FeedCity

I’m sure this acquisition of Clay was in the works for a while, but the timing feels wrong so soon after the Automattic layoffs. I’ve been mostly supportive of Matt Mullenweg and Automattic through all the drama. I’d just like to see them get back on track.

I’m going to take a break from AI-related blogging for a few months. I think the pause will do me and my readers some good. It’s too divisive an issue, and I expect in the coming years there will be a small but vocal faction that pushes back against AI more than there has be...

The Talk Show Live was excellent. My WWDC week is winding down… It was great to catch up with folks. Saw several people tonight I hadn’t seen in years.

I downloaded the .ipsw for macOS Tahoe before realizing I would need a second Mac to install. So just did the Software Update, naively thinking it would prompt for which partition to use. Nope. So I’m accidentally running Tahoe on my main system. Onward!

Liquid Glass is getting a little bit of hate after the first day of WWDC. Apple can dial it back in some places, but I think it’s mostly going to work. I’ve also tested the Micro.blog iOS app with it. We’ll update our UI as we get closer to the final iOS 26 release. Amusing button glitches:

Dave Winer blogging about Bluesky’s choice of using domain names for handles:

They were smart at Bluesky to use DNS this way. Why invent your own identity system when the net itself has a great distributed system that scales?

Catching up on yesterday for the photo challenge. Day 9, wood. From walking around Oakland, near Children’s Fairyland.

Ben Thompson writes about Apple refocusing on what they’re good at for WWDC. For the new models:

What is compelling about the Foundation Models Framework is how it empowers small developers to experiment with on-device AI for free: an app that wouldn’t have AI at all for cost reasons now can, and if that output isn’t competitive with cloud AI then that’s the developer’s problem, not Apple’s; at the same time, by enabling developers to experiment Apple is the big beneficiary of those that discover how to do something that is only possible if you have an Apple device.

There’s more in Apple’s new Foundation Models than I was expecting. The struct interfaces and tool calling especially. Fascinating.

Planning to install macOS Tahoe later today. For now, only downloaded SF Symbols 7. Still no robot icon! 🙁

iPad windowing looks good. Funny we were so worried the Mac would become too much like iOS, but sort of the opposite has happened to the iPad over the years. Files app also becoming a little more like the Finder.

Looking forward to trying Apple’s on-device models. It’s a great direction for them to take. But I’m still doubtful they are going to be good enough for some things, after you’ve been spoiled on much larger cloud-based models. Would love to see Apple’s private cloud computer opened up later too.

New blog post about Micro.blog themes from @ericgregorich. I like the way he describes the “layers” of a custom theme. That’s not a word we’ve used, but it fits well.

My post yesterday about Sam Altman has been pretty well received. Not everyone agrees, which is totally fine! We’ll see how the post ages in a year. I tried to put significant thought into it, though, not just fire off another hot take into the “love AI / hate AI” debate chaos.

Good morning from San Jose. I need to find coffee. My brain is finally switching gears to WWDC. Have barely had a chance to really think about what to expect or to get excited.

Day 8 of the Micro.blog photo challenge: travel. Heading down to San Jose. Not actually my train… It arrived on the other track.

It’s the day before the WWDC keynote, an event that used to be anchored by Steve Jobs. He’s been gone 14 years and there has yet to be another executive at Apple who could do what he did. Every once in a while we see a glimpse of a leader in tech who stands out, capturing a ...

Always a good day to be able to release some app updates, even on the weekend. Happy to get Micro.blog 2.5 for Android and 3.5.4 for Mac out the door. Currently have some downtime while waiting for laundry, fixing a couple more things for an iOS app updates this week.

Craig Hockenberry blogging on the eve of WWDC. I expect many developers will agree with his points about App Intents… It’s a lot of work that ultimately puts all the UX control in Apple’s hands:

Instead of building our own ideas on top of a LLM, we’re supposed to provide the internal details of our apps to Apple so they can do it on our behalf.

Picked up a new hoodie while in Berkeley. Despite knowing exactly what the weather’s like in the Bay Area, I packed only short-sleeved shirts. 🤪

I wasn’t planning to give money to this woman holding up a cardboard sign with her kid, on the corner of the grocery store parking lot, until some guy walked by and started yelling at her. Shockingly hateful. And as backdrop we have what’s going on in LA. 😞

Sunk cost fallacy strikes again. I spent way too much time on my local LLM experiments, finally went back to the main branch to ship a new version. Micro.blog 3.5.4 for Mac is available with some fixes.

Top of Jason Becker’s wish list for WWDC is a package manager for users. It often feels like I’m drowning in package managers, especially with React Native development which somehow requires like 3-4 different package managers. If Apple could somehow step in and simplify all of this, could be nice.

Quiet, cool morning walking through downtown Berkeley. Last time I was here was when I took this photo. That was an amazing trip.

This was unexpected. Walking back to my hotel tonight, I noticed that some of the traffic lights were out. Turns out the power is out at the hotel too, and they gave everyone little glow sticks to help navigate the stairs and rooms.

Finished reading: The Optimist: Sam Altman, OpenAI, and the Race to Invent the Future by Keach Hagey. Listened to the last part as I was wandering around Lake Merritt in Oakland today. Some great details in this book, and perfect leading up to WWDC. 📚

Days before WWDC, where Apple us rumored to open up their models to developers, I must be the only one hitting my head against the wall trying to get image analysis to work with an embedded Gemma 3 model inside my Mac app. I started down this path a month ago, keep chipping away at it, keep failing.

I ended up having to completely skip FediForum. With travel and coding, just too much going on. I’ve also retreated from the fediverse for a bit, so I can focus on my blog and the Micro.blog community. Hope there will be some blog post write-ups of the conference sessions I can read later.

Really enjoying everyone’s photos for this month’s Micro.blog photoblogging challenge. Thanks for sharing! I’ll post the next week of prompts later today. Any word suggestions?

Rest in peace, Bill Atkinson. From John Gruber:

One of the great heroes in not just Apple history, but computer history. If you want to cheer yourself up, go to Andy Hertzfeld’s Folklore.org site and (re-)read all the entries about Atkinson. Here’s just one, with Steve Jobs inspiring Atkinson to invent the roundrect.

I was actually thinking of old QuickDraw a week ago while I was mowing the yard. No joke, my mind wandered into realizing that the most efficient mowing path is a roundrect.