My Software Curmudgeon Era

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A funny thing has happened to me in my 40s. I have started to understand how people end up set in their ways. I think it’s often not because they stop paying attention, but because they have seen enough to recognize patterns and make choices based on their values. Reading recent critiques of macOS Tahoe’s direction [1][2] and broader discussions about dark patterns in software development these days [1][2] helped me realize how much of my reaction to this change isn’t just because I’m naturally pulling back, but instead because so much about what is changing is in stark contrast to what I value.

While some tech like AI has really broadened my perspective at home and at work, a lot of other opinions have really started to reveal to me how I’ll likely never come around to the “new way” of doing things. I’d like to think I am still open to new tech when it’s useful to me or aligns with my values, but I do find that it takes a lot more to get me to really change my ways these days.

Through that lens, I present you with a few hot take old guy opinions. These aren’t just gripes, but instead me settling on certain tech that align best with my values.

RSS vs Social Media for News

This is one thing that I’ve stuck to for the longest time. RSS is truly the best way to keep up with the sites and content that you care about. Heck, Michael Cantrell and I built our own short-lived RSS reader when Google Reader shut down. So I’m a true believer.

Modern RSS services like Feedbin even add another layer on top, letting you add newsletters, create filters and even add pages to read later in the same interface. You can use one of many amazing apps (NetNewsWire and Reeder are my favorites but there are a zillion great choices here), and use a service like Feedbin or just bring your own OPML file.

The important news will find you. You don’t need to be refreshing and seeking this stuff out. You also don’t need to be wasting your time on an algorithm-based timeline that is feeding you junk that it knows you’re going to react to. That leads me to my next point…

Blogging vs Social Media for “Thinking Out Loud”

It’s so easy to fire off a hot take on social media without really thinking through your stance on something, essentially yelling into the void.

Now I’m not a great writer but the act of sitting down and yelling into my own void actually does help me crystalize my thinking a bit as well as practice the art of writing. When I do this regularly I find that I am better at fleshing out my thoughts and that’s a good thing both professionally and personally.

Things like Mastodon and Bluesky are great Twitter alternatives that are much better open web citizens, but getting back to a world of writing a bit more and linking to our friends while using the aforementioned RSS more to stitch things together would be so healthy for state of our discourse. Less quote-post-dunkng, more linking to posts you disagree with and explaining why, please.

Computers vs iPad/iPhone as my primary computing device

I covered this last summer, but I just can’t fit an iPad into my life. Believe me, I’ve tried. Every time I get rid of mine I get sucked back in and buy a new Air or Pro, get the keyboard and an Apple Pencil and then proceed to use it to watch videos a few times a month. It’s not as good for writing, the battery life is good but not as good as a Mac, and it’s overall a compromised device.

It’s a little closer when thinking about the iPhone vs the Mac as my primary device just due to the amount of time that it’s by my side on non-work days, but even then I’d much rather be using a nice laptop on a comfortable couch than screwing around on my phone.

Streaming Services are Actually Not Great

I’m still working this one out a bit.

I’ve written about my love of album focused music apps before, but lately I’ve been thinking more about what it would look like to bring back my circa-2016 MP3 collection and start building up anything new I’ve added since then. What would that cost? What would I get in return?

I’ve spent approximately $10/month since around 2011 or so. Some napkin math says that’s about 15 years, or $1,800 to rent my music since then. If I stopped tomorrow, I’d have nothing to show for it. That “sunk cost” only increases over time. Ouch.

Music isn’t like TV or movies, where you consume it once and with a few exceptions, move on. It’s single-serve entertainment for the most part. We develop relationships and memories with our music and come back to favorites time and time again. I use apps like Albums and Longplay to recapture that feeling of when I was younger where I’d plow through the same album for months at a time, but still hate knowing that I’m renting my music.

What makes this hard is not that the options are unclear, but that streaming has hidden all of this labor for so long. Ownership means thinking about formats, storage, and where things live when the subscription ends. It means dusting off a NAS, ripping discs, and making decisions I have been deferring for years. Even Apple seems to acknowledge this gap, given that iTunes Match is somehow still available. None of this is elegant, and that is exactly what streaming has spared us from.

Dark mode is actually bad

This is a quick one. As I’ve gotten older, I just can’t do it anymore. Maybe on the phone, but on a laptop it just makes things impossible to read for me. Even with glasses on, it’s just not happening any more.

Get off my lawn!

The bottom line is that I am losing interest in software that assumes it knows better than I do how I should think, read, write, or listen. It’s similar to this post I put up a while back about algorithms but I think it goes even deeper than that. I know it makes me sound old and out of touch, but I suppose that’s increasingly true.

Pentagon Used Anthropic’s Claude in Maduro Venezuela Raid

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From The Wall Street Journal:

“Anthropic’s artificial-intelligence tool Claude was used in the U.S. military’s operation to capture former Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, highlighting how AI models are gaining traction in the Pentagon, according to people familiar with the matter. The mission to capture Maduro and his wife included bombing several sites in Caracas last month. Anthropic’s usage guidelines prohibit Claude from being used to facilitate violence, develop weapons or conduct surveillance.”

Apple News+ Link

Not great, bob.

Apple Should Rethink Face ID Settings for our Current Era

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From Phillip Michaels at Six Colors:

The central role that phones play in our lives coupled with uncertain times at home and abroad have people rethinking how they should approach Face ID. Apple needs to be doing the same.

One thing I’ve always appreciated about Android is how many automation apps exist that let you configure settings much closer to the metal than iOS Shortcuts allows. Tasker was my go-to for this back in the day. It could set DND based on calendar events, change deep settings based on location or WiFi network amongst other things. This allowed me to me keep my phone unlocked at home while requiring fingerprint authentication everywhere else.

I love Shortcuts and have a ridiculous number of automations set up myself, but there’s a handful of things I genuinely need to automate that Apple simply won’t let me touch. The most glaring one? Location-based security policies. You could imagine a world where users choose between no barriers at home, biometrics when out and about, and a long password at protests or border crossings. It’s not a wild ask. It’s just basic threat modeling.

Apple could open up APIs to make this possible via Shortcuts automations. In addition, they could create sensible defaults and ask users about their preferences when upgrading to a new OS. I know there are complexity costs and geolocation is only so reliable so there are risks involved. But the risks of imperfect geolocation seem a lot more acceptable than the alternative: leaving users vulnerable to compelled unlocking at protests, airports, or anywhere else someone with a badge decides your face is the key to your entire digital life.

Apple has built its recent brand on privacy. They run TV spots about keeping your browsing data safe. They’ve position themselves as the antidote to Big Tech surveillance. And yet, when it comes to giving users the tools to actually protect themselves from state-level threats, Apple’s response is basically “hold down some buttons and hope for the best.” They could do better. If Apple genuinely believes privacy is a human right, exposing more control here could go a long way to walking that walk.

Where are all the “Don’t tread on me” Americans?

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From Chris Truax:

So is getting immigrant criminals off the street a justification for ICE’s behavior? Constitution says no. Of course, some immigrants are criminals who shouldn’t be on the streets. Some Americans are criminals who shouldn’t be on the streets either. Nonetheless, we have a Constitution that prevents police from roving those streets and demanding that people present their papers, or from breaking into someone’s house without probable cause and a warrant signed by a judge. Those rights don’t exist to protect criminals. They exist to protect innocent people. And it is innocent people who suffer when those rights are ignored, whether the government is hunting criminals or immigrants.

Concise, well written breakdown of what’s at stake here. No notes.

Dot: The Menu Bar Calendar That’s Become My Main Calendar

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From John Vorhees at MacStories:

So if you use a calendar app that doesn’t have a great menu bar app or live in your menu bar calendar more than your main calendar app like I do, give Dot a try. There’s a 14-day free trial, and at the moment, the app is just $9.99 during its launch window when you use the code LAUNCH, with an eventual planned price of $14.99.

I’ve used Dato for a while and am generally happy with it, but I really like the little UX wins Dot offers along with the insane amount of customization. I love apps like Fantastical but can’t see myself subscribing to a calendar app given my needs. Paying one-time for this type of thing is more my speed.

Resist and Unsubscribe

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From Resist and Unsubscribe:

First, we must recognize that the president is unfazed by citizen outrage, the courts, or the media. He responds to one thing: the market. The most potent weapon to resist the administration is a targeted, month-long national economic strike — a coordinated campaign that attacks tech companies and firms enabling ICE — to inflict maximum damage with minimal impact on consumers. In sum, the shortest path to change without hurting consumers is an economic strike targeted at the companies driving the markets and enabling our president.

I don’t think every person can or will drop every single thing in this list, but look at this list and try to decouple yourself from the companies that are facilitating the harm being done to our country and fight the oligarchy.

Every little bit can make a difference.

How to Leave the U.S.A.

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From The New Yorker:

Nevertheless, “The Family of Migrants” was a reminder that Americans’ growing appetite for expatriation is a historical anomaly. For centuries, tens of millions of impoverished immigrants have settled in the U.S. seeking safety, prosperity, and happiness, transforming the country in indelible, wonderful ways. I came to the U.S. from Switzerland as a student in 2004, and ran the gantlet of visa and green-card applications before naturalizing, in 2022, but I’m not so sure I’d be welcome now. I’m not even sure I’d move here at all.

For no particular reason, I’ve been thinking a lot about the DAFT visa and other potential ways out. This is a great article about what it’s actually like to leave it all behind.

The Fallen Apple

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From Matt Gemmell:

Whatever the nuance, Apple’s old and hard-won reputation just doesn’t ring true now. The company feels like a performance of itself, diverging farther and farther from the original, shuddering with escalating dysfunction, and held together by the sheer, grotesque extent of its indentured income.

Brutal, but fair takedown of what it is like to be an Apple “fan” right now. The hardware is great, the software is generally getting worse, the “services” are getting more entrenched in the ecosystem, and the general cozying up to the government is a huge turn off.

For me, the following things need to happen to help rebuild my hope that I don’t need to reboot my “should I ditch Apple stuff?” blog subgenre:

  • Show small but meaningful progress towards design that is usable. Bring back some whimsy into your brand identity.
  • Find a way to make the developer community happy by making changes that are EU regulator-friendly & dev friendly. This could be commission simplification and reduction, opening up key parts of their OSes, and allowing categories of apps that are currently impossible to build on their platforms.
  • Finding a way to humanize the company better. I know it sounds silly to say “live keynotes will fix everything” but the Apple leadership slinking away to their ivory tower over the past few years has been unfortunate timing.
  • Don’t make it so easy to identify yourself as part of the Oligarchy. I don’t expect a public break from the Trump admin but maybe don’t go to the Meliana movie premiere on the same night that ICE murders someone. Find ways to tactfully distance yourself while still doing right by your shareholders. I get that it’s tough, but what’s happening right now is sleazy.

I want to be optimistic about Apple and feel confident that my investment of time, money, and attention is still worthwhile. But the trend line isn’t encouraging.

Speechless

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In many ways, I’m at a loss for words about what to say here.

Seeing how far we’ve come in just the past 12 months is, in one sense, not surprising given what we experienced during the first Trump term. In many other ways, my shorter-term fears are much greater, even though I still hold long-term hope that this government’s actions will eventually be rejected and reversed.

The recent killing of Renee Good & Alex Pretti by ICE officers is the latest and saddest example of where we have ended up after a year of an all-fronts assault by the Trump administration. If you haven’t watched the actual analysis of the position of the agent relative to the car and the events leading up, it’s worth a watch.

The details of what happen and the immediate reaction matter, because this is exactly how violence gets normalized: stripped of context, flattened into slogans, and waved away as inevitable. Almost immediately, both were labeled terrorists, and we were told the cases would not be investigated. That could change, but regardless of your politics, that should be terrifying.

I made the mistake of looking at Facebook once, and all of the people I expected were either joking about it or posting some version of “FAFO.” These “don’t tread on me,” Second Amendment absolutists sure have a narrow definition of tyranny. When ICE agents are repeatedly linked to January 6 and extremist movements, that selective outrage starts to make more sense. Slowly, state violence becomes acceptable, as long as the people on the receiving end are deemed to “deserve it” or are in the out group. Every single one of us, even those here illegally, deserve due process.

What’s wild to me is that the government could legally enforce our immigration laws and detain or deport people without random chaos, bloodshed, or inhumane treatment. This is not about immigration enforcement – this is about indiscriminate violence, impossible quotas, and the weaponization of a paramilitary force against those who oppose Trump. That is what people are protesting. Pew consistently finds support for border enforcement and due process and humane treatment at the same time.

In some ways, I can completely believe we are where we are now. This is the culmination of more than 20 years of asymmetric assaults on institutions, truth, and democratic norms, combined with a relentless push to elevate culture war fights while the country is quietly hollowed out. What truly separates us as Americans is not red versus blue, but the 99 percent versus the 1 percent. The ultra-wealthy understand that if they can keep us divided over cultural nonsense, they can loot the country and slip away before most people realize their future has been mortgaged.

If you strip the R or the D away from many of the real issues facing the country, there is broad consensus on what actually matters. Yet the wealthy and powerful work tirelessly to keep us divided, because division is how power is protected and expanded. Look at the data. The middle class is struggling, and by almost any metric, outcomes related to health, education, personal wealth, and the affordability of everyday life are moving in the wrong direction.

Silencing people through violence and coercion while destroying our social safety net and the global world order isn’t the type of “Freedom” most folks voted for. The specifics may differ for each person, but it is worth stepping back and thinking about our definition of the word outside the shallow comfort of flag-waving and slogans. To me, it means:

  • Freedom to choose who represents us, with confidence that our will is respected.
  • Privacy from government snooping and interference. We should not be tracked by systems like Flock or monitored by ICE simply for existing somewhere.
  • Economic freedom to live with moderately low taxes and real choice as consumers.
  • Security that makes those choices possible. A baseline welfare state, including healthcare, Social Security, and unemployment support, is what allows people to take risks and exercise real economic freedom.
  • Fair enforcement of laws so that people genuinely have equal opportunity, even if outcomes differ, because the playing field was made as level as possible.
  • Freedom to believe and worship, or not, any god you choose.
  • Freedom to live your life as you see fit, as long as it does not harm others.

On top of encroachments on our ability to live our lives in peace, we’re now seeing other breaches that bankrupt us and make us less safe:

  • Deregulation of key industries that further entrenches the largest and most powerful corporations. These entities are now so dominant that regulation without breaking them up is increasingly meaningless.
  • Personal profit from the presidency. By last count, Trump’s family has made roughly $4 billion this year by leveraging public office for private gain.
  • Conducting foreign policy as if the president were a king, sidestepping Congress at every turn. Whatever happened to small government?
  • Using ICE, now funded at levels comparable to the military budgets of entire nations, to sow fear and chaos at home.

You know what all of this rhymes with. Authoritarianism. The danger we face is not one man or one election. It is the normalization of authoritarian methods in the name of patriotism and security. Fascism does not arrive all at once. It arrives when violence, surveillance, and corruption are tolerated, even celebrated, as long as they are directed at the “right” people. That is where we are now.

One question I try to ask myself about every politician I have supported is simple: what would I think if this person had an R next to their name? For my conservative friends, think about the things Barack Obama did that outraged you. Now think about what Trump is doing, and ask yourself whether you would accept the same behavior from a Democratic president. One day, Trump will be gone. The norms he has shattered and redefined will remain, ready to be exploited by whoever comes next.

I honestly do not have much hope for people who have supported Trump since 2015 and still do. If you voted for him in 2016, I can understand the impulse to shake things up. If you voted for him after 2020, after January 6, and after everything that has followed, I am genuinely shocked. If you can witness all of this and still support him, it is worth looking in the mirror and asking what you truly value. Because it no longer aligns with any serious definition of conservatism, Christianity, or traditional Republican principles.

If you’ve supported Trump in the past and think what you’ve seen in the past year is too far, it’s not too late to turn your back on him. If you’ve long opposed this type of leadership, we’re going to have to work twice as hard in the coming years to save something we love from people hell bent on destroying much of it.

“When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross.” – Sinclair Lewis

2025 Subscription Audit

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I’ve started to make a habit of auditing all of my subscirptions annually to ensure I have a good feel for what I’m paying for and if there is anything I need to drop. It’s always eye-opening to get an overview of what you’re paying for magazines, apps, streaming services and more. Let’s take a look.

Still around:

A large chunk of it is about information. News and analysis I trust enough to pay for directly. Local reporting from the AJC. National outlets like The Atlantic, the New York Times, Wired, Jacobin, and The New Republic. NPR filling the house during the day. Feedbin and Overcast pulling it all together without algorithms yelling at me. This is me choosing a slower, more intentional information diet.

Another big category is entertainment, especially sports. YouTube TV, NFL Sunday Ticket, RedZone, MLS Season Pass, and Five Stripe Final for Atlanta United content. Add in Netflix, Max, Peacock, Paramount+, and the Disney bundle and it is hard to pretend I am a minimalist. I have essentially rebuilt cable one subscription at a time, but at least this version reflects what I actually watch. While I get to watch a ton of great content, I also get to pay through the nose to get it. If you are a Liverpool supporter, you end up having to subscribe to YTTV for Premier Leage matches, but also Peacock because NBC is gonna do their thing. Champions League & Carabao Cup are both a Paramount+ joint, and then you need EPSN+ to watch FA Cup matches. All told, my fandom in various teams costs us well north of $150 a month. Don’t tell my wife.

Then there is control and ownership. Emby for home media. Apple One and a handful of small, focused apps like Carrot Weather, Day One, Parcel, Albums, and the aforementioned Overcast. These are tools that support daily life without constantly trying to expand their footprint. They are quiet subscriptions, which might be why they last.

A few subscriptions exist mostly as aspiration. AllTrails, Peloton, Amazon Kids+. They reflect who I want to be or how I want our family to operate, even if real life does not always cooperate. These are usually the first to get questioned during the audit.

Out:

I got rid of a number of things I wasn’t using any longer:

  • Ivory. I just don’t post on Mastodon that much any more. Love the Tapbots guys, and can’t wait to give them my money for a Bluesky client.
  • Instapaper. The sub price has doubled and the features that come along for a sub just don’t make sense for me. If there were tiers, I’d absolutely pay for the lesser version but alas.
  • Foodnoms. This is more on me, but I found I was tracking my calories and not actually changing my behaviors. I’ve simplified things a bit by using Streaks instead. Seriously though, if you’re looking for a good calorie tracker, I’ve never used a better one in my life.
  • Plex. I moved to Emby for my home media needs. Plex is trying to become something entirely different than I’m interested in using.

In:

I also added a few new things:

  • Kagi. I’m sick and tired of Google’s search results becoming increasingly filled with AI slop. Kagi’s results are better, it’s more customizable, and
  • Sofa. I decided to drop my Goodreads account, so this was a good way to save and track books, but also for things like video games and tv shows as well.

Hot takes:

  • Lately I have been thinking a lot about music streaming. Apple Music works quite well, but I am not sure it feels like value in the same way it used to. I miss owning my music, curating a library, and knowing it will still be there regardless of licensing deals or pricing changes. I am not ready to go back to that world yet, but I am thinking about it more often than I expected.