May 7^th 2025 · 1 min read · #development #game #godot #ios #ipad

Xogot: iPad Game Dev with Godot ➹

Miguel de Icaza’s tour de force in Swift development (that I have had the priviledge of beta testing, albeit not as consistently as I would like) is now on the App Store.

Xogot brings a full-fledged Godot game development environment to the iPad, and it is very slick indeed. The bundled projects give a good idea of what you can achieve, and it has lots of thoughtful creature comforts.

There’s a dry appeal to watching a traditionally desktop-oriented engine make the jump to mobile (and yes, the notion of building and running games on the same iOS device is intriguing, and pretty much unique, but Godot has been working on Android for years).

This is an amazing technical achievement on all counts, and yes, it proves that you can pack professional-grade tools into a mobile experience, even if Apple doesn’t really want you to and some of the desktop workflows feel a bit alien on an iPad.

Imagine (again) if Apple actually let us do more.

May 6^th 2025 · 1 min read · #arm #microsoft #qualcomm #surface #tablet #usb-c

New 12-Inch ARM Surface Pro ➹

This is one of those times when I must say it is very frustrating that Apple not only killed the 12” MacBook but also refuses to make the iPad a more generally useful device (and I’m actually typing this on an 11” model, just after putting away a comparably-sized Linux laptop I am reviewing).

The new Surface Pro 12-inch goes all-in on USB-C, keeps (but downsizes) the keyboard design and promises about 12 hours of battery life thanks to Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X Plus chip. It also seems reasonably priced at $799. I have been considering getting an ARM machine as part of my next corporate refresh, and I hope this one is on the roster.

I can’t wait until Apple comes to their senses on either of the above, though.

May 3^rd 2025 · 3 min read · #automation #docker #home #homebridge #homekit #mqtt #node-red #proxmox #zigbee

My Quest For Home Automation, Part 6

This weekend, I finally migrated my home automation setup off the Raspberry Pi 4 it’s been running on for the last four years and into an LXC container managed by Proxmox on my Beelink U59 Pro.

I’ve been meaning to do this for a while, and things finally fell into place yesterday when I had a bit of time to spare.

Previous Installments

In case you haven’t been following along for the past seven years, here’s a brief summary of the major milestones so far:

Part 1 - Sonoff/Tasmota S20 outlets
Part 2 - Node-RED, Broadlink IR (since discontinued) and security
Part 3 - debugging and Xiaomi/Aqara Zigbee sensors
Part 3.5 - a detour through Azure IoT (since discontinued, but fun)
Part 4 - old Docker setup, Node-RED wizardry and HomeKit accessory spoofing
Part 4.5 - switched to a Pi 4 and away from Docker
Part 5 - Push-button Tasmota timers and upgrade to Zigbee 3.0
Part 5.5 - Zigbee 3.0 firmware updates

Why

It’s mostly about consolidation and cleanup, since I now have one less power plug and Ethernet port in use on my server closet.

Being able to backup everything consistently and migrate the setup to any machine I want (as long as it has an USB port for my Zigbee coordinator) is just icing on the cake.

Although HomeKit hasn’t really improved substantially over the past few years (in fact, the Home app has only gotten worse, and most of my unscheduled interactions are via Siri), homebridge and zigbee2mqtt satisfy my relatively simple needs for home automation rather well.

I’ve written about that at length over the years, so the list above should give you a good idea of the finer points of my setup.

But, in short, everything operates 99% on the LAN (with no devices calling home to anyone or relying on outside services to work) while allowing me to do the occasional remote action securely without any new software on our phones, and I quite like it that way.

I also wanted to do a general cleanup of the whole thing from scratch, including renaming all my accessories using a slightly different convention (including renaming them directly in zigbee2mqtt to make sure names are consistent throughout the stack) and removing redundant accessories, since (for instance) I no longer have the need to have as many temperature sensors around the house now that all my heatpumps have been HomeKit-enabled by the addition of ESP32 modules.

Finally, I was having some trouble keeping things up to date, mostly due to JavaScript packaging vagaries. Every update I wanted to make eventually led to me having to either upgrade NodeJS or fiddle with the latest fashion in package management, so it was time to go back to a Docker-based setup for consistency with the rest of what I’m running–although I am not doing automated updates for this stack.

Why both homebridge and zigbee2mqtt don’t have sensible alternatives written in something like Go I have no idea. Even Java would have been better.

How

The actual process was pretty straightforward:

Backed up all my configuration and data.
Created an LXC container on u59 with the original hostname and made sure my router updated its local DNS (after some finagling with DHCP), so that the Tasmota devices could connect immediately.
Configured Proxmox to pass through the USB device for my Zigbee controller.
Wrote up a docker-compose.yaml file to set up homebridge, zigbee2mqtt, mosquitto and node-red.
Restored the config for each in turn, doing minor tweaks as needed.
Renamed all my Zigbee devices (this makes it easier to manage things on the Home app when HomeKit throws a fit).
Set up piku to manage some MQTT microservices like the plex-listener that powers my “now playing” display and my homelab homepage (which is now a variant of this little dashboard/homepage I hacked a while back).
Set up backups (both of the complete LXC filesystem and git versioning of the configurations)
Started cleaning up old Node-RED flows, removing redundant accessories, etc.

The current filesystem layout is pretty straightforward:

.
|-- README.md
|-- docker-compose.yaml
|-- homebridge
|   |-- accessories
|   |-- auth.json
|   |-- backups (excluded from git)
|   |-- config.json
|   |-- lgtvKeyFile
|   |-- node_modules (excluded from git)
|   |-- package.json
|   |-- persist (contains bridge data and identifiers)
|   |-- startup.sh
|   `-- webostv
|-- mosquitto
|   |-- data
|   `-- log
|-- nodered
|   |-- flows.json
|   |-- flows_cred.json
|   |-- flows_home.json
|   |-- homekit-persist (contains data for Node-RED Homekit shims)
|   |-- itunes.db
|   |-- lib (excluded from git)
|   |-- metrics.db (14GB, _definitely_ excluded from git...)
|   |-- metrics.db-shm
|   |-- metrics.db-wal
|   |-- metrics.sql
|   |-- node_modules (excluded from git)
|   |-- nrchkb
|   |-- package-lock.json
|   |-- package.json
|   |-- projects 
|   |-- security.db
|   `-- settings.js
`-- zigbee2mqtt
    |-- configuration.yaml
    |-- coordinator_backup.json
    |-- database.db
    `-- state.json

Next Steps

Right now I’m still removing redundant devices, as well as planning replacing some Tasmota plugs with Zigbee equivalents to improve the mesh coverage.

Another thing I will be doing is replacing some Node-RED flows that do metric logging and MQTT transformations with Python microservices.

I no longer have a need to tweak them, so their behavior can be frozen and any changes better versioned in git (Node-RED does support git, but it’s just messy to do some things that way).

May 3^rd 2025 · 1 min read · #apple #appstore #epic #eu #guidelines #policy #scrooge #us

On The Apple U.S. App Guidelines Update ➹

Apple’s revised guidelines following the Epic Games ruling are… not a good look, and I hope the E.U. doubles down on this to force them to do the right thing and change the rules “globally”.

The updated rules allow apps on the U.S. storefront to include external links and calls to action without the previous restrictions (sections 3.1.1 and 3.1.3 give a clear green light). But Apple’s insistence on debating what a button is and going out of their way to hold on to their payment fees (instead of acknowledging that the fees could simply be lowered to a point where sheer convenience would ensure developer adoption of their payment system) feels too miserly to dwell upon.

To me, their arguments for developer fees (especially the $99 tax for being able to permanently install builds on your own devices) have always seemed borderline evil, and given their scale and operating margins there is just no excuse for not being fairer about the whole thing.

After all, developers are the ones giving their store real value, and whatever “value” or costs that Apple incurs by maintaining the storefront (which should be stupefyingly efficient from an engineering perspective by now) and App Review (which is still a mystery box of random outcomes) is likely to be much smaller than, say, cutting their fees in half or even waiving them for small volumes of sales.

But Tim Cook’s Apple runs on tallying nicklels and dimes.

Apr 30^th 2025 · 2 min read · #3dprinting #kingroon #klipper #kp3s #longterm #review

The Kingroon KP3S Pro (V1), Two Years Later

It’s been two years now since I got myself one of the first iterations of the Kingroon KP3S Pro, so I thought I’d post a sort of cursory long-term review of what it’s been like to use it.

For something that I bought on a whim and without any actual reviews, it’s been excellent bang for the buck.

Hardware

It is the quietest 3D printer I own – I’ve mostly retired my Prusa clone due to that alone, and I can keep it going during my constant video calls.
The all-metal construction has proven to be sturdy and stable, with very little vibration even at relatively high speeds (for 2023… current printers are faster), so the outputs are of pretty good quality–for instance, I recently used it to print all the parts for my PicoTracker (including the key caps) and it works great at 0.12mm layer height.
Despite being a bed slinger, the motion system is good enough that I’ve been considering replacing the nozzle with a 0.2mm one to print smaller parts, although I will have to spend a bit more time tuning filaments since so far most of what I print are functional parts.
Replacing parts (like a broken belt) has been pretty straightforward so far.

The only real issue I have with it is that it still tends to layer shift on occasion–I suspect that is due to my not tuning for all the filaments I use and the toolhead hitting support structures (I am using stepper feedback for software end stops).

Modifications

There were a few hardware modifications that helped a bit:

I created my own version of the classic “filler” spool holder, which I’ve been using for a while now. It works well enough that I haven’t felt the need to improve upon the design, and it has the added benefit of allowing me to mount the Filler itself in several ways.
Taking advantage of the fact that the nozzle can move slightly outside the print bed, I added a nozzle wiper based on a metal “toothbrush”.
I got a couple of Garolite/FR4 printer beds that work very well with PETG, to the point where I still haven’t used the PEI bed I bought at the same time. Even though it is an open frame printer, the relatively small bed can run hot enough to maintain adhesion.

Other than that the only real modification was installing a BLTouch and sacrificing the internal LCD to Klipper, which has been working perfectly with OrcaSlicer. At the time I was a bit annoyed that Kingroon had created the V2 and shipped it with Klipper so soon, but given that they haven’t upgraded their official firmware since September 2023, I’m OK with having taken things into my own hands…

Future Tweaks

Since I can keep it running while working and I have full control of the firmware, right now I am considering building a simple multi-material setup like the 3MS.

This because I now feel the need to print two-color key caps, project enclosures and small mechanical/functional parts with TPU and PETG using material interlocking, and I can’t really babysit manual filament changes.

This is also why the KP3S is ironically, the printer I’m most likely to replace with a good, quiet, multi-material alternative, although with the current geopolitical situation I’m holding back a bit on new purchases.

Conclusion

All in all, and considering it’s been two years of frequent use, I think the KP3S Pro V1 was a good purchase–especially if I consider bang for the buck, although to be fair it also helped me compound my experience with Klipper (it became the printer I tested out all my configurations on before applying them to the others).

Apr 30^th 2025 · 1 min read · #ai #cloud #digital #disclaimer #europe #geopolitics #microsoft #privacy #security #sovereignty #tech

Microsoft Digital Commitments in Europe ➹

This one deserves a link to my disclaimer, even though it is quite obviously way above my pay grade.

I do find it positive in the sense that it is a step towards a more resilient and privacy-focused digital landscape in Europe, but I also have to wonder about the implications of such commitments in the context of the ongoing geopolitical tensions and the need for data sovereignty–in short, we’ve been discussing the lack of an European cloud for decades in my closest circles both inside and outside work, and something like this was a long time coming.

Like I pointed out in various (public) places, hosters are not hyperscalers, and being able to spin up a VM on European soil is not the same as having a full-fledged cloud provider with all the bells and whistles. The fact that my current employer is committing to a 40% increase in datacenter capacity in Europe, along with the establishment of sovereign cloud options in France and Germany, is a pretty positive sign that they are taking the needs of European customers seriously even if they weren’t signing my paycheck.

The bit that might come in under the radar, though, is the one I find the most interesting myself: setting up legal mechanisms to contest any government edict that might disrupt cloud operations.

Given the current worldwide situation, it’s a pretty strong statement on the US side, and acknowledgement that digital systems are not immune to geopolitical fickleness.

Apr 28^th 2025 · 1 min read · #electricity #emergency #grid #outage #portugal #power #spain

Spain-Portugal Power Outage ➹

Well, this was a fun day. Nothing like having to climb up and down seven flights of stairs in pitch dark a few times and keeping yourself entertained with a hand-crank FM radio, portable solar panels and a Kindle.

Mobile networks saturated quickly and went out after a few hours (around five, short of the eight I expected), power took around nine hours to be restored and fiber service is still mostly out, so tomorrow is going to be an interesting day as I try to bring my homelab back online (but at least the Portuguese grid can still be self-sufficient, even if they had to do a black start).

Still no root cause, though, other than the obvious fact that the Spanish grid went unstable and took out ours (because it’s cheaper for us to import their power, and because European power grids tend to be interlinked).

Loads of discussion on Hacker News if you’re so inclined. Me, I’m going to bed.

Update: Here’s a breakdown of what Internet traffic looked like. The mobile traffic held on for longer in other parts of the country, apparently.

Apr 28^th 2025 · 1 min read · #ai #integration #ios #mac #perplexity #siri #voice

Perplexingly Better Than Siri ➹

Hot on my rant about Siri on the HomePod Mini, this lays out how, by simply using native Apple APIs like EventKit, MapKit, and Mail’s native compose sheet, Perplexity manages to make conversation with an assistant a practical—if not sometimes quirky—experience. I found it amusing that queries like “play the song that was playing in The O.C. when Seth Cohen was wearing a Spider-Man mask” got a correct response on Perplexity, whereas Siri (even with its ChatGPT integration) was hopeless. Sure enough, Federico notes, “Siri is producing absolute junk while Perplexity is being genuinely useful.”

The piece is worth a look because it isn’t just hype—it carefully points out real limitations (like issues with reminders and the absence of HomeKit control) while hinting at a future where integrations may become the norm rather than the exception. The detailed back and forth shows a thoughtful interaction with AI that should have been within Apple’s ability to deliver rather than bombarding us with vaporware bells and whistles.

It’s a sober reminder that innovation often comes from practical tweaks rather than revolutionary new tricks, and I have to wonder how many more people are doing it better than Apple right now.

Apr 25^th 2025 · 4 min read · #airplay #apple #homeautomation #homepod #homepodmini #reviews #siri

The HomePod Mini

Since Alexa has changed the way it handles voice recordings and I don’t feel comfortable with their privacy disclaimers, I decided to retire the Echo Dot I have been using for years in my office and replace it with a HomePod Mini.

And of course there are a few catches–for instance, it’s been seven years since the first HomePod was launched, and it is still not officially available in Portugal. So I did some spelunking on eBay to have a second-hand one shipped from the US (which, ironically, was the cheapest way to get it).

The second catch is, of course, that I have gone all-in on Siri on what is likely the worst possible time. And yes, I know that there is absolutely no guarantee that Apple will bring any future “AI Siri” features to current devices.

In fact, there’s a near certainty of the opposite, especially since the product cycle for HomePods is just plain weird and Apple will definitely want to upsell you on to a “ScreenPod”.

And yes, I was very close to getting a Home Assistant Voice and going through the entire rigmarole of setting up a local LLM to handle intents and have a fully offline solution, but that would have been an additional time sink and required a lot more changes to our home automation setup than I deemed useful (or viable in the short term).

Plus, saying “Okay Nabu” just feels ridiculous (and yes, I know a lot about the Wyoming Satellite project and how you can configure wake words, etc. - I just really didn’t want to do any of it until the tech matures another year.

But I digress. Let’s go over my notes on setting up the Orb of Artificial Stupidity (which is what I initially named it on the Home app).

Hardware

Although I was fully aware of the fact (and mentioned it in the past several times as a reason not to get one), it’s simply asinine that the HomePod Mini doesn’t have an audio out jack.

And I was also aware that the power cable (which terminates in a USB-C plug that requires a PD or Apple power adapter) is non-removable (you can do that on the “normal” model with some effort, but on the mini it’s soldered to the board).

Otherwise, it’s what you’d expect: a single wide-range speaker (with very good bass for the volume) with a few LEDs grafted on top inside a somewhat fashionable (but utterly forgettable) textured sphere.

And the touch controls are… well… not good. Fortunately, I have it tucked away behind my monitor just out of reach, so I don’t try to use them for anything but muting or un-muting it.

AirPlay 2.0

I have no issues using the HomePod Mini to listen to podcasts, but music has to be a) in stereo and b) through my 2.1 speaker setup, which has a little passive audio mixer in front to ensure I can have up to four computers or synthesizers permanently plugged in.

So I took the opportunity to upgrade shairport-sync on the Raspberry Pi that manages my office lights, which also acts as a unified streaming receiver via a little audio DAC. I also run a PlexAmp instance there, so it’s been the default “play on” destination for all of my music, but the HomePod can’t stream to anything that doesn’t speak AirPlay 2.0 (or Bluetooth).

Recompiling shairport-sync to support AirPlay 2.0 was a relatively trivial thing, but, again, it is an insanely more contrived process than just using a cable. I’m used to the vagaries of AirPlay and Apple’s silent war against audio jacks across anything that isn’t a MacBook, but it still feels stupid.

Still, at least I was able to keep using the Raspberry Pi as a “unified” audio receiver of sorts.

The Siri Dunce Cap

Once I had everything working, we began the process of training the human intelligences that were to benefit from this. For starters, I disabled speaker recognition (since I needed to have other people be able to set lighting scenes or play music), and everything mostly works… except Siri’s ability to understand context. As usual.

But in this case, it has a couple of extra annoying quirks. In particular, I have to explicitly tell it where to play music all the time. To simplify things, I named my Raspberry Pi ‘s AirPlay service “Desk”, but the HomePod needs very specific guidance to use them.

“Siri, play (that U2 album Apple foisted on everyone) on Desk” works, but given the vagaries of “dumb Siri” context handling, that also means that “Siri, pause” does not work at all from that point onward, because Siri is fundamentally unable to do that unless you specifically tack on “… music on Desk”.

Similarly, I have to be careful to avoid saying “turn off all the lights” even though the HomePod’s location is set to be my Office without adding “… in the office”, otherwise everything in the house will be plunged into darkness.

This, as you might expect, is not a popular outcome for most people.

I also had to rename my “Office Desk Lamp” to “Desk Lamp” because it was getting tedious to say “Siri, turn on the desk lamp” and have it say there was no such thing in my home, even though both the HomePod and the lamp are configured to “be” in the office.

Conclusion

These are all things I was mentally prepared for, since I have been using Siri with my Apple Watch and iPhone for many years now and Stockholm Syndrome nearly prevents me from pointing out, yet again, that the experience of using Siri for anything inside the home has, if anything, been thoroughly and consistently this bad since the very beginning–and, again, I have zero hope of Apple ever fixing it properly.

But hey, we can get it to work and I trust Apple a lot more than I trust Alexa, so even though I am still sore about the loss of the Echo Dot’s audio jack and the inability to stream any of my Plex music to the HomePod I’m telling myself it’s all worth it because I get to rebuild all my playlists on Apple Music.

Which is kind of what Eddie Cue wanted all along, no?

Apr 24^th 2025 · 2 min read · #personal #projects #update

A bit of a personal update

I have been mostly in “inbox zero” mode for the past few weeks, which generally meant checking stuff off my to-do list, trying to ignore the news, and using some fairly colorful language when I didn’t.

Apr 24^th 2025 · 1 min read · #ai #email #prompts #software #usefulness #ux

Horseless Carriages ➹

Pete Koomen’s essay takes aim at the current crop of AI apps by comparing them to “horseless carriages” – a neat metaphor for tools that lean too heavily on outdated thinking.

He points out that Gmail’s AI email draft generator misses the mark by forcing a one-size-fits-all tone and then, for an encore, he goes and does an almost perfect common sense prototype that puts a lot more control in the hands of the user.

Letting people customize behavior rather than defaulting to slop is definitely a much better way to use AI, and I’d be here for it if people were actually doing it.

Apr 19^th 2025 · 1 min read · #cash #disks #enshittification #evil #grab #nas #restrictions #storage #synology

Synology wants to sell razor blades too ➹

I’ve been a very happy Synology customer for over 15 years, but this piece of news (which echoes the Western Digital fracas from a couple of years ago) makes me wonder if I will keep recommending them.

The Synology software makes it dead easy to have encrypted cloud backups to Azure and mirror both my Dropbox and OneDrive contents locally, and those are just two of the features I have relied on over the years–many other people use a lot more of their core software, and pretty much everyone I know has a Plus model.

The TerraMaster F4-424 MAX, for instance, doesn’t do all of those things out of the box, and going custom would be a major pain even for me as I’m just running Proxmox and a bespoke Samba server there, treating it as a dedicated VM and media server. But maybe I should start hedging my bets…

Apr 19^th 2025 · 1 min read · #bush #countryside #easter #eggs #photo #photography

Easter Break

Unusual, I know — I wasn’t aware rabbits lay eggs this high.

Apr 13^th 2025 · 5 min read · #3dprinting #dryer #eibos3d #filament #polyphemus #review

The Polyphemus Filament Dryer

I haven’t written about 3D printing in a while, but I have both kept at it and actually doing a bit of market research–I’ve been considering either building an MMU or getting a multi-material printer, but I haven’t made up my mind yet, and the tariff war isn’t helping.

Apr 13^th 2025 · 1 min read · #acrobatics #arena #circus #entertainment #matinee #meo #photo #photography

Cirque du Soleil

Apr 11^th 2025 · 1 min read · #ai #joy #llms #productivity

AI Does Not Spark Joy

As an inveterate tinkerer, I have spent a lot of time messing with LLMs in my side projects, and… it hasn’t sparked a lot of joy.

Apr 5^th 2025 · 1 min read · #arena #classical #concert #meo #music #orchestra #photo #photography #strauss #vienna

A Classical Evening

1-2-3 1-2-3 1-2-3 — Strauss by the Vienna Johann Strauss Orchestra

Apr 5^th 2025 · 10 min read · #chuwi #corei3 #desktop #hardware #homelab #intel #mini-pc #review

The Chuwi Larkbox S

It’s been a little while since I last looked at regular mini-PCs, and considering that the market is flooded with cheap Intel N100 and N150 variants, you would think there isn’t a lot of diversity in the EUR 200 range.

Apr 4^th 2025 · 1 min read · #apple #economics #geopolitics #tariffs #tech #trade

Apple gets caught in a trade-war nightmare ➹

I’ve spent the past couple of days watching the tariffs fracas unfolding, and with China’s fresh hiking of truly “reciprocal” tariffs to 34%, things are not looking good at all–but Apple is in a pretty serious bind here, since there are newscasters projecting their phones might become over 40% more expensive in the US, with Chinese restrictions likely harming their sales in China as well.

Tim Cook’s going to have to pull a pretty stressful balancing act on the tariff high-wire as it stretches taut on both directions…

As much as I strive to avoid doomscrolling, the overall feeling here in Europe is not positive. The circus-like political statements, the lack of basic competence in either SIGINT handling or even basic math (the “reciprocal” values look more and more like they were done either on a napkin or using AI without the benefit of natural intelligence), the loss of confidence in a major power that we used to see as ally and the immediate impact on the economy are a tad overwhelming.

The chorus of informed consent that is surfacing around the real consequences that have yet to come, as depicted in this week’s edition of the Economist (in this and other articles I’ve just started reading) are all things I’m actively trying to both ignore and mitigate–although there is very little I can do regarding the latter.

But with the DOW falling 2.000 points and most tech stocks dipping at least 5%, this is already at least as bad as the economic impact of COVID, with the main difference that this is by design. We’re well into the “chaotic evil” quadrant of economic policy.

Apr 4^th 2025 · 1 min read · #ai #anniversary #cloud #innovation #microsoft #tech

Microsoft at 50 ➹

I’m sick with a sore throat, so I missed the celebrations at the local office.

Having witnessed most of this (40 years of it second-hand as I grew up, and the last 10 directly involved as my hair turns a definite grey), I have mixed feelings–for instance, I don’t have a lot of nostalgia for the the early days of DOS and Windows (or the earlier days of CP/M, which are barely hinted at).

It might be because I ran Windows 2.0 on my first Schneider-branded 286 PC and spent a lot of time putting together new machines during college until I was blown away by how much better the Mac user experience was, but it’s most likely because the latter decade has been a roller coaster.

I joined quite early on the Azure bandwagon, and it’s been quite a ride as I witnessed Microsoft’s pivot to a full-blown cloud and AI juggernaut as well as some of the hard decisions.

Still, a lot of the anniversary gallery is fun to peruse. Like with all work things it’s kind of amusing to do so from an outside perspective when you know how the AI sausage is made.

But as far as future prospects are concerned, there is a lot of substance to Microsoft’s approach that allows me to ignore all the hype and hope for the best.

Let’s see how things go from here.

Mar 28^th 2025 · 1 min read · #apple #development #ios #macos #sequoia #snowleopard #software #ui

Apple Needs a Reset ➹

Although there are a few innacuracies here (Snow Leopard was not that much of an improvement, more of a freebie and a way to level set), it can’t be argued that today’s MacOS Sequoia and iOS/iPadOS 18 feel like products patched together by engineers who may not actually use the software they build.

From Messages’ erratic copy/paste behavior and bloated background processes to the counterintuitive UI changes in System Settings (goodbye, easy drag-and-drop display rearrangement), it’s clear that Apple is slipping, and the number of people who replied to me in the Hacker News thread (yeah, I know, HN is kind of a weird place for Apple folk right now) to echo my complaints about Spotlight’s erratic behavior in Sequoia is staggering.

The whole situation shines a… Spotlight (ha!) into frustrations about a platform that seems to become more and more brittle to the point of actively neglecting the basics it rose to prominence on.

Yes, there will always be a bit of rose-tinted longing for the methodical, almost surgical improvements of the Jobs era. But I honestly have no idea how Apple can keep pushing AI features without cleaning house, and whatever they’re doing in the platform teams just isn’t working.

Mar 26^th 2025 · 1 min read · #apple #dasher #lumon #mac #severance #terminal #tv #unix

Lumon Terminal Pro ➹

Having loved Severance Season 2 and its amazing marketing campaign (which includes a Lumon presence on LinkedIn and other strokes of genius), I have to say that I actually wish Apple would sell something like this.

I’ve even been pondering getting a Dasher Keycap MT3 Set or the Macrodata Refinement Set, but these sets are horrendously overpriced, even if the keyboard itself would be accessible or… mysterious (and already available in a similar colorway, same as this one).

Mar 22^nd 2025 · 2 min read · #agents #ai #anthropic #api #integration #llm #mcp

Notes on MCP

I’ve been playing with Anthropic’s MCP for a little while now, and I have a few gripes. I understand it is undergoing a kind of Cambrian explosion right now, but I am not very impressed with it. Maybe it’s echoes of TRON, but I can’t bring myself to like it.

Mar 19^th 2025 · 6 min read · #hardware #jetkvm #kvm #review

The JetKVM

I have now officially reached the point where I have more KVM devices than I actually need (at least for now), and I think this one will be the last for a while–so this is my attempt to finish the series on a high note.

Mar 18^th 2025 · 1 min read · #design #hardware #opensource #pebble #smartwatch #tech

New PebbleOS Smartwatches ➹

This was quite quick, really. Migicovsky’s announcement for the two new PebbleOS watches came much earlier than I expected, and the design echoes the original Pebble vibe (with upgrades like a 30-day battery and improved buttons) while introducing modern tweaks such as a touchscreen on the Core Time 2. There’s a fair bit of engineering constraint and hustle evident here, but the overall narrative isn’t shy about the rough edges.

I love these, and reading past the watch specs it’s clear that the project is driven by personal passion more than commercial polish, with the reasoning behind each design choice – from sensor selections to display trade-offs – in a refreshingly candid manner.

I’m very much committed to my Apple Watch (the health features, from ECG to sleep tracking, have been very important to me over the past few years), but the Core Time 2 might be a worthy “downgrade”.

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