A weekly list of interesting things I found on the internet, posted on Sundays (or Mondays if I fall asleep early and forget to publish). Sometimes themed, often not.

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1️⃣ This would indeed be a perfect Deadpool moment. [🔗 threads.net]

2️⃣ This animal/human safety Instagram filter sounds like a “What if we just tried this?” sort of thing that comes out of a team brainstorm, and I love it. [🔗 Sheena Vasani // theverge.com]

3️⃣ I’m not a coffee drinker, but I found Steve Ledlow’s post about his coffee ritual to be just delightful. [🔗 tangiblelife.net]

4️⃣ These colorful light-up display cases look sick! I kind of wish I had a use for them. [🔗 Andrew Liszewski // theverge.com]

5️⃣ Vidit Bhargava fashioned an awesome Walkman that only plays music while you’re walking, and made a fun, 80s-style ad for it. (This explainer is short, but his social post about it is even shorter.) [🔗 viditb.com]

6️⃣ I can’t say I know too much about Tim Walz, but I certainly like this website that indicates he brings big dad energy to the campaign. [🔗 timwalzfixedyourbicycle.com]

7️⃣ I’m excited to implement some of Alvaro Montoro’s one-liner CSS tricks to HeyDingus. [🔗 alvaromontoro.com]

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🔗 Take a Chance

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Thanks for reading 7 Things. If you enjoyed these links or have something neat to share, please let me know. And remember that you can get more links to internet nuggets that I’m finding every day by following me @jarrod on the social web.

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This is post #11/31 for Blaugust 2024.

7 Things Blaugust

Speaking of home gadgets, I just watched Jennifer Pattison Tuohy from The Verge run through Google’s home products announcements. There’s a lot that I like with what they’ve done on this go. I’m not going to recap everything from their video, I just want to share my favorite bits that I’d like to see some to more home products — so you should watch it yourself.

TV Streamer with “Favorite” button and remote finder. Google took a page from Apple’s book and ditched their Chromecast dongle strategy, replacing it with a more traditional set-top box. But it’s quite mini, and I like the wedge shape that makes it stand out even less sitting in front of your TV. The fact that the box has a physical button to activate an alert sound on the remote is genius. The remote itself has a “Favorite” button that the user can customize to open certain apps or actions. Yes, let’s put Action Buttons on all the things!

Redesigned Nest Learning Thermostat. Sounds like Google got the message that the last “lite” version of the Nest Thermostat wasn’t very well received. And while they’ve done the biggest redesign of their flagship version in 13 years, I’m pleased to see it retain a lot of its iconic design. The rotating ring remains for navigating the interface, and it’s quite sleek overall. They’ve done a good job making it fit in with more of Google’s hardware products too. The other nice improvement is more explanation available for users to understand why the Learning Thermostat makes the decisions it does regarding heating and cooling the home.

Google Home with Gemini Inside. Quick hot take: I think Google would have been better served to roll their AI stuff into the existing ‘Google Assistant’ branding like Apple is doing with Siri and Apple Intelligence. Because it replaced Bard, I think of Gemini as a text assistant, whereas Google Assistant is more all-encompassing. Anyway, the Google Home app/system is getting Gemini smarts for describing scenes your cameras see, and to more easily set up automations. Both are great ideas. The first, I’d prefer if that processing was done on-device, but if you’re already cool sending all your camera views to Google then you probably don’t care. The second, the demo looked like something Siri should be able to do as well once it’s infused with Apple Intelligence, but that remains to be seen. I think helping users configure smart home automations — tricky enough at baseline, and notoriously hard with Google Home — is a great use for AI.

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This is post #10/31 for Blaugust 2024.

Blaugust

My wife has been back in Michigan to visit her parents for the past few days and the buddy who was supposed to come visit me wasn’t able to make it, so I’ve had a little extra time on my hands. You know what that means: catching up on home chores! I’ve cleaned out the fridge, put up lights and switched out bulbs, configured the last couple of Apple Home remotes that I’ve been meaning to get to, and more. But the most exciting thing I did was set up a couple of neat gadgets that have been waiting for my attention.

Oasis Mini

This little guy was an Indiegogo project that I backed over a year ago. To be honest, despite their periodic updates about development and productions, I was never quite sure if I’d been scammed or not. I thought it just as likely that I’d never get the product in my hands. But much to my delight, the box finally showed up on my doorstep about a week ago.

It’s an automated sand art device that uses a magnet to move around a small metal ball that pushes fine-grained sand into abstract designs. You’ve certainly seen the type before. The Oasis Mini is about 12-inches in diameter — perfect for a side table — and has many RGB lights around its interior circumference. Between the rotating lights and little waves of sand, it’s pretty trippy to look at!

The whole thing is controlled and automated through an app. You can load up “playlists” of designs for the thing to cycle through creating, adjust the lighting, speed up or down the ball, and more. I find it mesmerizing to watch, and I’m fascinated by how the lines for each design are sequenced so that the early ones aren’t ruined by the later ones. They all work together to create the intended picture. I’ve already spent a couple meals watching it rather than the TV or my phone.

I just might have to dial down the RGB lights — the overall effect almost makes me a little dizzy!

Safevant Smart Bird Feeder

This thing I should have installed months ago. It was a Christmas gift that I got on a killer deal (like 75% off on Amazon!) for my wife. It’d been sitting in our dining room since December, waiting for the birds to return… and then I forgot about it. But all is well, I spotted it when cleaning things up and added it to my Power Puttering (™ Merlin Mann) list.

The “smarts” of this bird feeder is the camera that sits at its center. When birds (or other hungry critters) perch to eat, you get a front-row view of the action with a live feed to your phone. And when you opt in to its (pretty reasonably priced at around $50/year) subscription plan, they’ll use “AI” to try to identify the bird and give you some fun facts about which kinds are coming to feast. Even more, you can use the thing as a security camera with person, vehicle, and package identification, trigger an audible alarm and flash a light, and intercom through it’s built-in microphone and speaker. The camera has infrared for at night, and the whole rig is powered by a solar panel and integrated battery.

It remains to be seen how it holds up over time, or even how well the bird identification works since I only just put it up tonight. But the quality seems good, the app is well-made, and all-in-all it’s quite the package for the $81 I paid for it.

At the moment, I’ve got it rigged up in the backyard near our other (dumb) bird feeders, but maybe we’ll try it in the front where we could use it as that dual-purpose security camera. I’m excited to learn more about the birds we visiting every day and hope my wife gets as much joy from it as I expect I will!

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This is post #9/31 for Blaugust 2024.

Blaugust

My (not so subtle) attempt to someday be a guest on “the tech podcast where we’re finally reunited and, boy, does it feel so good!”

Mikah Sargent: What is a gadget or other piece of tech that everyone should own?

I’m sure there are many things I could answer for this topic, but I’m going to go with the one that immediately jumped to mind and it’s the one item that’s always in my pocket (other than my phone): AirPods (or other wireless earbuds). For eight years now, a set of AirPods have been in my front right pocket and they’re still one of my favorite purchases of all time. Being free of the cord is so liberating with no snags or tangles, and makes listening to music and podcasts an effortless joy.

Plus, with AirPods, you get the pleasantly smooth-like-a-river-stone case to fidget with as a bonus.

P.S. After Dan’s answer, I’m just a slight arm-twist away from clicking ‘Buy Now’ for a paper shredder on Amazon.

Emily Dreibelbis: What is your tech strategy for planes?

Speaking of wireless earbuds, those are a must for travel. However, I’ll usually try to bring a pair with noise cancelation (either Beats Fit Pro or AirPods Max) to get some peace on the flight. Air travel can be stressful, so my longstanding rule is “No work on the flight”. It’s a nice opportunity to get in some personal entertainment. That means I’ve usually got my YouTube Watch Later queue and other TV/movies downloaded to my iPad, and often my Kobo is loaded with plenty of eBooks. Honestly, it can be hard to choose what to watch or read with so many options.

Another tech strategy of note is having all my documents and itinerary saved to a singular Apple Note for easy offline access. I use the Flighty app for updates about the flight/gate/etc. And my luggage has an AirTag to keep track of it, although I’m not convinced it does much more than add another opportunity to stress when checking to see if the luggage also made it onto the plane.

Dan Moren: What are your first impressions of Apple’s new Distraction Control feature in Safari?

I think it’s great. We’ve had Safari Reader built in for years and years which gets rid of all the elements of the webpage besides the text in one fell swoop, so I don’t think Distraction Control will be detrimental for websites. Plus it’s largely a manual process that appears to be specifically designed not to interfere too much with dynamic ads. I think the web will survive, and I’ll be glad to dissolve away many of those elements that prevent me from reading the actual content on websites. Websites have had years to be better about not covering up content with garbage, and they’ve done the opposite instead. (That animation is pretty cool too.)

Matthew Cassinelli: Are there any apps that you’re looking to control entirely with Siri and use with Apple Intelligence?

I’m all for more apps getting robust Siri and Shortcuts support, of course. But I’m having a hard time thinking of an app that I want to control entirely through those layers of abstraction. I like using different UIs and seeing what developers come up with to make their apps their own. So I’d probably still dive into apps for fun, even if I could do everything with my voice.

That said, I hope we’ll see more robust intents and actions for Apple Music. It’s shocking how long they’ve resisted putting more capable actions for searching and acting upon specific songs and albums from their catalog. I was sure we’d see something like the old Beats “The Sentence” feature show up in an Apple Intelligence demo, but it remains to be seen if I’ll be able to tell Siri to build me a playlist based on an arbitrary feeling like I could a decade ago with Beats Music.

Bonus Topic: Would you rather go to space or the bottom of the ocean?

I’d absolutely want to go to the heights of space over the depths of the ocean. I know the ocean is under-explored, but I’ve held a fascination for space and the cosmos for just as long as I’ve held a general foreboding about the dark depths of the sea. I’d love to experience the weightlessness of zero gravity, knowing that at least once I’d escaped its pull.

Overtime Topic: Do the endless, repeated permission prompts help with security?

I don’t think I’ve seen a single person who thinks the weekly permission prompts for things like screen recording on macOS Sequoia is a good idea. And I’m certainly not the first. I’m with people like Jason Snell, Nick Heer, and John Siracusa who think that a constant barrage of those dialog boxes are a usability nightmare, a “cover your ass” and responsibility-shifting tactic, and are insulting to users’ intelligence and agency. And I think they condition us all to ignore and automatically click through such prompts so that get on with what we’re doing on our computers. In other words, they eventually have the opposite intended effect.

Matt Birchler suggests a reasonable compromise in that the prompt is repeated with an option to allow forever, or repeats monthly. Weekly is way overkill.

Until next time, watch what you say, and keep watching the clock!

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This is post #8/31 for Blaugust 2024.

Crashing Clockwise Blaugust

The next time you find yourself about to phone it in on a goal, shirk a commitment you made, or just plain give up, ask yourself something: Are you the kind of person who only does easy things? Or are you a person who can do hard things?

I spent a couple of days this week doing some rock climbing guiding for a group of young women on a YMCA camp trip. They had just spent six days hiking the 50 miles of the Cranberry Lake Trail, and without a day off, then rolled into two more days of trekking with me out to rock climbing crags to scale walls all day. Their mantra to one another was “You can do hard things!” Anytime someone was contemplating coming down before reaching the top or being self-deprecating, the phrase was pulled out: “You can do hard things!” When the counselors waffled on trying a climb themselves, again: “You can do hard things!” If they’d given their all and decided to come back to the ground, a slight variation was used: “You don’t always have to do hard things, but it’s important that you know that you can do hard things.”

It was heartwarming and inspiring to observe these young women lift each other up (sometimes literally) with positive encouragement. They recognized they each had vast strengths, especially when supported by their peers and role models. And they reminded one another that a life spent doing only easy things is hardly a life at all.

Sometimes the hard thing is scaling an 80-foot rock wall using only your hands and feet. Sometimes it’s speaking up with confidence and conviction to make yourself heard. Sometimes it’s getting out of bed to the goddamn stretches and push-ups. Sometimes it’s saying “I was wrong and I’m sorry.” Sometimes, as it was for me today, it’s powering through a 13-hour hike with a smile on your face and excitement in your voice while egging on your exhausted clients, even though your own knee feels like it’s on fire with every step.¹

Doing the hard thing isn’t always fun. It’s often not the thing you want to do. There may be many reasons for you not to do the hard thing. But there’s almost always a good reason that you should do the hard thing. And I hope you remember that you can.

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Update: Greg Morris was kind enough to link to this post, and he shared how it reminded him of the concepts of misogi and sumikiri (doing nearly impossible things in order to reach clarity and flow). It’s a good post, and now I have a new book on my to-read list.

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This is post #7/31 for Blaugust 2024.

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1. And sometimes it’s writing and publishing your daily blog post before midnight, even though you’re dead-ass tired and could just do it tomorrow instead.↩︎

Blaugust

Here I am at 10:38 PM, having only gotten home a short while ago and scrambling to find something that I can write about quickly for Blaugust today, but something still worthwhile. I don’t want to just phone it in. So I went scrolling through my many many many items in Drafts that I’ve tagged as potential blog post ideas. Tonight you get to hear about how I actually don’t hate the AirPods Max case.

I’ve had a pair of AirPods Max for 3 or 4 years now. However long they’ve been out since I picked them up shortly after launch. They’re certainly the best sounding headphones I’ve ever had, but I can’t call them my favorite headphones of all time. The weight and shape are both just a bit large for my head, and I’ve never been able to fully get used to that. But I’m not here to talk about the AirPods Max themselves — that’s a post for another day. No, I want to talk about the case for the headphones that shipped in the box with them. Yes, that one. The outright derided and eagerly mocked, “brassiere-shaped” bit of silicone-like Smart Case. (Which I only remembered by looking this up that it’s called the ‘Smart Case’.)

When it first came out, nobody seemed to like the Smart Case — me included. It felt kind cheap for such expensive headphones, only covered the ear cups, and (since the headphones don’t fold up in any way) didn’t reduce the size of the headphones for travel. I thought my primary use of the case would be to protect my costly purchase when on the go, and this one only covered a portion of them, for crying out loud. I almost immediately splurged on a Waterfield case that at least protected the whole widget, and looked and felt good while doing so.

But in the years since, I’ve used that Waterfield case less and less. I just don’t tend to bring my AirPods Max on many trips and that case is overkill for around the home. But you know what case does a great job around the home and for local travel? The flippin’ one that came with it! It provides casual protection for the more fragile and critical ear cups, while leaving the connector band exposed, perfect for grabbing as a handle!

Some other things I’ve come to like about the case include how easy it is to slide the AirPods Max in and out. There’s no zipper to fiddle with, just a simple magnetic flap (naturally) that holds the case around those earcups. And, despite a brief controversy shortly after launch regarding the AirPods Max battery life (people were finding that they didn’t go into sleep more reliably or quickly enough so the headphones were constantly out of charge), nowadays the battery life seems to be a total non-issue. After a firmware update that adjusted how quickly and to what degree the AirPods Max fell into a power-saving sleep mode. Chief among those triggers for sleep mode is when the headphones are slid into that case with its particular magnet arrangement. If the AirPods Max are in the case, you’re obviously not using them, so it’s ideal to have them power down. It’s essentially solved the battery issues that I was facing.

These days, I think rather fondly of the AirPods Max case. And I’m happy to admit that my negative first opinion has proven out to be wrong. If there were just one thing that annoys me still today is that it’s not obvious enough which way the case goes on. I know to match up the charging port with its cutout on the case, but I do it the wrong way often enough that I think Apple should have made it more apparent. Otherwise, I’m quite satisfied with that funky thing.

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This is post #6/31 for Blaugust 2024.

Blaugust Reviews

My (not so subtle) attempt to someday be a guest on “the tech podcast that always has jet lag.”

Dan Moren: Do you Find My in its various incarnations for people, items, etc., and do you find it a creepy technology, useful, or both?

While I’m not a big user of Find My, when I do use it, I’m a big fan. The only person I share my location with full-time is my wife, and I only sporadically check up on her to see if she’s on her way home from work so I can start dinner (it’s funny how often that specific use case is cited when it comes to location sharing). I kind of doubt my wife ever checks my location.

If I’m visiting with friends, I’ll temporarily share my location with them for convenience of meeting up, but I don’t like the feeling that someone is looking over my shoulder and that’s kind of what Find My feels like to me. So I’m unlikely to leave that on, even though I don’t think my friends would abuse it in any way.

My wife and I do have a handful of AirTags spread out between our keychains, bags, Apple TV remote, bikes, and (yes) our dog. Tracking those items down is more common for us.

People can try to use Find My in creepy ways, but I think Apple has done a great job adding checks and balances so that creeps can be easily thwarted. (Tim Sweeney’s opinion that it’s creepy to be able to track down your own stolen items with Find My is…well, it’s something.)

Jean MacDonald: Is there any tech (device or software) that you use that you haven’t upgraded because what you have is good enough?

My iPhone 13 mini has been my daily driver for three years now, which is 1-2 years longer than my iPhone usually lasts. I used to be on the iPhone Upgrade Program which let me swap out for the latest and greatest each fall, but when I tried the 13 mini, I was smitten. I keep hoping they’ll revive that smaller form factor, but I’ve just about given up on that. With Apple Intelligence limited to the latest Pro phones, and presumably the entire lineup this fall, I sense a hefty Apple Store purchase coming my way. But I’ll dearly miss having a phone that actually fits my hand and doesn’t feel like a substantial weight in my pocket.

Runner up: My purchased-secondhand 2020 iPad Pro (which might get a third life if I hand it on to my wife).

Jason Snell: Will the advent of Apple Intelligence really make you use Siri more often?

I’m definitely going to give it a fair shake! I’m cautiously optimistic that Siri will turn the corner from butt-of-the-joke to widely-useful, but I don’t think it’s a sure thing. Apple is being given a very generous second chance to make a first impression, and I hope they don’t screw it up. Mostly because Siri, even as is, can be very useful but many people never think to try their questions and requests because they’ve been burned so many times before.

The opportunity with Apple Intelligence’s personal context is huge, but what actually gets me to use Siri more in iOS 18 honestly might be the ability to easily type out my Siri requests rather than speak them.

James Thomson: Have you learned any tech-related travel lessons lately that you want to share with the class?

I haven’t done a lot of travel lately, but my two biggish trips this year (a Las Vegas climbing trip and a speed-run drive through Canada to Michigan for my mom’s birthday) did teach me a few things:

• If you want to show off your fancy Vision Pro to a friend but be able to walk them through the interface by seeing what they see via AirPlay Mirroring on your iPad, you have to first make your iPad an AirPlay Reciever (Settings → General → AirPlay & Continuity → Turn on AirPlay Receiver). Otherwise, you’ll just look like a silly Apple fan with two fancy computers that supposed to work together but don’t.
• A full backlog of great podcasts will make a 12-hour drive fly by.
• One of those 3-in-1 charger things really cuts down on the number of cables and charging bricks you need to pack. My entire charger setup now is this 3-in-1 USB-C/USB-A battery bank/wall brick, a 3-in-1 tip-switcher cable, a 3-in-1 three-headed cable, and a 3-in-1 folding charging pad. I’m all about the multi-use items.
• An Apple Card is handy to have around when traveling internationally. No international transaction fees, baby! You just have to actually remember to pack the physical card (I never use it otherwise) and switch to it in Apple Wallet for digital purchases.

Bonus Topic: What city abroad have you spent the most time in?

I’ve done very little traveling abroad, so the one pool I can pull from in my honeymoon nearly six years ago. We first traveled western Ireland, but didn’t stay anywhere for more than a couple of days, so Hallstatt, Austria might take the prize since we spent the last four days of our trip there (it was lovely). Although, maybe Dorchester, Canada wins because I did a couple of International Scouting Jamborees there as a kid.

Overtime Topic: Do you yearn for AI companionship?

As I mentioned in yesterday’s blog post, no, I do not yearn for an AI “friend”. These Large Language Model chatbots are useful and fun in their own way, but I see them as a tool and not a friend or companion in any way. And other AI features are likewise handy, so I’m not against AI as a whole. But I think, except in specific use cases, filling the void of human companionship with an AI chatbot-enabled gadget is the wrong avenue, and the wrong use of time, money, and effort to develop it.

Until next time, watch what you say, and keep watching the clock.

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This is post #5/31 for Blaugust 2024.

Crashing Clockwise Blaugust

A weekly list of interesting things I found on the internet, posted on Sundays. Sometimes themed, often not.

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1️⃣ You might have noticed another blogging community event, Blaugust, kicking off. I’ve written three posts for it so far (this will be the fourth), so…so far so good? I’ve you’ve been in a rut like me, this might help get the writing juices flowing again. [🔗 Belghast // aggronaut.com]

2️⃣ Regarding X’s reversal on the gun emoji, Stephen Hackett says it best. [🔗 Stephen Hacket // 512pixels.net]

3️⃣ I’ve tried Arc Browser in the past and bounced off, but Numeric Citizen’s post might have convinced me to give it another go — if only to try its new UI conventions. [🔗 JF Martin // numericcitizen.me]

4️⃣ I thought this Friend thing was a joke, but it’s not. No thanks, not for me. [🔗 Alex Heath // theverge.com]

5️⃣ For devices that won’t get Apple Intelligence, iOS 18 has seemed like a lightweight release, but after seeing all these little improvements, I’m pretty psyched for it. (I usually watch these round-ups on 1.5x.) [▶️ 9to5Mac // youtube.com]

6️⃣ Like many others, I find listening to lofi music helps me to get in the zone more quickly and focus on the task at hand, namely writing. The thing is, I don’t want hours of those tracks influencing my Apple Music suggestions and I don’t care to guess and check that the Listening History toggle is actually working. I tried out lofi.cafe, but even as a web app on the home screen, it can’t keep music playback going like other native apps. So now I’m trying Lo-Fi Clouds Radio, and I’m tentatively quite happy with it. It’s free, supports Split View and Slide Over, and the music is doing the trick. [🔗 Lo-Fi Cloud Radio // apps.apple.com]

7️⃣ If you see my rock climbing photos and videos and are interested in getting a better look at some of the routes I’m scaling, here’s a YouTube video from a different climber who climbed Quadrophenia, the route I did just yesterday. This Chris Granata guy has a number of other Adirondack climbing videos. [▶️ Chris Granata // youtube.com]

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🔗 Take a Chance

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Thanks for reading 7 Things. If you enjoyed these links or have something neat to share, please let me know. And remember that you can get more links to internet nuggets that I’m finding every day by following me @jarrod on the social web.

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This is post #4/31 for Blaugust 2024.

7 Things Blaugust

I know this old news by this point, but I hate leaving things unfinished. Therefore, over two months after the fact, I’m back grading the predictions I made prior to Apple’s ‘Let Loose’ event, in wish they debuted the thinnest Apple product ever, got crushed by their own ad, and expanded (rather than simplified) the Apple Pencil lineup. Among other things.

Let’s get grading.

1️⃣ Apple Pencil Pro — 👍

While it didn’t come with all the features I had hoped for, I got the name, haptic feedback, squeeze button, and magnetic charging all right!

2️⃣ OLED Screen for iPad — 👍

It was probably the surest bet, but still I was blown away by the specs of the Tandem OLED display. Can’t wait to see it come to more products.

3️⃣ M3 Chip Inside — 👎

I said it was a coin flip, and I guessed wrong. Apple leapfrogged the M3 chip and went straight to M4 with the new iPad Pro. In hindsight, there was too much smoke for there not to be fire with them debuting the M4 at this event. But still, the M3 only lasted seven months before its successor appeared.

4️⃣ Every iPad gets an update — 👎

So close, and yet so far. The base iPad didn’t get an update, per se, they just dropped the 9th-gen altogether so the 10th-gen could take the entry-level spot. And the Mini got no update whatsoever. I’m hoping out (slight) hope that it could get a more major update by the end of the year, maybe with that gorgeous Tandem OLED display? (A man can dream, alright?)

5️⃣ New “Pro” Keyboard Accessory — 👍

You know what? I’m going to claim this one as a win. Although “Magic Keyboard Pro” would have been a way better name for what they introduced, “Magic Keyboard for iPad Pro” is the official name for the newest keyboard accessory and it does include “Pro” in there. USB-C data pass through was really the only thing I missed in this prediction.

6️⃣ Mac Virtual Display — 👎

Nope. Basically no new functionality in the software for these new iPads, except for what you can do with the new Apple Pencil Pro. And after The Talk Show Live at WWDC this year, I’m no longer holding out hope for a Mac Mode on iPad. (Although creating a MacPad is ever more intriguing.)

7️⃣ Minimum storage space on the base-level iPad gets bumped up — 👎

Nope. Still stuck at 64GB or 256GB.

8️⃣ Goodbye Home Button — 👍

Yup! No more Home Button iPads for sale from Apple. And the 10th-gen iPad now holds down the fort at an entry price of $349, well below the $400 price tag I had expected.

9️⃣ Event video will be no longer than 45-minutes — 👍

Got it. This one lasted a little over 38 minutes.

🔟 “AI” will be said at least 15 times — 👎

According to a transcript (fittingly generated by an AI analysis of the event’s YouTube video), they only mentioned AI by name 8 times. So about half as many as I expected.

Final Result: 5/10 predictions correct. That’s about par for the course for me. But they’re fun to make, so I’ll keep at it.

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Bonus Grading Of My WWDC Wish List

A Siri that doesn’t suck. — 👍

It’s hard to say for sure because I haven’t tested it myself, but I’m optimistically grading this one as a win because it seems like they’ve hanging their hat on Apple Intelligence providing “a new era for Siri.” And its new animation is hella gorgeous.

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This is post #3/31 for Blaugust 2024.

WWDC Blaugust

First things first, a massive congratulations are in order for Marco Arment, developer of Overcast, for shipping the huge rewrite to his podcast app. It’s pretty cool that he was able to get it out on the 10th anniversary of app’s debut. Hitting those kinds of milestones isn’t important to everyone, but I understand why it was important to him. Marco has been working on this update for about 18 months and, as he noted in its announcement blog post, it sets Overcast on a new, modern foundation for faster iteration and feature development.

I’ve been using Overcast for all of its 10-year existence. With it, I’ve listened to thousands of podcast episodes and saved 1,142 hours (over 47 days!) of listening to silences in those episodes with its industry-leading ‘Smart Speed’ feature. I’ve learned, laughed, and loved shows and their hosts. It is quite possibly the app I use most.

Throughout those 10 years, I’ve dabbled with other podcast apps. I tried Castro and its unique queuing feature. I’ve tried the Apple Podcasts with its weird instance that I would continually want to listen to individual episodes of random shows rather than stick with the ones I’ve subscribed to. I tried Pocket Casts. I tried one called Airshow where its design looked amazing and had great ideas around chapters. I tried an unnamed Testflight beta of a podcast app. But I always, always came back to Overcast. It’s been fast, reliable, had the important features I cared about, and has always worked the way I think podcast apps should work (kind of like an RSS reading client, but for podcasts).

Overcast has been through major redesigns before, and although they can be grating at first as you grapple with your muscle memory for completing common tasks, they have all eventually felt right and become the new norm until the next redesign comes around.

The funny thing about this 10th anniversary release is that it’s not a major redesign of the app. The biggest changes are all under the hood, and the fact that Marco could get it to look and behave so similarly to the last version is quite a testament to his skill because, as I understand it, almost nothing of the old UI code remains in the apps. Sure, there are some notable changes to the UI (more slide up sheets for the Now Playing screen, controls, and show notes; horizontally scrolling playlist icons, a more colorful Settings screen), but overall its the Overcast you know and love. And yes, there are some missing features and bugs — because of course there are going to be some snafus in a ground-up renovation of a decade-old app. But I’m thankful that Marco only changed one thing — the backend — rather than also trying to rethink the entire UI of the app at the same time. It really is a new foundation. Now he can start redecorating and making new additions.

If you’re into hearing about the “why” behind the Overcast renovation, I highly encourage you to listen to Marco discuss it in detail on a recent episode of the Accidental Tech Podcast. I could feel the despair he described as he looked down the barrel of rewriting the entire app from scratch, a task that seemed insurmountable at the outset, but that he has now successfully completed. He’s not shy about admitting that the app has fallen behind in the last few years, but that he’s now enthused about getting it caught up with new features — something that he held off on in the old version because it would have only dug the old codebase deeper into technical debt knowing that this rewrite was imminent. He’s been developing Overcast for 10 years, and I’m willing to give him a grace period to get the app back to the forefront.

Now that I’ve prattled on for over 500 words about how much I respect this rewrite — even if its not exactly the chock-full-of-new-features update that we might have wanted — I’d love to share some short lists of the things that I love about the update and what I’d like to see improved. But first, if you’re like me and have been a happy Overcast user and willing to extend some grace to Marco as he finishes the second act of this rewrite, I encourage you to head to Overcast’s App Store page and give it a rating and review. Marco shared in a follow up about the update on ATP that his recent ratings have taken a nosedive as people displeased with the update have swarmed to express that displeasure. I’m certainly not unhappy with the update — like I said, it’s just a refinement of the previous design — and I know it’ll help both the app and Marco’s mental health to also hear from satisfied users.

Got that rating done? Great! Let’s get to the lists.

Likes

• The app is indeed fast. It’s always been the fastest app to see new podcast episodes, but now the UI feels extra zippy too.
• The horizontal playlist row. I have a lot of playlists, but only really use the first few regularly. I’m glad to have them take up less vertical space on screen.
• Smart Playlist management is way better. Priority ranking now has more options, and selecting included podcasts is much easier with a more compact view.
• The chapters list can now show longer chapter titles. They used to get cut off.
• Swiping gestures make the app feel more fluid and modern. I can make imprecise gestures to dismiss screens for example.
• The simplified list of ‘Current’ or ‘All’ shows in the main podcasts list. The “Inactive” tab was unnecessary.
• The ‘Undo Seek’ option. I’m so glad this works even when you’ve made an unplanned seek from the lock screen.

Dislikes

• Show notes take an extra second to load. This is the one thing that I’ve found to be slower about the app. It’s not a show-stopper, but when I switch the show notes view and see a blank screen for a sec, it really throws me off. I wonder if it’s fetching the notes upon my first request to view them, but it really seems like that data should be already waiting for me. (I’ve not heard anyone else mention this, so maybe it’s a me problem.)
• Losing the skip forward/back buttons on the minimized ‘Now Playing’ bar. I used those buttons quite a bit, and now I have to jump to Control Center or bring up the Now Playing screen to skip forward or back. When I just want to quickly re-hear the last thing spoken, I don’t want the extra step.
• The Sleep Timer is harder to use. It’s not hard to get to, but I use it every day and liked having it more accessible on the Now Playing screen. Marco has mentioned that it being buried further is a common complaint, and I expect it will make a more prominent return.
• The elimination of streaming means shows sometimes take longer to start. I understand and respect Marco’s decision to removing the streaming feature, but it does mean I’m waiting for shows to download more often than I was before. And since I don’t want my infrequently-listened-to shows to take up a bunch of space on my device, I had a lot of those set to stream. Better control over pre-downloading certain shows or playlists would make this problem mostly go away.
• Can’t skip or seek while looking that the chapters view. I like how you can seen progress through specific chapters, but without play controls visible, I can no longer easily seek within a chapter. (Showing chapter segments within the main scrub bar like Apple Podcasts does in the iOS 18 beta would solve this.)

Wish List

• More context menu actions. Long-pressing on a show or episodes feels like it should bring up some options, but it doesn’t.
• Quick actions from the app icon. I don’t understand why every app doesn’t offer quick actions when you long-press on its icon on the Home Screen. I want to quickly start playing from the most recently played list, start playing a designated playlist, jump into the search view ready to type, and maybe start or bookmark the currently playing episode or something. Or maybe start a new clip share from the current episode.
• More user customization overall. This is an app trend that I think Marco is missing. Let users customize which icons appear at the bottom of the Now Playing screen. I’d personally add the Sleep Timer and Share button, but I’m sure others might want the Star button or a way to quickly jump to the Podcast’s main page.
• A listened-to history view. I’ve pined for this for years. Sometimes I fall asleep listening to shows and wake up hours later with no idea of which shows I missed while I was asleep. That never feels good. Or I want to go find a link or share something from a podcast I just finished. Hopefully I can track it down via search or lots of scrolling, hunting, and pecking through the UI. A (7-day? 30-day? infinite?) history of every show I’ve listened to would be so helpful.
• Fun Spotify Wrapped-like stats. I listen to a lot of podcasts. I like seeing and sharing stats. Need I say more?

Even though it may look like I have many of gripes and wishes for future versions of Overcast, I’ll reiterate that I’m very happy with the app as it is. Marco pulled off a successful rewrite, and I’m still listening to many hours of podcasts every day with Overcast. Hopefully he’ll see these lists and make some of the improvements, but none of them are stopping me from enjoying the app. And I’ve very excited to see what comes next with the refreshed foundation ready for rapid development. Congrats again, Marco, and here’s to 10 more years!

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This is post #2/31 for Blaugust 2024.

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