2,903 karma · joined February 25, 2020
I really hope this isn’t artificial market segmentation by Apple to sell more Pros.
> I've decided I want to work for a company that values my time and developer experience
That’s one of the reasons we’re switching. Being Windows-only absolutely hurts recruitment.
The Mac trackpads are so responsive that they feel every bit as good as having a touch screen.
Assuming software comparability isn’t an issue, I don’t know how I could recommend any non-M1/M2 machines in earnest.
Haha, I read your comment, and my first thought was a dismissive, “who cares about active cooling”. Which really says something about how insanely power efficient these chips are. I’ve had the M1 Air since launch and I’ve yet to observe any thermal throttling under my workloads (I’ve yet to feel the machine even get hot)
That's interesting. UIKit is by far my favoured UI development framework (whether on web or mobile). It's incredibly powerful, and also pretty damn easy to work with once you know what you're doing.
I feel SwiftUI might be favoured nowadays, only because the vast majority of devs come from a web development background. UIKit unfortunately has a pretty steep learning curve if you've come from a web dev background.
Yes. The popularity of Instagram and Pinterest for shopping is a direct reflection of how relatively hostile the web is from a UX perspective. I often find myself using Pinterest, rather than the web, to browse retailers, because it's typically a better experience. This is rather precarious situation for retailers to be in, imo, as it means that Pinterest/Instagram effectively become gatekeepers to their stores.
From this perspective, it's no wonder why these stores keep begging users to install their apps. I'm sure Ikea would much rather me use the Ikea app than Pinterest.
However, I don't think every store needs or should have an app. I wonder if it's possible to deploy boilerplate native app experiences, that don't require these retailers to have a whole native development team.
Native iOS and Android apps are fantastic in that, as long as you're willing to follow Apple's/Google's guidelines, it's pretty easy to create great user experiences and highly maintainable software. Until the web can match that relative ease, it'll always be second-fiddle to native on mobile.
The problem with the web right now is that the tooling is a complete mess compared to native development. It feels like you end up spending 80 to 120 percent of the effort you'd put in to build two native apps, and even then the web apps would never feel as good as native.
My company strongly considered building web apps, as we move away from MVP to a more mature product, but the web tooling just isn't at the level it needs to be. The only value proposition for web was that it's easier to hire web devs.
I can't really comment on other companies, but my company is currently moving our product from MVP to a more mature project. When comparing various options (PWAs/web, Flutter, React, Native), PWAs/web was immediately discarded as an option because we didn't believe we could deliver the level of UX excellence we're targeting. Nor did we believe that PWAs would be any easier to develop and maintain than two native apps.
Perhaps the strongest argument in favour of the web is that it's a lot easier to hire web devs than iOS and Android developers. But that's all moot if the web can't deliver the product experience we're targeting.
We're still considering React, but I feel like we're inevitability going to end up building a full native experience.
Generally speaking, I feel that PWAs and the web have a long way to go in terms of tooling, performance and UX excellence, before companies in our position will be comfortable adopting it. At least with iOS, it's really easy to create fantastic user experiences and maintainable software as long as you're willing to follow Apple's guidelines. It's a lot more difficult to achieve the same on the web.
iOS 15 introduced notification filters and notification summaries
iOS 16 doesn’t even show notifications on the Lock Screen unless the user explicitly asks to view them (there’s just a small “view notifications” button at the bottom of the screen). Further, the Live Activities widgets will eliminate a lot of the notifications sent by apps like Uber.
If the trend continues, iOS 17 will further hide notifications.
Perhaps this is why Apple now feels comfortable with web push notifications.
I wish the EU had gone with this solution rather than the current regulations. However I can’t help but feel that the “loopholes” in the current regulations were intentional. Politicians have a history of rolling out regulations that have giant loopholes for their corporate friends to exploit.
And why would we assume that these companies would follow the "most natural implementation"?
The very predictable response of the industry to the EU directive was to make the cookie banners as annoying as invasive as possible, such that users would consent to tracking out of apathy. No, it's not what the EU intended to happen, but it was a consequence. Which brings me back to my original point: often times idealic and well-intentioned measure have negative consequences.
In hindsight, perhaps the EU should've legislated that the UX for the tracking content cannot be unreasonably annoying. I don't know how I'd go about codifying that into law though.
Engineers are expensive, and every minute they spend fighting with equipment rather than being productive is costly.
>A tennis ball mass black hole would go right through the Earth without too much fuss. The black hole's radius would be too small (smaller than an electron) to cause any damage.
Is it possible that tiny black holes of this size could be travelling through the earth at a regular basis? Do we have the means to reliably detect black holes that small?
On that note, I wonder if a pair of wide angle cameras could be used to create a reasonably convincing three-dimensional live stream via FaceTime. With VR glasses, participants in the call would be able to see each others surroundings in 3D space.
This sounds more immersive, and less goofy than the metaverse. It also seems like a feature that Apple could reasonably deliver with their rumoured glasses.
Facebook has been screaming bloody murder over Apple’s regulations making it difficult for them to monetize user fare.
These companies are not your friends, and don’t for a second believe that their push for more open regulations has anything to do with user “freedom”. These companies are only concerned about apple limiting their freedoms to prey on users.
> Of the entire internet, with its endless horrors beyond Apple's control, the DOJ has decided to go after a small green patch that users trust. This is more an indictment of the DOJ than anything. Apple's phone market share is small, but the trust / spending on apple are crazy because it's one of the few places online that doesn't just screw you over.
The fact that the most valuable consumers willingly lock themselves behind this walled garden, when there were and are plenty of open alternatives is a pretty glaring indictment of the state of the tech industry. Unfortunately predatory and user-hostile companies are the norm in our industry, and consumers have adjusted their spending habits accordingly.