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.
]]>Both apps are worth checking out. I am really enjoying creating comics at the moment. I’ll try not to over do it, but this may be how Christmas cards get done this year.
]]>It’s Vila by Fabiano Do Nascimento & Vittor Santos Orchestra which I imagine you can find anywhere from Apple Music to Band camp. Though I will link to the Vila Band camp page which feels like the best way to support the artist if you choose to buy it.
It is jazz music and on the softer side of jazz. It’s either your thing or it is not. Personally, I enjoy it, and it’s especially a good album for listening while working, in my opinion. While it does have a Brazilian vibe to it, there are songs that give me hints of 16-bit era RPG soundtracks and a track off the Danger Mouse / Daniele Luppi album Rome. They’re subtle hints, and it might be how my brain works, but I hope that helps give you a hint of the kind of jazz it is.
If you think you could be remotely interested, I’d say give it a listen.
]]>They still champion the anti-surveillance state, which is a key thing that needs to be raised. However, I guess my key example of where it falls apart is section 230. I fundamentally agree with the protections of Section 230, but the ideal that the platform isn’t the publisher of ideas and the individual is responsible for what they say falls apart in the modern age.
From my link above, in the words of the EFF:
Section 230 embodies that principle that we should all be responsible for our own actions and statements online, but generally not those of others. The law prevents most civil suits against users or services that are based on what others say.
I think for the most part that holds true where there is no thumb on the scale via an algorithm. I do think one of the biggest problems that face the web is algorithmic feeds. This is the platform deciding what gets surfaced and when they do that, they should be responsible for what’s seen.
Some small time forum that just hosts a forum with a list of posts ordered by the latest post made should not. However, there is no reason a billion-dollar company that decides what gets surfaced should not be moderating slop and propaganda, in my mind.
Take YouTube, as one example, regardless of what I look at, what the homepage surfaces is clickbait, A.I. slop that’s largely the kind of content that is exactly the problem with the web. In my mind, YouTube is only valuable if you use an external search engine to surface subjects you want. Everything is suggest is garbage. Google made that happen, and Google can fix it. They’re not a small company just getting by.
Bot accounts and bad actors heavily rely on algorithms to get their alternative narratives out there. If it were just a message board that sorted data by time, all those sock puppet posts would just disappear onto page 2,3, etc. Imo, that’s because the algorithmic feels are a publisher decision to push content up, and the publishing platform should be held responsible.
I think even if you put a size limit on the platform and allowed unrestricted algorithms on small platforms, that would even be okay.
I just don’t think it’s right that the world’s richest man can push false narratives on his platform which will push his comments on people and get away with it. If anything is said, it will be weak and late. Yet companies end up blocking the UK or small communities in the UK shutdown out of fear of what Ofcom may do to them over some person’s comment.
Basically, I think the EFF needs to see this problem and not just flat out fight against anything because, to me, it does feel like it’s turning in to a libertarian ‘protection business’ rather than considering what really protects consumers. Thinking more about the little people and taking a balanced approach that reigns in billion-dollar companies while protecting small business and consumers would be far better, in my opinion.
]]>A.I. is flawed. In the hands of the wrong people it leaves people uneducated, it helps with scams and sway people towards extremist positions with fake information.
In the hands of experts who care about fact checking and verifying the output, it can be a powerful tool.
Data centers seem to bad for the people who have to live near them and for the climate in general. I think that could be solved with exceptional strong green policies and regulations.
A.I. is heavily reliant on the previous work of humans without compensation, and we are in no way prepared for how we can handle that.
Some of the best people to educate people and fight back on A.I. would be tech workers. Unfortunately, often, tech workers are often happy to collect their large salary and shares while thinking they’re unique and edgy by being anti-tech. We typically mock MAGA people for being anti-vaccine. It might be forgotten that before MAGA, it was Silicon Valley people that were causing problems by being anti-vaccine and selfishly thinking it’s fine to push ‘tech’ on people to the benefit of their salary and shares while they ban their kids from social media and raise their chickens.
While many tech people might still not do that, they want to be anti-A.I. while reaping the benefits from it. While not directly targeting tech folks, I think the book ‘We Have Never Been Woke’ by Musa al-Gharbi covers this hypocrisy.
If you work in tech, and you think A.I. is bad, you should be fighting it or at the very least trying to educate people using your educated view on the subject.
But regardless of that, I don’t think A.I. is that bad. It is very useful, at least on the subject of code, in the hands of a professional. From my experience, give it small targeted tasks where you can clearly explain what you want allows it to produce reasonable code quicker than you. Meaning you can then review it and tweak it to be even better in an overall time that might be faster than had you done it all on your own.
If companies accepted that and realized you can’t do away with junior developers or even expect 2 senior developers to produce the same output as 4 senior developers, then I think we would be in a better place.
Where they can be of some use is also as a search engine replacement. Again, more often with a narrow, well-defined subject like programming languages (vs something like what’s the best style of clothes for whatever). Some reasons they can replace search engines though is because search engines have degraded because some search engine companies have pushed too many ads and are also focusing on their own A.I. You can still have a nice traditional search engine experience, but you probably need to pay out for it and use something likeKagi. I’d definitely recommend Kagi, but I understand not everyone can afford to pay for search, even at the lower price brackets.
Because of that, we’re now in this weird space where nothing works very well. This would have been acceptable in like 1995 when everyone wasn’t dependent on the internet, but things have changed. The internet in 1995 was also slightly more honest and less scammy. Whereas now, everything is all about the money and squeezing the most out of people. Even legitimate businesses feel slightly scammy. Even while I think subscriptions in the current ‘App Store’ model are completely reasonable, the fact everything has to be a rent seeking business is unfortunate. I think Apple and others need to better support versioned software and if someone wants to stick with version X until it breaks, that’s on them.
This is sort of a random rant of various things and I don’t know where we’ll end up with A.I. but I don’t think it will go away.
I think it does provide value. Not enough to warrant the valuations that the current companies have. As an example, I think it could only end up most useful as a coding tool. What coding tool has ever been worth billions? Selling developer tools hasn’t ended well. Just ask Code Warrior.
A.I. feels like something that would be best done as a community project where the models are created in a GPL-3 sort of way where we have one set of models where everyone is free to use them but must contribute back for the benefit of society. This could minimize the issues around the climate and as far as stealing people’s work, at least you can say that people can freely benefit from the result. No company should be able to swoop in and take over (i.e., web standards and Chrome) if the GPL-3-like licensing was strictly enforced.
Unfortunately, I don’t think that will ever happen. While some western countries are more of a tire fire than others. Even the more ‘respectable’ ones are more than happy to throw their citizens under the bus for a quick buck.It’s concerning for myself because I may be an old, feeble person when everything goes really wrong, but I feel bad for those who are younger and will have to live on the other side of it going really wrong. Hopefully, we can realize we need to change course with everything and especially with A.I. Regardless of its benefits, it’s also really good at spreading fake news and I think that’s going to hold us back.
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