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  I might have found iOS26’s best feature that nobody has mentioned yet: fast forwarding in CarPlay is much faster! Where holding down fast forwarding for 3 seconds maybe resulted in 15 seconds of progress before, it now results in a minute or so of progress. Finally!

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  New Airpods Pro 3 are nice and all, but you know what would’ve really cool? If they had basically no audio latency. You know, to do actual Pro stuff like editing audio or video without getting annoyed after 30 seconds. What’s the latency on these new ones? That’s the only thing I’m interested in.

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  Did Apple change the selection behaviour in Finder in Sequoia? If I click on a file or folder and drag within a second I keep selecting all the items my mouse moves over. Only when I click and hold on an item (or selected set) can I drag stuff. Quick update: when you click on a name (in column view) a drag will start instantly, but when clicking in the empty space after the name, you get the drag behaviour. Weird.

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  I (finally) released an app! I’m a map addict (and a theme park geek) and I kept finding myself comparing the sizes of places around the world. “This ride is great, would something like that even fit in the theme park at home?” You know, stuff like that. With SplitMap, I can finally answer such questions. You can measure anything on a map and pull up two maps side by side that keep th seem zoom level. It works on and syncs between iPhone and iPad. Try it! https://splitmap.paulsprangers.com

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  I finally released an app. I’m a theme park geek and a big fan of my home park, the Efteling. The park is always evolving, and I often catch myself wondering: what rides could they still build? I also love maps, and was looking through Disney and Universal satellite images thinking “would something like this physically fit in the Efteling”. But eyeballing maps only gets you so far. 1/8

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  To answer those questions, I used a bunch of different apps. One to measure land. Another to sketch things out. Yet another to compare locations visually. It worked, sort of. But it was slow, clunky, and honestly way more effort than it should be. At some point I thought: this should be easier. So I started tinkering. A few weeks later I had a prototype app that clicked. That prototype eventually became SplitMap. 2/8

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  The core idea was simple. Not just measure things on a map, but make it easy to compare what you measured with a completely different location somewhere else in the world. In a single app. The measuring part was surprisingly straightforward. With libraries like Turf, translating map points to distances and surface areas is very doable. Accurate area calculations were turned out to be the easy part here. 3/8

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  The real challenge was comparison. How do you compare two places that are thousands of miles apart without losing context? The answer sounds obvious: put two maps side by side. The implementation was… less obvious. Keeping two map views perfectly in sync turned out to be tricky. Zoom levels depend on viewport size, so splitting a screen immediately breaks the zoom level a map was at. Solving that took way more time than expected, but once it worked, I finally had my dream app. 4/8

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  With synced dual maps working, I added the rest: multiple languages, CloudKit sync, small screen support, and a proper iPad layout. SplitMap 1.0 was ready. I launched it as a $ 3.99 paid app right before the end of the year. That was a mistake. Almost nobody wants to pay for an app like this without trying it first. Lesson learned. I pulled the app, added a feature I had in the works, and added an In App Purchase to unlock limits instead. 5/8

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  Now you can try SplitMap for free! Create one location, make multiple measurements, and get a real feel for how it works. Unlocking removes limits and enables exports. That became version 1.1. Version 1.1 came with its own lesson. A small mistake in requesting location permissions caused an App Store rejection. I fixed it fast, but missed a button in App Store Connect, leaving the app stuck in “Waiting For Review”. I finally noticed my mistake and fixed it. Eventually it went live. Again. 6/8

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  SplitMap 1.1 is now available and free to try. Apple provided me with a fancy celebratory animation. You can now compare theme park rides, homes old and new, gardens, stadiums, F1 circuits, lakes, city centers, whatever you like. Having precise measurements and synced dual maps in one app makes SplitMap fairly unique. And while waiting for 1.1 approval, I already started working on something bigger for 1.2. That will need testing, but it really levels things up. 7/8

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  So even if you’re only mildly curious, give SplitMap a try and let me know what you think. And if you want to help test what’s coming next, feel free to reach out. Feedback from you is how this thing gets better. Thanks! https://apps.apple.com/nl/app/splitmap/id6756726585 8/8

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  SplitMap has been updated, and it’s a doozy! After measuring something on a map, you can pick up that area and drop a copy of it anywhere. With two maps open, even to the other side of the world. Want to check if a building fits somewhere else? Or which park is bigger than the other? Try SplitMap! #app https://apps.apple.com/us/app/splitmap-compare-and-measure/id6756726585