macstories and the continuing disappointment in the tech press

The key thing driving this article is the news of macstories developing AI psychosis (my opinion, for valid medical assessments on podcasters, please consult a medical professional) and on top of that jumping back on twitter.

I’m not here to police anyone’s activities and if you like AI and what Elon is putting out there. Fine, you do you but I think it is sad they went this way and it’s just not for me.

I also think how it was handled was very disappointing. As of today, as far as I can tell, there are zero links to their twitter accounts on macstories and it appears nothing was mentioned to the contributors. Rightly or wrongly they are on the About page and negative opinions towards twitter could be directed at them.

Despite not wanting to even link to their website, I’m going to provide some links to give context on why this is disappointing.

Any possible comments said on podcasts about Tim Cook or Apple still being on twitter won’t be dug up. I feel this covers everything. The core issue is the change of heart. Not even a subtle change of heart but a full 180. Those links are sentiments I can get behind. I felt I was in a community that supported independent developers and had similar ethics to me. Now, it feels like I was just listening to people that will say anything if they think it will make them a few more pennies.

It is not surprising, I haven’t really listened to the AppStories podcast this year. I simply marked episodes as played. Naively thinking this is a phase that would pass once the AI bubble burst or the excitement wore off. I don’t think it’s going to change. So, I’ve unfollowed them on Apple podcast, and I felt I left a neutral but honest 1-star review. Admittedly, I kept it that way so it’s unlikely to get flagged and removed while providing a warning that it should be more appropriately called AIStories.

As it’s iOS beta season and AI Siri is a thing, it feels like the podcast Connected, Federico Viticci has to sort of be pushed into having an opinion on Siri that’s not entirely negative because it’s not like his Open Claw setup or whatever agentic thing he is doing. I wonder if he will even do any sort of iPad review. It feels like he’s gone full AI bro and any Apple reviews are just about maintaining any income from existing fans to fund his tokens.

To his credit there is at least some self awareness there and has said “You see, I believe my issue is that I’m too agent-pilled and accustomed to products like Claude Code and Codex at the moment.”. It’s fine to change, admit it and move on to your little AI world. But, be honest about it, don’t try secretly going to twitter and pretending like it did not happen. Own it. Those of us who do not like it can move on and you can happily embrace Elon and AI.

I suspect they still have the strong opinion that AI can’t do their work. You find that among a lot of podcasters. Mention Image playground or anything that implies doing audio or images with AI and they’ll profess you can’t be an artist and it’s all fake. Most podcasts are like that. But funnily enough, they feel they can make themselves developers with AI. Something that does not affect their core business and by being a developer they can hopefully make a quick buck. Sometimes they’ll call themselves a ‘builder’ rather than a developer. I’m not sure if that’s out of shame or feeling they’re talking to people that will call them out for calling themselves a developer.

So, to this point and going away from macstories, I’d highlight Kan Do: Project Management by Stephen Robles. I’m not here to give you an opinion on this app or whether you should use it. In fact I can’t have an opinion on it because it’s a paid app with no free trial. So, it’s up to you to decide if it is for you.

What I will say, is if you are thinking about using it, consider listening to Mac Power Users episode “Stephen Builds a New Task App, Aug 9, 2026” or at the very least skim the transcript if you have Apple Podcasts.

It is a vibe coded from a non-developer and might not even be supported long-term. To quote some snippets from the show:

“People, people can get my app. I did not want to do a subscription because again, I'm not a developer and I don't know how long I'm going to work on this thing. So I'm doing it hopefully for the reasonable price of $3, $3 for the app.”

…

“I think it's delightful. And my love of shortcuts is probably where this came from, because shortcuts was, again, not a developer. I don't know code, but shortcuts gave me a language that allowed me to build certain automations that really expedited my workflows and allowed me to multiply my efforts and showed me what building a thing could be, like even just if statements, like learning what to do with an if statement, which is a base level coding thing that you use, and allowed me to then be able to instruct an LLM to build an app.”

I get why this isn’t mentioned on the app’s AppStore page. Everyone should feel free to make an app however they would like to. However, it feels like this is just being done for a money grab. No demo, pay or go away and no guarantee he’ll be up for continuing support in 6 months.

Sure, $3.00 isn’t much. But it’s not just $3.00. It’s people’s time and effort to input their data into the app. Does it matter if everyone else has the same idea and is bogging down app review and flooding the App Store with future abandonware? It feels to me the only thing that matters is making a quick buck.

I will wrap this up soon but I guess I need to get all my tech press annoyances out of my system so one last one. I’ll mentionJohn Gruber who has caught some strays over the macstories incident mostly because of twitter there’s been annoyance has his trying to normalize twitter while putting it on others to block it with xcancel.com. I feel the bad opinions on remote working are worse but to each their own.

I still think he’s an okay guy and I don’t need to agree with everything someone says. It’s probably healthy if you don’t. But if I’m being honest, the clinging onto twitter like it’s acceptable to participate there is just an awful take.

It’s not a particular surprise he feels that way. He strikes me as a Chuck Schumer-like centrist. In that really he’s a classic big companies are always right conservative mentally. That was a perfectly acceptable opinion maybe in 1985. To quote The Dark Knight: “You either die a hero or you live long enough to become the villain”. While perhaps not the intention in the film, I think you can take that as you go away before your static ideas age out or well…they age out if you don’t change.

He’s unlikely to see this but if he does, please just give up on twitter.

So the tldr is it feels like a really disappointing time to have anything to do with the tech press. Unfortunately I don’t think anything is going to change. When the web was young and a lot of people blogging about tech were doing it for free or in their spare time, it was more acceptable that it did come off as a PR mouth piece for companies. A lot of them were just learning how to do it or, I suppose to an extent like me, just mouthing off into the void to pass time.

You would have hoped as time progressed, the tech press would become more reputable rather than something we can easily replace with AI or, to be honest, corporate press release links. I just feel some things are worth taking a stand and not everything has to be a money grab.

I’m happy to be proven wrong, but I don’t think anyone I mentioned is doing this as a hobby. These are people with a lot of influence and money. I wish that was reflected in the output. Maybe then the web could start healing and not feel like the National Enquirer.