I recently listened to an episode of ATP where they discussed how Gmail works differently than a regular IMAP email account.

In Gmail, messages are labeled. You can set as many labels as you want on a message and those labels are a way of filtering messages later. This has the advantage over a folder structure where the message can only exist in one folder at a time.

I’ve used Gmail since it was an invite only beta. I used labels a lot to categorize my messages. But when the iPhone came out I started using Mail.app and pretty much stopped using labels. Almost 15 years later, I’ve realized that I don’t miss labeled messages and that I almost never go back to look at old messages in the folders/labels. In fact, I rarely look for messages older than a few months and a quick search in my archive turns anything up almost instantly.

Everyone has their way of organizing and my way is to have three buckets for incoming messages:

1. Inbox
2. Archive
3. Deleted

For outgoing messages I have:

1. Drafts
2. Sent

I don’t use any other folder structure than those. Search is so good these days that I don’t manually dig for messages anymore.

I hope you don’t either.

Update: It is worth noting that I separate my roles with separate email accounts. For instance, my work email is completely separate from my personal email. I’ve found this helps me separate my roles logically instead of funneling everything into a single email account and then dividing it up with folders/labels.

Lately I’ve had a few discussions about mobile applications technologies. There are many options available, native Swift and Kotlin, and multi-platform React.js, Flutter, and Kotlin Multiplatform. Personally, I am adamant about using the tools and languages that are native to the platform. There are tradeoffs with any choice but for me it comes down to caring and the effects this choice has on the culture and team.

What do I mean by caring? Sure, everyone on any team wants to create a quality app. But for me caring goes far beyond passing requirements. For me, coding is a form of art - like writing a story or poem. It has structure and form. It can be beautiful, clean, and elegant. And I’m not talking about GUI – I’m talking about the code! One of the reasons I love writing Ruby code is that it is easier to reach that goal. Caring about how the code looks and is organized may seem over the top but guess what? It matters. Ruby attracted people who had those same values and it created a wonderful community. I’ve found a similar community in iOS and Swift projects - partly because they are all heavy Apple users – but there is a connection in those groups about creating something that isn’t just beautiful on the outside but is elegant, understandable, and maintainable under the covers too.

Continuing with the art analogy, if an artist is creating a poster to frame and hang on the wall what kind of paper and drawing tools would they use? A torn out large lined sheet of notebook paper and a broken pencil?!? No! They would use a heavy feathered card stock with a fountain pen or quality brushes or markers. They care about the medium and the tools because they care to create something that doesn’t simply pass the requirements.

When we choose to use the lowest common denominator languages and tools to save on “resources” then we shouldn’t expect to build a team that cares deeply about the app. We get out what we put in. The app will be fine but not great. And it will never be an insanely great app.

Today marks 10 years since Steve Jobs passed away. When my kids feel unsure of themselves I use the quote below to encourage them to be better and grow beyond their expectations.

When you grow up you tend to get told that the world is the way it is and your life is just to live your life inside the world. Try not to bash into the walls too much. Try to have a nice family life, have fun, save a little money. That’s a very limited life. Life can be much broader once you discover one simple fact: Everything around you that you call life was made up by people that were no smarter than you. And you can change it, you can influence it… Once you learn that, you’ll never be the same again.

Apple has a nice remembrance video on their homepage today that also includes this quote.

Update: the video is now posted on YouTube - youtu.be/CeSAjK2CB…

As I watched the 2020 WWDC Keynote I started seeing patterns in some of the features that were unveiled.

First is SwiftUI. Last year SwiftUI was revealed as a cross (Apple) platform way to write UI code. It significantly eases support for basic things that reside on all Apple platforms including light/dark mode, accessibility handlers, translation, and UI layouts.

Second is the new multi-platform Xcode template. It makes it easy to start building and maintaining apps for iPhone, iPad, and macOS.

Third, is App Clips. App Clips are parts of an app, the demonstrated example is a parking meter app. You may be in a new city and need to park but don’t want to spend 5-10 minutes downloading the app, creating an account, etc when you may never use that app again. With app clips you get just the experience of paying for the parking spot without permanently downloading an app.

Lastly, is the new UI for macOS. It is much more visually similar to iPad OS in many ways. They build off of each other while remaining structurally different. I think that Apple isn’t converging the platforms so much as they are creating a consistent design language across all of their platforms - which brings me to the point of all of this - what is the next platform?

The semi-obvious answer is the much rumored Apple AR Glasses. SwiftUI allows you to write cross platform UI code that can be ported to a new platform and then customized for that platform with less effort than writing a new platform specific app. The Xcode template gets you further along that path by separating UI code while sharing underlying network and application logic. App Clips seems like the perfect fit for Apple AR Glasses on the go. You want lightweight apps that can be used nearly instantaneously for a specific interaction. And the unified design language of macOS/tvOS/iOS/iPadOS will make the next platform instantly recognizable and more intuitive.

Apple is putting the pieces together for their next big platform right under our noses.

An article on the Washington Post consumed 300% of my CPU. And I had ad-blocking software running.

I was simply reading the article when the fans on my MacBook started ramping up. Soon it sounded like a hurricane was coming. I opened up Activity Monitor and sure enough the Post article was using 300% of my CPU.

I understand the predicament most publishers are in - trying to squeak by on a percentage of a penny per page view. But you aren’t helping the experience when what should be a simple web page turns my computer into a hot mess just so you can serve some crappy ads that I don’t care about.

I did this with my daughter so we could both watch a movie when we needed it to be absolutely quiet elsewhere in the house.

If this is possible for AppleTV or other iOS devices let me know.

apple.stackexchange.com/questions…

Apple released a holiday video about a girl who is reluctant to share her art.

“Share Your Gifts”

Apple also released a making of video - and only then did I realize they hand made all the sets. It’s incredible. If this is a taste of the quality going into Apple’s proprietary TV offering rumored for next year then I’m very impressed.

Making of “Share Your Gifts”

I’ve been on a social media diet since August 1st. I deleted the Twitter app from my Mac and my iPhone. I rarely used Facebook before then anyway and only through Safari. It’s been over three months and I can firmly say that I’m much happier and no less informed than I was previously.

Most of my ‘news’ comes through the Apple News app or visiting websites directly. This makes my consumption of news very deliberate and usually very short. I can review things for the day in about 5-10 minutes and that is all.

I have more time for what really matters and I feel like I’ve not wasted my time endlessly scrolling through noise and interruptions.

This November I’m thankful I gave up social media.