Monthly Archives: June 2017

iPhone introduction felt impossible

John Gruber remembers what it was like watching the iPhone announcement:

Apple had amazing product introductions before the iPhone, and it’s had a few good ones after. But the iPhone was the only product introduction I’ve ever experienced that felt impossible. Apple couldn’t have shrunk Mac OS X — a Unix-based workstation OS, including the Cocoa frameworks — to a point where it could run on a cell phone. Scrolling couldn’t be that smooth and fluid. A touchscreen — especially one in a phone — couldn’t be so responsive.

I felt the same way. Even the day I brought the iPhone home, I wasn’t sure that it was actually going to work. I was ready to be unsurprised if it turned out to be unstable — crashing often or overheating. It was stunning how good it was. It absolutely felt like a phone from the future.

One thing I had forgotten about from 10 years ago was the activation process, which was definitely not from the future. It was rooted in the past, connecting to iTunes like an iPod. Here are some of my tweets from that day, showing the long delay between picking up the iPhone from the store and actually using it, plus my last-minute decision to even wait in line:

6:34am: Good morning iPhone Day! Weather forecast in Austin for today: 40% chance of showers and storms.

10:15am: It’s only 10am but already realized I need to go to Plan B. Bribe friends already in line to use their 2nd iPhone purchase.

11:09am: Change of plans. Heading to the Apple Store now to join in the line-waiting fun. Will it be too late?

12:26pm: I expected rain, but that seems unlikely. It’s hot like a real Austin summer here in the iPhone line.

2:32pm: Hanging out in The Line with Jeremy of Barton Springs Software and @damon. Apple Store is closed. Had some lunch and a Starbucks soy latte.

4:03pm: 2 hours left. We can redeem our free Starbucks coffee coupons now. Excited! (About the iPhone. Not the coffee.)

6:30pm: Got my iPhone.

7:35pm: Activation will have to wait. Ratatouille.

8:18pm: Movies all sold out. Pre-activation dinner at Kerby Lane instead.

9:53pm: Activation took less than a minute. Also, no plan choice. Just $20 added on to what I already pay, I guess.

11:56pm: @danielpunkass Wait, what? You can make calls on it? (But seriously, you’re right. It’s a computer first and a phone second.)

Apparently I waited in line most of the day. I remember it only being a few hours. I also love how trivial these tweets seem. A big reason to have a microblog is because even the most mundane posts today carry extra significant years later.

MarsEdit 4 and microblogs

Great to see Daniel Jalkut announce a public beta of MarsEdit 4. There are a lot of new features in this version, but the one that I love the most actually might seem minor. It’s just a short line in Daniel’s announcement, under WordPress-specific enhancements:

Post Format support

For anyone using WordPress for microblogging, this is a big deal. It means you can post with the “status” post format for your short posts. It’s a really convenient way to post to a WordPress microblog from a Mac. (And of course, you can use MarsEdit to post directly to a Micro.blog-hosted blog as well.)

Rolled out additional fixes to timezones, more robust photo uploads. Also prepared the iOS app for the App Store. No more TestFlight builds.

→ 2017/06/28 11:14 am

Deployed a major improvement today for timezones and custom domains on hosted sites. Seems simple, but tricky to do without breaking feeds.

→ 2017/06/27 5:59 pm

Preview of Sunlit 2.0

A few years ago, Jon Hays and I built an app for photos called Sunlit, powered by the App.net API. We evolved it to work with other services, like Flickr and Instagram, but as App.net faded away we could never justify the investment to rewrite significant parts of the app to bring it forward and keep it relevant. It also wasn’t clear what the app should do if we were to modernize it. So we let the app sit in the App Store, kind of neglected, and even discussed removing it from sale.

As I rolled out Micro.blog to Kickstarter backers, Jon dusted off the Sunlit project and experimented with something that should’ve been obvious to us earlier: Sunlit should post to blogs. And more than that, it should work well with microblogs and IndieWeb standards. It should become a great app for photoblogging. The new version of Sunlit can post photos to Micro.blog, WordPress, or any site that supports the Micropub API.

To play nicely with microblogs, we introduced a new post type in the app for single photos. For longer posts, you can still collect multiple photos together, add text, and post them as a story directly to your blog. There’s also a brand new editing interface with filters and advanced adjustments:

screenshots

Jon has put a bunch of work into this while I focus on Micro.blog. Sunlit 2.0 is already feature complete and in beta testing now. We expect to ship it sometime this summer.

I was skeptical when the NBA announced that they wouldn’t give awards until after the playoffs. But it’s nice. It wraps up the season by celebrating multiple teams instead of just one.

→ 2017/06/26 8:45 pm

Looks like a lot of great work came out of IndieWeb Summit hacking yesterday. Watched some of the video and tried to keep up on Slack. I didn’t end up having as much time as I hoped, but still deployed a handful of fixes to Micro.blog over the weekend.

→ 2017/06/26 9:05 am

Excited to hear from everyone attending IndieWeb Summit in Portland this weekend. I’ll be in IRC/Slack. Hoping to have a chance to improve some related parts of Micro.blog.

→ 2017/06/24 9:09 am

Expecting great things when the Spurs use their 59th pick in the NBA Draft tonight. (4-time NBA champion Manu Ginobili was 57th.)

→ 2017/06/22 4:39 pm

Core Intuition 287

We just posted Core Intuition episode 287, following up on Chris Lattner, WWDC, and Uber. From the show notes:

Daniel and Manton react to Chris Lattner’s early departure from Tesla, and segue into speculation about his job prospects, and the challenges of effective technical interviews. They talk about the new frameworks announced at WWDC, and overcoming fear of incompetence when learning new things. Finally, they react to Uber CEO Travis Kalanick’s resignation, and think about what’s next for the company.

Thanks for listening. If you’re new to the show, you can subscribe in iTunes or Overcast.

We saw Cars 3 this week and enjoyed it. Maybe my favorite of the series. Pixar is the best at trying to fit an original story into sequels.

→ 2017/06/22 7:49 am

Danny Green is an important part of the team. No way I’d trade him to get Chris Paul. Spurs are competitive as-is with only minor changes.

→ 2017/06/21 8:36 pm

The open web and Micro.blog progress

I was very excited to see this post from Brandon Kraft, about the potential for an expanded role for WordPress in the IndieWeb movement:

The dream isn’t to return to the past before social media, but help make social media part of the web in an organic way. For this post, you can like it or comment it on via this site, WordPress.com, Twitter, or Facebook, but all of the comments will appear here using Webmentions. The closed gardens will still exist, but it’ll make it easier for people to reach out between them.

People always ask me how Micro.blog is going. There are many answers to that: from the business side, or how the community is growing, or the technical bits of scaling the backend. But one simple answer is how Micro.blog’s success can be judged in posts like Brandon’s.

I still believe strongly in the dual nature of success that I posted about earlier this year:

Key for Micro.blog: it’s a success if more people blog. To provide value it doesn’t need to replace Twitter. But also, it can.

Of course, “if more people blog” is a simplification that leaves out what naturally happens next: the spread of more web standards and better tools for microblogging. If Micro.blog has played even a small part in encouraging IndieWeb standards within WordPress itself, that is great progress. I’ll be happy to raise the bar for what success looks like.

Micro.blog iOS going universal

As I expected would happen, using iOS 11 on my iPad Pro after WWDC has inspired me to revisit the universal version of Micro.blog for iOS. Here’s a screenshot of my current build:

Micro.blog iPad

I plan to include this in 1.0. I’m in the process of moving the app from TestFlight to its final home in the App Store. As we prepare for the public launch, this’ll make it much easier for everyone to download it, and it shouldn’t be limited or scaled up on the iPad.

Democrats have a serious, near catastrophic turnout problem. Time to stop blaming the candidate and figure out what is wrong on the ground.

→ 2017/06/20 8:45 pm