Widgetsmith has just achieved a remarkable milestone, surpassing 100 million downloads since its launch in September 2020. A number that I can’t really wrap my mind around. A number larger than the population of all but 14 countries (🤯).
A massive congratulations are in order for Underscore on reaching a truly mind-boggling number of people around the world with Widgetsmith. This milestone is the result of the consistent, high-quality effort put into his apps, and making the best product at the right time, but also a lot of help from many communities (indie app developers, Apple enthusiasts, the team at Apple that develop the tools and evangelize for developers, and more). And it couldn’t happen to a nicer, more earnest, caring, or down-to-earth guy.
As David hoped for in sharing this news, I, at least, find it inspiring to know that a one-person shop can indeed move the needle.
[…] I couldn’t work out why I felt so weird about the idea of the iPhone’s ringer switch going away.
It hit me today: the ringer switch is one (of the ever-shrinking number) of the hardware feature of the original iPhone that is still with us today.
Stephen hit the nail on the head with this one. It’s been with us for over 15 years, and I’ll be a bit sad to see it go.
You know, I’ve often wondered why other phone manufacturers haven’t copied this hardware feature in the way they copied so many other things from the iPhone. It’s so undeniably useful to anyone who’s tried it. And aside from the piece of mind it provides, that little switch is probably my most-used fidget toy.
Don’t miss Stephen’s footnote about the iPad’s old switch, either. That’s another gone-yet-not-forgotten hardware feature.
A weekly list of interesting things I found on the internet, posted on Sundays. Sometimes themed, often not.
1️⃣ The jaw-dropping numbers and spread of casualties in World War 2. I had no idea the Soviet Union suffered so heavily. [▶️ Neil Halloran // vimeo.com]
2️⃣ This UK citizen experimented with how short they could write their home address and still get it a letter delivered to it. Pretty darn short, is the answer. [🔗 Vladh // microblog.vladh.net]
3️⃣ This clip of Jon Stewart’s show (granted, out of context) is a point of view that I’ve struggled to coherently express. He does a good job. [🔗 @gruber // twitter.com]
5️⃣ I spent a fun few minutes perusing the ‘List of Internet top-level domain’ entry on Wikipedia after an idea sparked for a future project. Spoiler, the TLD I wanted is not yet available. Maybe someday. [🔗 wikipedia.org]
I’m a day late, but I just turned 29. This will be the last year of my 20s and the last of my third decade here on Earth. I don’t really fear or regret getting older. I’m mostly just excited to see what this new year brings!
Looking back at being 28, I’d say it was one of the best years of my life, while still presenting its unique challenges. I feel more confident and sure of myself than ever before, and I feel like I have a direction. I have things I want to achieve set in my sights.
Thinking back through the things that defined being 28, there’s an obvious big one: my wife and I moved to a dream town here in Saranac Lake. We didn’t know it when we picked the spot, but we’d very quickly grow to love living in such a small town. It’s friendly. Everything is very walkable. All my favorite activities are nearby. This could be our forever hometown.
I got a new job, and despite a rocky start, I’m loving finally being a Guide for folks exploring new activities in the wilderness. Being a destination location, I get to talk with people from all over the world and from all walks of life.
I’ve made many great new friends, mostly thanks to #11 below. On the other hand, staying in touch with friends from previous homes is harder. I’ve spent almost all of my free time off of work getting outside and exploring new places and outdoor pursuits. It’s left less time than I expected for just hanging out or day-to-day life stuff.
Last year, I listed out 28 things I hoped to achieve in my “golden year”. Let’s see how I did.
Year 28’s list:
Read more books than I did last year. ✅ (12 versus 8!)
Spend at least four weekends in a tent. ✅ (All great. All memorable.)
Design more t-shirts than I did last year. ✅
Summit at least five peaks. ✅ (Knocked out 13 of the 46 ADK High Peaks.)
Write more consistently than I did last year. ❌ (Had three months where I hardly published anything.)
Spend more time journaling than I did last year. ❌ (If you count blogging and journaling, maybe. Which I tend to count both more these days.)
Get in the habit of reaching for healthy snacks rather than junk food. ❌
Make more regular phone calls to family. ❌
Learn how to fix things in my home. ✅ (Am I now a “handyman”? No. But I’m learning and less embarrassed about asking for help.)
Own up to mistakes more than I have in the past. ✅
Join a local club. ✅ (ADK Run Club is the best.)
Lend my talents to a local volunteer organization. ✅ (I helped, briefly, with the FISU World University Games. Not the local organization that I imagined, but it did help out local friends.)
Strike up conversations with strangers. ✅
Get good at cooking something with fresh ingredients. ❌
Finish at least one story-based video game. ❌
Make Date Night with my wife a priority. ❌
Close all my rings at least 50% of the days this year. ✅
Get out ice climbing. ✅ (Been out a bunch, and loving it.)
Climb at least three multi-pitch routes. ✅ (Did at least double that.)
Tick off at least 15 crag days. ✅ (Maybe doubled that one, too.)
Find a local climbing partner. (Maybe this should have been #18) ✅ (Shout out to Dakota!)
Take a non-local friend out climbing. ✅
Take my wife up a trad route. ❌
Learn a programming language / finish a programming course. ❌
Take a writing course. ❌
Take my wife on a surprise weekend trip. ❌
Play my trumpet. (Hooray for living in a house, not an apartment!) ❌
Work my way up to running a half-marathon. ✅ (One of my proudest achievements of last year. I decided I’d put it off long enough, and got out and ran it on New Year’s Eve.)
Results: ✅: 16 and ❌: 12
Honestly, I feel pretty good about the things I got done. Would it have been cool to cross off all 28 goals? Sure. But I think I knew even then that this was pretty deep into New Year’s Resolution territory; notoriously dicey for not working out. And I make the rules here, so I say not finishing everything is okay!
There are items that I wish I would have put more effort towards date nights, cooking and eating more healthily, for example. So instead of listing out now 29 new things that I’d like to do this year, I think I’m going to try to keep the good times rolling by extending the 12 that I didn’t get done last year into this year, and maybe adding just a couple more. I’m choosing to think of it as 30 things before 30. 😉
Year 29’s list (or 30 Before 30):
Write more consistently than I did last year.
Spend more time journaling than I did last year.
Get in the habit of reaching for healthy snacks rather than junk food.
Make more regular phone calls to family.
Get good at cooking something with fresh ingredients.
Finish at least one story-based video game.
Make Date Night with my wife a priority.
Take my wife up a trad route.
Learn a programming language / finish a programming course.
Take a writing course.
Take my wife on a surprise weekend trip.
Play my trumpet. (Hooray for living in a house, not an apartment!)
Finish requirements for the New York State Level 1 Rock Guide License.
Host (or be part of making happen) at least 10 friend or family get-togethers. Like game nights. Probably game nights.
(Bonus-but-somewhat-out-of-my-control: Make significant progress toward owning our own home.)
A weekly list of interesting things I found on the internet, posted on Sundays. Sometimes themed, often not.
1️⃣ This macOS tips post is worth the price of admission just for the first one about the Stationary Pad option in the ‘Get Info’ menu. [🔗 - Tim Hardwick // macrumors.com]
3️⃣ Here’s another neat use case for GPT3: Make an RSS feed with a short summary of each article to help you decide whether to click through. [🔗 piqoni // piqoni.bearblog.dev]
5️⃣ I’m liking the look of this Sidekick Notebook from Cortex Brand. I’ve been using the Studio Neat desk notebook for a couple of years, but I appreciate that this is made to anti-precious. [🎥 - Cortex Podcast // youtube.com]
6️⃣ Last Skier Standing is a bananas competition where nutty people skin up 1100 feet and ski back down, and then do it again and again at the start of every hour. Until there’s only one skier left. (They went for 60+ hours last time.) I kinda want to try. [🎧 The Dirtbag Diaries // overcast.fm]
7️⃣ Like Steve Jobs’ declination to sign an autograph — actually, more so — Merlin’s email turning down the opportunity to write about his alma mater is a work of art. [🔗 Merlin Mann // ungainly.me]
One evening after the event, as they were walking down O’Keefe Avenue looking for dinner, Steve—a notoriously fast walker—pulled to a halt. Someone in a store window was working on a Macintosh.
He had to take a closer look. How was this person using the Mac? Steve is so curious, so lasered in on trying to understand, that he is bent nearly double.
[…]
This is Steve at a pivotal moment. He’s about to turn 29. Apple, which he co-founded and chairs, has recently become one of the youngest companies ever to reach the Fortune 500. The Macintosh has been met with rave reviews. He is on top of the world.
I’m about to turn 29 myself, and though our trajectories are wildly different, I, too, know the keen excitement of seeing someone use, read, or experience something that you’ve poured yourself into. There’s nothing quite like it, and I hope Steve was proud to discover his creation in the hands of a customer that night.
The rest of my day was a bit of a mess. I didn’t feel creative, competent or clever. I mostly just floundered around for a few hours trying to fix bits and pieces but didn’t accomplish much. Largely, just feeling sorry for myself.
[…]
If I try to take a step back and be thoughtful about why I might feel like that today I think it is because I didn’t wisely match my choice of task to my physical state. I didn’t sleep well last night and think that put me at a disadvantage when I started working. Then by tackling one of the most challenging and frustrating things in programming (fighting the frameworks), I was setting myself up for disaster. From there it was just a progressive digging myself into a deeper hole productivity-wise. The smart thing likely would have been to recognize where I was cognitively/emotionally and then go after easier, quick win tasks today instead.
David professes so plainly what is monstrously difficult to do: listen to yourself.
For the first time in many years, I didn’t install any beta software on my devices. Rather than live on the cutting edge, testing features, and trying the new hotness before the rest of the world, I stayed on the on the public releases of Apple’s OSes last summer.
As if that wasn’t odd enough, when September rolled around, I felt very little desire to upgrade my phone to the latest and greatest. Indeed, I’m typing this very post out on my iPhone 13 mini — a device I’ve had for nearly a year and a half now — despite having the option to swap it as part of the iPhone Upgrade Program.
I don’t deceive myself into thinking that this is any sort of accomplishment. Sitting out a few months of beta testing, and holding onto a perfectly great phone for — swoon — more than 12 months is something that effectively everyone does. It’s truly a privilege that I have the opportunity upgrade each year if I choose to.
And yet, it’s been a bit odd. I’m used to jumping at the chance to try the new OS features, write about them, and provide feedback. But this year I felt satisfied to read others’ first impressions while living in the stable mainstream. I sought the delayed satisfaction of “unwrapping” the new software along with the rest of the world when it was “finished”.
Back on the physical side, my iPhone 13 mini has been my favorite iPhone, full stop. I longed for a smaller device when using the 12 Pro, and was rewarded with the nearly perfect 13 mini. The longer battery life, upgraded cameras, smaller notch, faster chip, and cooler design (👍 to the diagonal rear camera lenses) are all improvements over the 12 mini that make me glad that this is the phone I have and want to keep using.
This isn’t to say that I wasn’t interested in new features this year; I was! Stage Manager, Lock Screen widgets, Live Text, better Dictation, and the Dynamic Island all pulled at my heartstrings. But with my day job no longer relying on using my personal tech, or teaching others how to use theirs, I have less time and mental capacity for tech news, no matter how much I try to deny it. These days, I’m experiencing how more of the world uses their gadgets and finding the smaller, less drastic ways that they can make my life better. I’m not pushing the envelope so much as I’m using it as intended.
Maybe it’ll last, or maybe I’ll be enthralled by a compelling new shiney that will drag me back in. But I’m content for now, and hope my “content”1 will still offer good, if different, insight.
The weird and wonderful AI projects are start to come fast and furious. Spotify got a mic drop moment today announcing a personal AIDJ. It’s a product I feel like I should have predicted, but also find completely shocking. Here’s how Spotify describes it:
Ready for a brand-new way to listen on Spotify and connect even more deeply with the artists you love? The DJ is a personalized AI guide that knows you and your music taste so well that it can choose what to play for you. This feature, first rolling out in beta, will deliver a curated lineup of music alongside commentary around the tracks and artists we think you’ll like in a stunningly realistic voice.
Watch the video below for a taste of what the AIDJ experience will be like. Personally, my first impression is that I’m blown away. Spotify has long worn the crown for music recommendation, and it looks like DJ will provide more insight into why certain music is served up. That’s always something I’m curious about, wondering, “Why this song?” What a useful idea to use the AI to “explain itself”.
However, I think it was intentional that the listener in Spotify’s video was wearing headphones. I see this a solo way to experience music. To me, music is deeply personal and emotional. I can’t imagine I’d love “X”, the DJ, sharing commentary about my listening history with others at house party or on a road trip.
