Brent Simmons's linklog.
Jeff Johnson writes, in If computers are the future, why are computer users expected to be permanently illiterate? : The iPhone seems to have engendered a culture of anti-intellectualism and learned helplessness so pervasive that users have become evangelists for their own disempowerment. The line “evangelists for their own disempowerment” struck me because it’s a thing I’ve seen (I think we’ve…
From open web champion Manton Reece comes a new RSS reader Inkwell : Inkwell is built around three main tabs: Today, Recent, and Fading. Today is for the latest blog posts. Recent is for posts yesterday or the day before. And Fading is for posts up to a week old. After a week, posts fade out of Inkwell, so you’ll never be overwhelmed with unread posts. If you missed them, it’s okay. It already…
Jeff Johnson notes that different types of windows on macOS Tahoe have different corner radiuses . If this isn’t the stupidest user interface “feature” ever invented, I don’t know what is. The Mac used to be famous for consistency; now it’s becoming infamous for inconsistency.
Gazette by Colin Weir is a lightweight Gmail-to-RSS bridge designed specifically for reading newsletters in standard RSS readers (like NetNewsWire, Reeder, or FreshRSS). It polls your Gmail for newsletters, strips out the tracking scripts and complex CSS, and serves them as a clean, readable feed.
Marcin Wichary reminds us, in “Our programs are fun to use” , of the great Beagle Bros, the inspiration for so many indie app developers — of indies who went on to inspire other indies. Without their leadership by example the indie app world would be smaller and far less colorful.
I didn’t have a new or new-to-me RSS reader to link to today — so consider this your periodic reminder about how awesome Unread is . 🎸
FeedCity by Daniel Pietzsch says that it’s “Your feed reader for a stress-free way to follow websites. Encouraging exploration and sharing.” In the launch announcement from May 2025, Daniel writes: The main reason for adding yet another feed reader to the already huge pile, is that I couldn’t find an existing one with the features I’d like to have. Here’s how FeedCity is different, I believe: No…
Jake Spurlock writes of his new RSS reader in Today Comes to the Mac : Today on Mac uses a three-column layout: your feeds in the sidebar, articles in the middle, and the full article on the right. It’s the kind of layout that just makes sense when you have the screen real estate, and it makes triaging a busy morning of feeds feel effortless. I note that it includes (local) AI summaries of…
Terry Godier announces his new RSS reader Current : The impulse was simpler than a philosophy: every RSS reader I tried made me feel bad. Not because the apps were ugly or broken (most were quite good) but because they all seemed to agree on something I didn’t. That reading the internet was a task. The UI of Current is based on that premise — and it joins a small but awesome number of RSS readers…
If you use NetNewsWire you know Maurice Parker’s work — so much of NetNewsWire, from Feedbin and iCloud syncing to the iOS app itself, was written by him. He’s up to version 4.0 of his cool outliner app Zavala and he writes on his blog about the decisions and tradeoffs that went into it. (I love this kind of thing. Every developer should write like this after shipping a major release. Me too.) One…
Joe Heck writes, in Navigation Notes – Agentic coding : The latest “frontier” models are north of 1.2 trillion parameters today, maybe bigger… Even with the breadth of data, it can only predict patterns that it’s seen before. The generalization jump at 100 billion parameters means that it can start to apply patterns it’s seen in one place to another, but it still has to have seen it somewhere.…
Sure, it’s been a while, but why not bring back the ol’ linkblog. 🐣🐥 I gave it a design very much inspired by what it used to look like in the mid-2000s — the idea was to make it look like I just started posting to it again. Easy as that. The new/old design uses gradients. And Verdana! Love Verdana.
Ranchero Software doesn’t have a new app — but Ranchero Software’s sister company Q Branch released Vesper . For iPhone.
So I can simplify things for myself and make it more likely I’ll actually post to my weblog, I’ve decided to put this weblog on hiatus and post everything on inessential.com . That little bit of friction — answering the question of which weblog to post to — was enough to make posting seem like too much of a chore. So now I don’t have to answer that question. Hopefully that means I’ll post more…
Click on the picture of the FAMOUS BAND FROM THE NINETEEN-SIXTIES . Today’s a day you’re never going to forget, ever. Or, well, okay, maybe that’s not quite true — but maybe you’ll save some money, which is cool, too.
360 MacDev is the last Mac conference before the Mac App Store — and you can get 25% off. Details on my weblog .
Somehow I missed this news last week (and maybe you've already seen it) — my friend Patrick Burleson (BitBQ head bit-barbecuer) released QueueUp (iTunes link) on the App Store. It's an app for quickly adding a movie to your Netflix queue. That's what it does. I'm not a Netflix subscriber — but, if I was, I'd get this app right away. I love iPhone apps like this, that do a thing, that make it easy…
Riverfold Software — my friend Manton Reece — just released Tweet Library (iTunes link) on the iPad. It's another Twitter client, yes — but it does a bunch that the other ones don't. It archives your tweets and provides filters and collections. Is Twitter important to you? You may need this. There's a website that talks more about it — with screenshots and an intro video. One of the cooler…
TouchUp (iTunes link) is a gorgeous new photo editing app from my friends at RogueSheep. Introductory price is 40% off, just $2.99. I love it. Totally fun app. I had seen betas, but hadn't had the chance to use it much until just today. I'm impressed by their work, as usual — the attention to detail, to the sense of fun and delight, and to the generosity . The app even comes with screencast…
In RogueSheep's recent post on Scholarly Shepherding , Chris talks about the UW Extension course on Cocoa. Though I'm not one of the teachers, I'm on the board — and I'm hugely proud of the teachers and students and folks at UW who made the first year such a success. Year two is starting soon, and there are still slots open for the eastside class. (Westside is on waiting list.) Chris also mentions…