I’m proud to tell you about the latest product I worked on: Swift Playgrounds 4.1, now with Mac Catalyst support! You can now work on the same project files on your iPad and Mac, and publish them as native apps on both platforms.

Specifically, my work was around implementing the Mac Catalyst preview pipeline, which involved a rather unique dance between UIKit, AppKit, Core Animation, and many low-level services to orchestrate a fully interactive app preview experience across multiple processes.

It was very hard work sometimes, but I’m proud of the result. I hope this update opens up new opportunities for developers new and experienced alike to experiment with Swift and SwiftUI on the Mac.

https://developer.apple.com/swift-playgrounds/

Swift Playgrounds - Apple Developer

Swift Playgrounds is a revolutionary app for iPad and Mac that helps you learn and explore coding in Swift, the same powerful language used to create world-class apps for the App Store.

developer.apple.com

• #personal
• #apple

We’ve reached a grim milestone: one million dead from COVID-19.

“The number — equivalent to the population of San Jose, California, the 10th largest city in the U.S. — was reached at stunning speed: 27 months after the country confirmed its first case of the virus.”

Imagine the population of San Jose one by one suffocating, then dropping dead, until no one is left, in a little more than two years. That’s what COVID-19 has done to this country. I think it would be appropriate to mark this ignominious milestone with a national day of remembrance; a memento mori, a grim reminder that this disease is not yet over, not by a long shot.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/covids-toll-us-reaches-1-million-deaths-unfathomable-number-rcna22105

Covid's toll in the U.S. reaches a once unfathomable number: 1 million deaths

"It's an exponential number of other people that are walking around with a small hole in their heart," one widow said.

www.nbcnews.com

• #covid19
• #opinion

I have to agree with this video: Stupidity is less about intellectual deficiency that can be argued with, but more about a sociological state where a person surrenders their agency to defer to a strongman.

“Almost as if this were a sociological-psychological law: where the power of the one needs the stupidity of the other.”

• #video
• #opinion

Incredible array of cars at the ISSIMI Meccanica open house last Saturday! Check out the full album here:

Dave Rahardja - 2022-04-23 Issimi Meccanica Open House

humancode.myportfolio.com

• #photo
• #cars

“Distressed Blockbuster Video Sign” by trebomb¹

maybe Netflix is losing money because it was sold to us as a replacement for Blockbuster, but really it's the equivalent of going to Blockbuster and they don't actually have any movies to rent, but you can watch the Blockbuster staff acting in a play they've written if you like

— 📻 Glengarry Glenn Gould (@nailheadparty) April 21, 2022

I joined Netflix when it was Blockbuster in your mailbox, and it did exactly what it advertised: it allowed me to rent any movie available on DVD regardless of publisher.

As Netflix pivoted to streaming, I was excited at the prospect of being able to watch any movie ever made. I was convinced movie makers would cash in on the long tail of their obscure catalog that sat unplayed, because they would cheaply make a couple bucks off each movie. But the opposite happened: movie owners withdrew their catalogs from Netflix and into their own silos, and I found myself finding fewer and fewer movies on the platform. It got to the point where I didn’t bother searching any more, because odds were, the movie wouldn’t be available.

Yes, Netflix countered this trend by financing their own shows—some are very good and successful! But the idea that Netflix failed to fulfill their mission to bring every movie available on a single platform somehow seems…more salient to a long-time customer like me.

I suppose newcomers to the platform won’t have the same nostalgia that I do, and will accept Netflix as yet another self-producing streaming platform. Who knows? All I know is that I wanted Netflix to be 2005 Blockbuster in my browser, but now all I have is the one from 2012.

• #opinion