k3nx

So, the threat actor now, after making the compromise, just needs to announce that the previous version has a 0-day, and folks need to install the latest version? I love the idea of a cool down, but it can still be thwarted. I would just hope folks that are trying to patch a 0-day take extra caution to vet the new version. I wouldn't be opposed to a --cooldown 0 doing a side by side diff. I may not know what's going on in the code, but a 0-day shouldn't be a ton of new code either.

I was in the same boat. I was also one of the weird folks that like the touch bar. I've had my M5 Pro MBP for just over a week now. It's insane how much better it is than the i9 I had. I have a Rust/SwiftUI project that I swear was taking 2 minutes to do a clean build on that Intel machine, that takes about 3 seconds on this new one. I've used it for over 14 hours of heavy development work and have charged it ONCE. Yes, my wallet wasn't happy, but I am, like actually giggling happy. I don't want to make you feel like you should upgrade, but come on in, the water's fine. :D

Question: are you manually making those changes to the "stupid" code? I've been having success with Claude using skills. When I see something I wouldn't do I say what I would have done, ask it for why it did it they way it did, then have it update the skills with a better plan. It's like a rubber duck and I understand it better. I have it make the code improvements. Laughing as it goes off the rails is entertaining though.

I've struggled a bit with this myself. I'm having a paradigm shift. I used to say "but I like writing code". But like the article says, that's not really true. I like building things, the code was just a way to do that. If you want to get pedantic, I wasn't building things before AI either, the compiler/linker was doing that for me. I see this is just another level of abstraction. I still get to decide how things work, what "layers" I want to introduce. I still get to say, no, I don't like that. So instead of being the "grunt", I'm the designer/architect. I'm still building what I want. Boilerplate code was never something I enjoyed before anyway. I'm loving (like actually giggling) having the AI tie all the bits for me and getting up and running with things working. It reminds me of my Delphi days: File->New Project, and you're ready to go. I think I was burnt out. AI is helping me find joy again. I also disable AI in all my apps as well, so I'm still on the fence about several things too.

Here's a thought experiment. (you may need to ignore reality for a moment or think alternate universe)

Let's say Apple changed the requirements to have an app "pass" the app store rules. Allowed developers a lower fee for "free" applications, including OSS ones. (It would be nice if this was $0 if the developer was intending to make $0 just to make your platform better, etc.) Charged a 10% fee to be hosted on the app store instead of 30% (ignore any other fee minutia here, I understand making sure taxes are paid in other countries, etc. I don't expect them to do it out of the goodness of their hearts) Allow businesses to make revenue without going through Apple. (yes, the year is past 1998, we can all do this now) I'm ignoring legality for the most part. I also understand there's a provision "for children safety", but that's never really been "for children safety", but some other form of control because children figure out how to bypass it before grownups do. (sorry I'm jaded. I have children that have figured it out).

Would an alternate store even be needed at this point? How much financial loss do they have due to the other app stores vs the 30% fee difference? Where I come from 10% is greater than 0%. What about folks making money outside of Apple platforms? Yes, it happens, strange to think otherwise. Downloading apps? The whole thing is sandboxed, with provisions... how is app store review different here? If I have to say "yes", allow shady apps to access my contacts, does it matter where the app came from?

I don't think third party app stores is the problem. Let people install what they want, and charge less to do so. Change the App Store to show "This hasn't been blessed by Apple", like the Firefox extension store does. Let me install an app I wrote/built without expiring in a week, etc. You could have something like Gatekeeper that says "hey, are you sure you want to run this?". Or, if it's the same self signed cert on my computer and my phone just let me do it. It still protects your user base (I can't imagine the support calls), without stopping folks that "know what I'm doing". You'd have a walled garden for those that want it, but a nice footpath for those that don't. It doesn't have to be on or off, it can be both.

I'm thinking Apple has much more to lose here. I'd bet in the billions. A perspective shift could have avoided this. Think different :)

You should try to rent a lens to see what works for you. I used lensrentals.com just to try out the 85/1.4 that "everyone" said was awesome. I loved it, but couldn't justify the price for a hobby, so I settled on the 85/1.8. I bought it years ago (4+) and I think I've taken less than 20 pictures with it. My "nifty 50" is still a favorite 50/1.8, but I also love the 70-300/4.5-5.6. Those two are my most used, and both were less than $600 US total.

I'm always surprised by articles like this.

Apple or Google blocks your app, that could have been a web app anyway...

Apple blocked Microsoft from putting Cloud Gaming, as an app, Microsoft released a web page you can add to your home screen.

There are ways around this. The web app might have been the cheaper option too.

I love your pricing model, enough to make me download the app.

Free with limited lessons. $3 a month for more, or $30 for lifetime.

It makes folks like me who have subscription-itus smile.

Thank you.

Agreed. Here in the US if they say "sugar free" there is usually some other sugar replacement. I don't need dried mango's with added sugar or sweetener, they are sweet enough as is. I'd love to see an unsweetened option. As someone who is trying to remove sugar from my diet anything sweet is almost too much for me.

The OS itself I'm not sure of.

Developing for is was a fun challenge. I had a device that had 4MB of memory total. This was RAM, Data, and application space. I created an "app" that had plugins. When you ran the HotSync is asked which plugins you wanted to "install", then based on which ones were installed it copied over the data you needed.

I loved the documentation. It might be the only SDK documentation I read with joy. It just clicked with me.

Gremlins. I liked this program as well. I don't recall if it was a simulator only or if it ran across on device. You could tell it to just wreck havoc on your app. I would set it up to run over the evening or weekend and I would just fix any bugs that occurred during that time. It would click every button, add weird text to all input boxes, just smash everything. It found many issues for me. When I came back over the weekend and there were no issues, I shipped my app. I still had users running it up until 2010.

I did consider that. I've had more than one experience of screwing things up. The $300 investment was an insurance policy against me doing that again :) . With how happy I am with a cheap box it might be something to consider when I have a free weekend to mess with it... Or when a Windows Update installs more stuff that I don't want.

I really like stuff to work. My tinkering days are limited.

It was enough to get me to try Linux again, and it was pretty eye opening for me. My work laptop is a $3,200 USD Dell 5570 from 2023. I bought a Beelink SER5 on amazon on discount because it was an older model around $300. I installed Ubuntu on the SER5. I've used gentoo and other distros, I wanted to use the computer, not configure it, that's why I went with Ubuntu. That little Beelink box runs circles over the Dell, it's embarrassing. Granted, the Dell has a bunch of corporate stuff that kills the performance, but I'm just happier using the Linux box. Luckily JetBrains tools, VSCode, Obsidian work just fine, which is what I use it for most of the time. I did install a steam game for giggles and it works. Like Dr. Seuss says in Green Eggs and Ham "Try them! Try them! And you may. Try them and you may, I say." I still have a Windows tower though...

That what I used git submodules for. I had a /lib folder in my project where the dependencies were pulled/checked out from. This was before I was doing CI/CD and before folks said git submodules were bad.

Personally, I loved it. I only looked and updating them when I was going to release a new version of my program. I could easily do a diff to see what changed. I might not have understood everything, but it wasn't too difficult to see 10-100 line code changes to get a general idea.

I thought it was better than the big black box we currently deal with. Oh, this package uses this package, and this package... what's different? No idea now, really.