Waylist has now been out for a few weeks now and I wanted to share 3 ways in which I'm using it.
Favourite restaurants where I log restaurants we've been too and restaurants we'd love to visit. So they're not all our favourites (yet) but it's a good way of keeping them in one place
Holiday ideas to keep a list of locations that could make a great future holiday location
Things to do with the kids
In the next version, there's the option to share links and keep a scrapbook of related content against a a guide and against a location. I'm really excited to get that out as it was a lot of effort and I've been using it to help collate information I've stumbled across for future holidays.
The NHS have a Couch to 5K app that I had downloaded previously, opened once and then never looked at again. I actually deleted it as I wasn't sure how I'd fit it all in.
Then at the end of April, I began thinking about it again. This time, I not only opened the app but put it into motion and did my first run and I'm now about to finish week 2.
It has been tough, I've never been the best of runners, but already feel that I can run more comfortably for short periods of time thanks to the program. Getting to week 9 is not going to be easy but I'm pleased that I've made a start and I intend to keep going through the whole program.
Over the past few weeks I began prototyping an app for myself, one that turned Guides in Apple Maps into a usable bit of functionality. As usual, it spiralled into a fully featured app that I thought would benefit more people who are trying to create collections of locations (Guides) and want to be able to do the bare minimum, like sorting and filtering.
Waylist is available in the App Store now, and an update with more features is already pending in the App Store Review process.
Waylist does more than just collect locations, but that's it's core feature. You can send a location from Apple Maps to Waylist or use the Discover tab to do the same with Waylist. Either way, you create a guide and then store stuff in it. It really is that simple.
Where it excels is in organising that information. There are 4 sort options, and each Guide can be sorted individually, and different ways to filter. Right now, you can filter using text or, if you turn a Guide into an itinerary, by day.
I test drove the test on a recent trip to South Wales but found it was lacking some crucial features and actually the terminology didn't work at all so took he opportunity to start from a clean slate and using the first build as prototype that validated the idea.
The rebuild is more organised in its structure and didn't take long, despite hitting a roadblock with CloudKit, and I published the app this past week.
Version 1 had a the basics in place and the next update has a bunch of quality of life improvements and optimisations. I have a long list of enhancements which I'm working my way through.
Like Team Sheets, it's built with Liquid Glass in mind and because I've used SwiftUI and SwiftData, it should feel like an app Apple would build while I hope it fits within my own universe apps I'm building.
The app is £1.99, but I have a handful of promo codes I can share so you can get the app for free, just get in touch and I'll share them if they are still available and you can see the launch video I put together on the dedicated marketing site for Waylist if you'd like to learn more.
Apple Should Set and Enforce Some Basic Standards for Custom Video Players on tvOS on daringfireball.net
I'm actually not sure which apps on the Apple TV actually use the default timeline but you do find yourself putting up with the nonsense and the frustration that comes with them deviating from the standard.
Agree with John Gruber here, if your player doesn't match the default player then the app should be rejected. We're talking about million and billion-dollar corporations here, not indie developers.
The past 15 years have flown by and actually the sheet number of keynotes that have passed and devices that have launched is impressive. The Apple Watch and AirPods are distinctively Tim Cook-era devices.
If the annual schedule holds, John Ternus will announce the 20th iPhone and usher in iOS 27 (to be announced at WWDC). Assuming it's not ground-breaking, what devices will we look back at as the ones that define the Ternus-era?
Apple seems like it is in great hands. I have a lot of commentary to catch up on Tim Cook's transition to Executive Chairman. Johny Srouji taking over the Chief Hardware Officer role is more interesting to me than Ternus' transition up to CEO. How will hardware design move forward under his leadership? I'm hoping that Liquid Glass is refined and MacOS diverges from the concentric hell it's endured.
No matter what you think of Tim Cook's reign, the transition to Apple Silicon can't be seen as anything other than a triumphant success.
I've often struggled with the migration of CloudKit schemas and resource types when moving from local development to Test Flight builds. They don't populate or update correctly in the development space making it impossible to promote to production.
This time around, the fix was simple, but it was all down to a missed step from me. Let's start with the flow I had and the solution:
No schema updates in the CloudKit Console
Develop app locally
Run in as a Preview or in the Simulator
Push to Test Flight
It's been a while since I've had to promote any changes to the schema so it was a surprise to me that this was an issue at all.
Getting the schema into the development environment
I had missed a crucial step in building a CloudKit-enabled app. I had to push the app to my device and create data to force the schema to be created. The workflow should have been:
Develop app locally
Deploy to device via Xcode
That is enough to get the schemas created, and for me it was.
Why it wasn't obvious
Couple of reasons. Firstly, I'm working with Share Extensions. I need CloudKit to sync data between the app and the extension and yet they seemed to be looking at different data stores. One of them appeared to be pointing at the right storage at least, even though both were explicitly pointed at the same one. On pushing the app to my device, they began interoperating just fine but with the Share Extension's data not the data from my app.
The second reason was that I had built my app and was close to a first release but had already incurred a load of technical debt. I took the opportunity to rename entities and to both refactor and simplify code.
Because of this rebuild, and my confidence in the code I'd written, I missed the step to deploy to my device for testing before pushing to Test Flight. Part of this was to avoid blowing away data from the earlier version of my app but once I was ready I shouldn't have skipped that step.
What to do next
Now the app is usable, I've seen a couple of bugs that need fixing. Once they're sorted, I will get the app out via Test Flight again and promoting the schemas. I've already had to make some changes as the Share Extension failed silently on some schema related information that I luckily caught in the console (after way too much hair pulling).
I'll keep pushing on and really hoping to get the first version of my new app out this month.
Update
So I had further trouble where data wasn't pulling from the right environment after updating the app. Reinstalling it fixed it all, but I don't remember needing to do that previously. The app is usable and testable which means it's a little closer to being unleashed.
It annoys me when people say they are going to count down but actually count up. It annoys me way more than it should and while I chuckled at this post, it did rile me up!
Let Us Learn to Show Our Friendship for a Man When He Is Alive and Not After He Is Dead on daringfireball.net
I am finding more space for AI in my development workflow, although I spend a lot of time checking it's homework. I'm less trustworthy of it in other places. I think Sam Altman is at the heart of my distrust of the industry. I won't say anymore, and there are just too many quotes to pull so just go read this commentary by John Gruber.
Casey Neistat's latest video really resonated with me. I like to think I personally hit my targets for delivery but I'm sure I keep busy with plenty of procrastination without even realising it. Seeing it laid out like this made me realise that maybe I could do better.
Even with my AI scepticism on high, I am left wondering if I could look automating things that end up in the wrong quadrants.
None of this is easy though, especially when my output can often be measured in emails sent and documents created or contributed to.
I still remember my first interactions with a Mac, the Bondi Blue iMac in the 1999/2000. It was running OS 9 and I didn't get it. It was sat in my school's art room and I had used Photoshop on Windows which was a self contained app whereas on the Mac there was no containing window.
I really didn't get it.
Fast forward to 2006 and I started my first real web development job. I had forewarned them that I was a Windows user but made do with a Mac for a couple of days... and then I was hooked.
It was also an iMac with a completely underpowered PowerPC running OS X that crashed often, but was a joy to use.
Microsoft IE 5.5.
For well over a dace, I'd been a Windows user and it took just a couple of days to convert me to the world of the Mac.
After a few months, my iMac was replaced with a more modern Mac Mini. Pretty sure that was also a PowerPC model but by the time I was ready to buy my own Mac they'd started transitioning to Intel.
That wasn't my first Apple product, I had bought an iPod Mini in silver that I used for both music and as a file storage for University projects.
What I appreciate most about the Apply ecosystem is how things just work and the full stack integration. I do see many people complain about AirPlay and Continuity, but I rarely have problems. I'd go as far as to say I've never had a problem with either.
Right now, I use my iPad mini daily. My MacBook Pro multiple days a week and have built multiple websites and I have two apps in the App Store.
Apple Silicon has been the most fascinating transition to live through, leaving their competition in the dust.
My biggest appreciation amongst all that Apple do is that they don't have to be first, but they will usually do it best.
Mohamed Salah has decided to bring his time at Liverpool to an end.
Part of one of the most exciting trios I've ever seen at Liverpool and a certified club legend, it will be sad to see him go.
Salah joined from AS Roma, my second team, and came at a more-than-reasonable price even at that time when he still had lots to prove. Within a year he'd begun staking his claim as an all-time great, not just at Liverpool, but in the Premier League. Over subsequent seasons, we'd see him become one of the best on the biggest of stages.
Had he left after a title-winning season, we'd all have been up in arms at the thought of a title defence without him, but it feels like age is catching up with him and it's a good decision for everyone to call time on the relationship a year later. In hindsight, it was a year too many.
For more on Mohamed Salah's background and his influence on Liverpool Football Club, I highly recommend Chasing Sala by Simon Hughes.
I'm pleased he'll get a goodbye, but that shouldn't be the end goal. There are still two opportunities for claim a trophy this season and I hope we do go all out to win them.
From a personal point of view, I always cherish the opportunity to see the team I love play and especially to know that I've seen some greats live in the flesh. Lucky enough to have seen Salah play twice and score each time.
Whatever you do next, Mo. Good luck and thanks for all you have done for both AS Roma and Liverpool FC.
I knew that the creation of the world-wide-web was around the late-80s but didn't actually know that domain names proceeded that by half a decade at least. This timeline on the history of domains over on dotcom.press is worth a scroll. I really didn't know that domain names were invited in 1983.
I had read sex.com by Kieren McCarthy nearly 20 years ago on the battle of that specific domain and it touched on some of the points in the history of domains with how informal the whole thing was in the normal days.
Just from my own point of view, these are the TLDs I've owned over the years:
Last week, Reddit was fined £14m by UK data watchdog over it's age check verification failings. I get the intention, and as a parent I see value in what everyone is trying to achieve here.
Much like general tracking and analytics, the OS and browsers should be in control here.
If the OS knows your age for when you're buying in the App Store, it should be able to pass on a binary flag for if the user is 18+ or not. That would include apps like web browsers.
Of course platforms like Reddit should be responsible for the content they host, but make each one individually handle age restrictions seems silly when the number of OSs and browsers is much shorter and that in turn would make the integration of age verification much easier to implement.