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  @adam @rafa 100% public API.

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  Been really interesting to watch the iOS 27 adoption curve over the first two weeks. Clearly on a different path than previous years. Still steadily growing, at a similar rate to the 'steady growth' phase of most years, but without the big surge at the start. Given that this rate is largely controlled by Apple's automatic update logic, I suspect it's a deliberate choice. Likely because it lets them manage the Siri AI waiting list and avoid a big queue on day one.

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  Fifteen years ago I started a podcast called Developing Perspective. After four years of doing that show and then 10 years of recording Under the Radar with Marco, I thought my podcasting had come to a natural end. Well, a lot has changed in the world of indie app development. 😳 So I'm dusting off my microphone again and starting to podcast once more. My first episode wrestles with why being an indie app developer right now feels so pivotal, in both senses of the word. https://develop...

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  I've been an app developer for long enough that I've experienced a whole lot of new platform launches. For today's episode of Developing Perspective I walk through my experiences with them all (the good, the bad, and the downright ugly). Before contemplating the iPhone Duo and why I’m excited to be updating my apps for it. https://developingperspective.com/2026/10/08/228/

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  September can be a stressful time for app developers. New iOS versions to support, new iPhones to adopt, app updates to launch…according to the new Health Age feature this year must have been especially rough. According to Health I aged an entire year in just that 1 month. 👴🏻🤪 (Which is one of the weird artifacts of using ‘longevity' as a cumulative metric. It is immediately understandable, but behaves weirdly over time.)

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  For today's episode of Developing Perspective I think about something I've been realizing recently. In the good old days of “map-and-compass” development we'd decide on a direction and then walk the path to it, now if we can imagine it and see a line of sight to it we can build things nearly instantly. Which totally changes the cognitive and structural tradeoffs we need to make in our development process...and how we take care of ourselves in that. https://developingper...

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  I have launched and withdrawn more than 50 apps from the App Store over the years, but never have I had a withdrawal sustain the consistent attention that Geneva Moon (and its astronomically accurate complications) has. I pulled it 6 years ago and yet I still get people asking about it on a regular basis. It broke in watchOS 27. Over the weekend I got it working again. Here it is. I hope this makes a small but highly dedicated group of people happy. Also, I made it free https://apps.apple.com/...

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  I have a feeling that reading will be particularly nice on the Duo's matte inner display, so I built a little prototype reader to get a sense of it. It is also just super fun to be imagining what UIs will be like here.

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  @sdw@mastodon.social 😍, if that is what my home screen looks like next week I'll be a happy camper.

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  You’ve probably heard of Unit Testing, Integration Testing and maybe even Field Testing…but let me recommend Celebration Testing. 😉 I couldn’t think of a better way for me to celebrate the lovely reception to Pedometer++ v8’s launch than to head to my favorite trails in the English Lakes and put it to some good use.

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  It's the week before WWDC so time for my annual reminders: - Start writing down a list of any questions or issues you’ve faced this year to pose in the group labs now - If you're a watchOS developer now's a good time to start wearing your 2nd testing watch so that you'll have a week's worth of health data already loaded when install watchOS 27 - When considering what iPhone to prepare to be your summer test device ideally it would be a 15Pro or newer so...

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  I've been spending the morning going through loads of old Apple Watch screenshots for a post I'm writing about my various efforts over the years at putting maps on the wrist…just came across a folder full of concepts for custom watch faces I've built. 😔 Maybe one day…

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  RE: https://mastodon.gamedev.place/@joethephish/116482126537338800 🤣

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  Most of my podcasting is usually of the "short form" variety, where I limit the show to 15 or 30 minutes...so it is particularly fun to go on a show famous for being the complete opposite. If you want to hear me talk for two and half hours (!) about the WWDC announcements from a developer's perspective, @gruber had me on The Talk Show to do just that. https://daringfireball.net/thetalkshow/2025/06/30/ep-426

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  A few minutes on Beta 3 after spending the last few days very deep in liquid glass work I'd say it feels a bit too soft for my liking. But that is only on the very subjective ‘fun' side of things (I liked the playfulness of the Beta 2 glass more). This is clearly more legible and a very gentle transition from the previous material blur effects we've had for a long time. So I completely understand why they might be heading in that direction. Better but less fun. https://...

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  I have put in my name for one of these workshops. I was super excited to see Apple offering them. They sound very much like the thing we've all been asking for. Where rather than having our technical touch point be the WWDC-week labs, we get a second opportunity later in the summer once we've had time to properly learn the new APIs, completed our first draft implementations and got a list of really good questions. 👍🏻 https://mastodon.social/@stern/114892519766399477

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  RE: https://mastodon.social/@daringfireball/116523341095226896 😁

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  As part of the launch of Pedometer++ v8 I'm doing a series of Design Notes posts exploring the design decisions in the update. For the first one I'm talking through more than 6 years of work trying to perfect mapping for watchOS. I've tried loads of things over the years, both in terms of visual design and app architecture. Lots of design dead ends and false starts, but I've arrived at a design which, after hundreds of miles of field testing, works and looks gr...

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  I'm delighted to be able to show off Pedometer++ v8. It is a top-to-bottom redesign of the watchOS app. Pedometer++ has been on the watch since the very beginning. This feels like the culmination of more than a decade of both UX, design and low level technical learnings over those years. To start with the home screen has been clarified to be more legible at a glance. With some incredibly fun (to use and to make) animations to celebrate when you reach your goal.

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  While thinking about my feelings towards this year's WWDC I was struck by how grateful I am to be a part of this community. A community which spurs me on towards doing better and better work. I tried to capture this feel in writing, to see if I could summarize what I think makes the indie app community so special. After a lot of thought I think it came down to two ideals I regularly see valued here: Craftsmanship and Consideration. https://www.david-smith.org/blog/2024/05/15/craftsman...

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  Just submitted version 8 (!) of Pedometer++. I am so proud of this update and can’t wait to share it. The foundations one of its key features I've been working on for nearly 2 years.

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  RE: https://mastodon.macstories.net/@viticci/116398205988680627 I’ve been using this recently and it is super helpful. I must frame dozens of screenshots a week and always looking for more efficient workflows for it. Also just very cool see how far @viticci has been able to push Shortcuts. He’s a wizard:🧙🏼‍♂️

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  For a recent Widgetsmith feature I wanted to know how common the use of Display Zoom was among iOS users, but I couldn't find any published data on it. So I added the necessary analytics for collecting this data point, so that I could publish. I found that around 1.9% of users have it enabled. Which is much lower than I would have guessed. It is most common for with SE and Mini models, and least common for the Pro models. Full write-up: https://david-smith.org/blog/2026/03/12/displ...

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  It's a wild feeling when you are debugging a bit of logic and think you find the bug, so you fire up `git blame` to see where the code in question came from…and it turns out you write it nearly a decade ago. Mind bending that it is still in active use.

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  I was exploring the repairability of a MacBook Neo and came across this absolutely gorgeous exploded views Apple publishes in their Repair Manuals for their products. I love the vibe of ‘em. Also, kinda wild that the MacBook Neo is only 22 parts (vs the 35 of a Pro). Neo: https://support.apple.com/en-us/126172 MBP: https://support.apple.com/en-gb/102712 Air: https://support.apple.com/en-gb/121934

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  While I don't yet feel like I have fully settled on how the I'll end up using LLMs in my day-to-day programming tasks, I have found a handful of prompts which I repeatably find to be generally useful and applicable regardless of whether I'm manually or agentically programming. These are for: - SwiftUI Previews - Realtime Documentation - Newly Localizable Strings - Testing Plans - Bug Finding - Draft Release Notes Detailed here: https://david-smith.org/blog/2026/03/20/...

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  RE: https://mastodon.social/@BasicAppleGuy/116319618506552344 What are the odds that Lil' Finder Guy is in the goodie bag at WWDC this year? Now that would be epic.

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  RE: https://mastodon.tz.is/@khaost/116253127280820238 OMG, @khaost is my hero. They posted about this Apple Watch repair dock which allowed for direct connection debugging in Xcode. Just got mine in the mail and it 100% works. For the first time in my 11 years of active watchOS development that I can reliably/quickly step through code running on device. It is a bit pricing and does feel a little bit sketchy in terms not being officially supported but I don't care…it will save me huge...