decades of experience, I would have nothing to say.

    …

    The problems we face at this moment are part of our long history. But the complete absence of leadership – political, moral, policy, strategic – strikes me as genuinely unprecedented. What’s the plan now, America?

  • Sick to my stomach.

  • Last night I went to bed happy that, for the first time this year, it was warm enough to sleep with the windows open.

    By morning I wished I had put the air conditioners in the windows.

  • Thanks to @chuckjoiner for interviewing me about Unread 2 on MacVoices.

  • CNN: A 5-year-old boy was pulled over in Utah on his way to California to try to buy a Lamborghini

    I have so many questions about this.

  • My “e” key is sticking. On my 16-inch.

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