Been a side project for a few months, as I wasn't enjoying the official client, and wanted something that fit my particular tastes (scroll position permanence, greater emphasis on hashtags, support for Shortcuts, and a more iOS-native look and feel).
Launched 3 weeks today, and already nearing 100 subscribers (nearly all annual, but month-to-month also available). Been very fun seeing users start using the app each and every day!
I've been working in the mobile space since 2009, though primarily as a designer and then product manager. I work in kinda a hybrid engineering/PM job now, and have never been a particularly strong programmer. I definitely wouldn't have thought I could make something with that polish, let alone in 3 months.
Working on some new Bluesky tools and trying to learn more about the AT Protocol. Have been working on this following:
- Skyscraper, an iOS native app for Bluesky with focus on Liquid Glass UI. Launching hopefully in a ~week, and TestFlight available at https://testflight.apple.com/join/RRvk14ks
Then also working on a website/web tool that does the following:
- A keyword/term notification service that observes the Bluesky Jetstream for usages of the term and sends email alerts.
- Provides an HTML/JSON backup archive of any Bluesky account. Quick way to archive popular accounts, politicians, public figures, etc.
- Trending Hashtag lists, to see what is trending the last hour, day, week, and month.
Eh, I would disagree as there's nothing in it where you go "Oh wow, that's why they did it" in the context of Vision Pro or wearables.
It seems much more likely that the driver here was to produce a UI that was resource intensive and hard to replicate unless you control the processors that go into your devices as well as the entire graphics processing stack that sits above that as well. It seems created to flaunt the concept of "go ahead and try to copy this" to Google and Microsoft.
It does feel high pressure in the moment, but I wouldn't have two published technical books if not for the consistency and push of my editors and the publisher.
Another constraint of a technical book that I didn't see mentioned here was that time almost has to be very limited during the writing process. I worked on a couple mobile development/design books, and an iOS 18 programming and design guide is worthless after Apple announced Liquid Glass last summer. At 2+ years into the project and seemingly only 1/3rd complete, the publisher really needs to be sure the content will still be relevant after released.
Maybe I'm the only one, but does anyone else have an issue on macOS where Claude Code never updates itself automatically and you always have an error? I guess it's in times when I leave the CLI tool running and an update comes in overnight. But the alert seems to indicate it should update and fails.
This will be interesting to see, because it's not the FIFA game everyone who sees this press release is probably thinking about. EA didn't renew the FIFA license, so the game everyone plays is EAFC now. This will be a new game, and curious to see the quality.
Primary goal with the project was to create a Bluesky client that I wanted to to use. While the standard Bluesky app is fine, I wanted something more reminiscent of Tweetie, Tweetbot, Twitteriffic, etc. Something that feels at home on the iPhone. With the transition to Liquid Glass, felt like a good time to practice and get to experience the new UI with a new project.
Still in what I call "alpha", but pretty feature rich. Support push notifications, lots of discovery/feed following features, search tools, moderation setting management, post translation, and much more.
If you use Bluesky and are an iOS user, there's still space on my TestFlight and would appreciate any feedback or comments!
It's the 4th most biodiverse national park, and a really incredible place. But also, Dem. Rep Pete Visclosky was probably more responsible than Pence for pushing through in an appropriations bill.
An interesting situation where they probably were close to hitting some sort of load capacity, but didn't want to spin up new servers/instances and run the risk of making a mistake and tipping off people using the site.
My email is [email protected].